"I am a woman with differences"
Caster Semenya was 18 years old when she flew to her first World Championships. Little did she know her name would be catapulted into the headlines - not just for winning the gold medal.
Caster was born with what’s called a ‘Difference in Sexual Development’, or DSD. I think it’s important to let Caster say, in her own words, what that really means…
“Put simply, on the outside I am female, I have a vagina, but I do not have a uterus. I do not menstruate and my body produces an elevated amount of testosterone, which gives me more typically male characteristics than other women” - Caster Semenya, ‘The Race To Be Myself’
She did not know any of this until she returned home to South Africa, following the World Championships in 2009, when the results of her gender verification tests were leaked to the media.
Caster’s body produces too much testosterone to compete in the female category, according to standards set by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), now World Athletics. To compete, she would have to choose between surgery - to remove her internal testes - or taking drugs to lower the levels of testosterone. For a period of her running career, she chose the latter.
Over the last 15 years, the regulations around testosterone have been paused, re-started, and then made stricter for athletes with DSD.
Caster has been challenging World Athletics over their rules about testosterone, and her right to compete.
"I've eliminated the noise"
“Prove This Is Not A Boy”, “Maybe Not 100% A She”, “Gender Row Runner”... these are just some of the headlines that followed the 2009 Berlin World Championships.
I asked her how she managed to shut out all this noise, the intense scrutiny about her gender…
“Being selfish about yourself, keeping yourself away from things you can’t control… I’ve eliminated the noise, I took myself away from the world media and the criticism”
Now Caster says she’s ready to talk. She’s just released her book, ‘The Race To Be Myself’, giving her side of the story…
"They've published false testimony"
Caster told me that she believes the research into DSD athletes - and therefore the case against her competing with her natural testosterone levels - is flawed.
Caster had taken the IAAF to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2019. She argued that the rules around testosterone levels were discriminatory, ‘physically and psychologically damaging’ to women, and that the research the regulations were based on was flawed.
“They've misled us, there is no proof that women with DSD have and advantage, you know, over other women”
The News Movement put that to World Athletics…
“World Athletics has over a decade of research, directly from DSD athletes in our own sport, that show high testosterone levels do provide an unfair advantage in the female category. This research has been upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the Swiss Federal Tribunal who found our guidelines on testosterone thresholds to be necessary, reasonable, and proportionate to protect the integrity of the female category”
The trial would end up going the IAAF’s way. The Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed the regulations around testosterone and DSD athletes were necessary to protect the female category.
Caster hasn’t ran in a World Athletics event since June 2019.
"It's a racial issue, it's discriminatory"
One of the key themes in Caster’s new book is race, and how that has affected her treatment as a DSD athlete. She believes that black sportswomen are more likely to be scrutinized because of their skin colour.
Looking at other recent DSD cases, there’s Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba, who won silver at the Rio 2016 Olympics (Caster took the gold). Then there’s Margaret Wambui of Kenya. Both athletes were affected by World Athletics’ DSD regulations.
We put the claims about DSD regulations being a racial issue to World Athletics…
“Differences in Sexual Development (DSD) conditions occur all around the world and are usually diagnosed at birth. In Africa, like in other developing areas or countries, the diagnosis often comes later because there is a lack of post-natal monitoring and checks. This occurs for many reasons, and much is being done in some countries to address this”
There’s also a more general point about what Caster calls the ‘objectification’ of black women’s bodies in sport.
Serena Williams is one such athlete who has received a barrage of comments about her being ‘manly’ across her career. Then there’s fellow US tennis player Coco Gauff, who recently tweeted about the “death threats, racism and body shaming” she deals with on a daily basis.
"I don't have a problem with them competing"
For a lot of people, the whole question of Caster’s eligibility to compete boils down to this idea of protecting the female category in sport.
In fact, back in 2019 the former long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe said it would be the “death of women’s sport” if there weren’t tougher regulations around testosterone - fearing it could give transgender athletes an opening to compete in the female category.
Despite them being separate cases, earlier this year World Athletics banned both transgender and DSD athletes competing in the female category. Male-to-female athletes were banned entirely, and DSD athletes banned if they had a certain level of testosterone.
“I can’t speak on behalf of the trans community, but I sympathise with them. It’s one of the issues that, you know, that more research needs to be done”
"Authenticity is the best outfit you can rock"
Caster tells me she’s happy. She past caring about the haters, people who judge, people who criticise.
Her current focus is coaching other young athletes, and developing them into top class runners, through the Caster Semenya Foundation academy.
“It’s my duty, it’s my responsibility to educate, to build the young upcoming generation”
But more broadly, she tells me it’s about empowering women, especially women in sports…
“So that they know the difference between being misled, being dictated, and owning their throne”
Listen to the interview and further discussion on our podcast, Noted: https://linktr.ee/notedpod