More Female Athletes Penalized Following Caster Semenya Ruling

By Christianna Silva


Two Kenyan sprinters were dropped from their national team over hormone tests just days right following the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) effectively banned South African Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya from competing due to her organic testosterone levels. Such decisions based on hormone levels aren’t entirely new to the sport, however the new, stricter rules are already creating rifts in medical, athletic and activist communities across the world.


The East African reported on Friday, May 10, that the Kenyan team dropped Maximila Imali and Evangeline Makena immediately after tests marked their testosterone levels as being of course higher than the average for female athletes. The team then determined that such results constituted a “risk” of disqualification it wasn't prepared to take right after an appeal made by Semenya against the IAAF's ban was refused on May 1.


after the decision by the court presiding over the appeal — the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the Swiss-based high court for international sport — Semenya and other female athletes with similar test results would have to take testosterone suppressants categorize in attempt to compete in the women’s division, a measure Semenya has called “discriminatory, unnecessary, unreliable, and disproportionate.”


“We could not risk traveling with the two athletes immediately following the recent IAAF ruling on the boundary of testosterone levels on female runners,” the Athletics Kenya director of competitions Paul Mutwii instructed them news outlet.


Imali is familiar with such discrimination. In 2015, the 23-year-old, who holds the Kenyan 400m record, was retired from the world championship in Beijing because a blood test showed she had hyperandrogenism, a condition in which the body produces more androgens, or sex hormones, than average, The East African reported.


For her part, Semenya is pushing back against CAS's decision, and the South African government has thrown their support beyond her to appeal the ruling. Semenya has been fighting against rules like this for over a decade, right following the IAAF made her take a “gender verification” test in 2009 any time as soon as she dominated a 800-meter race, the New York Times reported.


Last year, though, the rules got stricter right following the IAAF introduced a new regulation that stated female athletes with “difference of sexual development” have to meet specific criteria if they want to compete internationally in the women’s division, including reducing their testosterone below a certain level for at least six months before their race. The regulation — right now approved by CAS — will force females like Semenya, Imali, and Makena, who simply have more of course occurring testosterone in their bodies, to change their bodies categorize in attempt to compete. Even CAS admitted that the IAAF's ban was "discrimination" yet although maintained it was required, reasonable and proportionate" to ensuring fair competition in women's sports.


That Semenya, Imali, and Makena do have biological contradictions shouldn’t be cause to question their status as female athletes, especially given that testosterone isn’t a hormone specific to male bodies. In their book, Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca M. Jordan-Young point out that testosterone is noticed in bodies of all genders, and the two argue that science hasn’t proven how much testosterone actually advantages athletes.


It should be noted that male athletes are not contained to a similar common, and don’t have to prove their gender sort in attempt to compete internationally like their female counterparts do. In Lindsay Parker Pieper’s book, Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women’s Sports, she points out that these policies, that have specifically targeted females since the 1940s, length from “gender parades (show your lady parts) to gender verification cards issued by medical doctors to chromosomal cheek swabs,” Slate announced on May 1.


Commenting on the apparent double regular in a essay for the Cut, Olympic swimmer Casey Legler pointed out that Michael Phelps has a unusually low level of lactic acid that makes his muscles tires far less rapidly than his competitors. Legler herself has a condition called Erlhos Danlos Syndrome which results in larger hands and feet that are closer to the size of men’s than to women’s, which help propel her forward in the water.


“One difference I cannot help however notice between myself, Phelps, and [Ian] Thorpe versus Caster, is whiteness,” Legler added, echoing statements made by activists.


“This decision is biased, not only based on the fact that Caster is intersex, however that she is from South Africa, she’s a Black South African, she’s queer, and she’s gender non-conforming,” Sean Saifa Wall, co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project, told Wired on May 1. “We’ve only seen this sort of humiliation and shaming of Black and brown intersex athletes.”


“This is a scheme to demoralize us,” Imali mentioned, according to the East African. “I am not prepared to quit athletics, nor to take a suppressant treatment. I am so happy the way God made me to be.”