Caster in Stone.

The Caster Semenya saga, it strikes me, is becoming rather like an office karaoke party. That is, you keep thinking it can't possibly get any worse, and yet, amazingly, it does.

I have, up to now, refused on principle to say anything about Semenya, because I feel she is already being dissected by far too many people who have no business to do so, and it’s disrespectful to her privacy.

But today I am ANGRY.

I’m so angry that even my trusty high horse got sick of it and rather unceremoniously threw me off en route. I’m so angry that I can’t even structure this into the usual essay format. I’m just angry.

So for what it's worth, here’s why I’m angry. In bullets, because bullets are what I’d like to hurl at the nincompoops who started it all.

• Even the media who are supposedly on her side are making a mockery of her. Exhibit A: Huisgenoot’s grotesque makeover. You know, forget those pesky internal testes, the real problem is that you’ve neglected that all-important splash of lippy in the morning. Wtf? What does this say about what it means to be female? If I forget my spiral perm, am I suddenly a sexual suspect? If this bid for femininity doesn’t work, are they going to crochet her some doilies and photograph her with a baking tray instead? As it is, female athletes already straddle a problematic gender boundary, where unless they happen to look like Anna Kournikova, their lack of “femininity” is brushed off as an eccentric side-effect of being exceptional, excused only by their athletic talent, as though the same level of tomboyishness would be unacceptable in a girl who wasn’t winning medals. In this case, that same rationale has taken the shape of hideous over-compensation, as though to make up for the controversy, Semenya needs a correspondingly large dollop of girliness to ease public horror.
• Even the influential figures who are on her side are saying – in my opinion – all the wrong things. One media report cited the chairman of Parliament's portfolio committee on sport and recreation, Butana Komphela, warning the public that Semenya was feeling really messed up. Which no doubt she is (think of how you’d feel if the same thing had happened to you at eighteen). But the way he put it, although sympathetic, was invasive and possessive, as though the world had the right to access her mental state. “She is like a raped person,” he said. “She is afraid of herself and does not want anyone near her. She has been placed on an altar for all the world to see. If she commits suicide, it will be on all our heads." Admirable sentiments, bucko. But what part of this comment isn’t placing the poor kid on the same altar? Except now it’s not just her physical body that’s up for dissection, it’s her emotional response as well. If she really is suicidal, it is none of our business – if her emotional state has to be discussed, we could at least show enough respect to leave the finer details of her private grieving process out of it. She's already been made into a circus freak; we don't need to paint her hysterically jumping off bridges as well.
• Her family and friends – and some political figures who, ahem, need no introduction – are still bleating about how she is a “real girl”, as though this is the primary concern. Her gender classification is not the issue. The issue is that her gender is being made into an issue at all. She is not ill, she is not dirty, she is not contagious - she's just (hand me my harp, please) built a little differently.
• Gender classification in sport is, in my opinion, ludicrous. (Actually, I think the international hysteria about sport is ludicrous in general, but we’ll leave that for another post.) Forgive me if this is all taking a turn for the Judith Butler, but really, what happens if you take gender classification in sport to its logical conclusion? You can develop athletic talent with the appropriate training, but there are also aspects that are undeniably inborn. Everybody’s hormone levels vary; everybody has certain physical advantages over others. An ambiguous gender classification is no more an unfair biological advantage than having longer legs, a faster metabolism, or the inborn capacity to build more muscle. Where exactly are we drawing the imaginary line that says some physical advantages are fair and others are not? Most of my male friends are weedy literary types (sorry guys) and believe me, some of my female friends – who are very tall* indeed – could whip the crap out of them on an athletics track. As a fellow commentator on Bec’s Facebook page responded to my rant about non-gender-specific athletic advantages,

If they deny her, surely that suggests testing every record breaker for the same genetic levels as the rest? I look forward to the day when everyone steps up to the start line and the race umpire runs around with a tape measure checking for leg length consistency!

You and me both, lady. I can’t frigging wait till the day when this ridiculous classification is taken to its logical conclusion. Wouldn’t it be a lot more prudent to classify athletes according to their weight and strength, regardless of gender? A-team and B-team instead of male class and female class? Sure, you’d probably find that for the most part, there’s a fairly natural gender division anyway. But at least it would provide some loophole for the exceptions, like Semenya, where their successes would be framed differently. A girl who made it into the male-dominated A-strength class would be a GI Jane-style heroine, not an object of ridicule. Headlines everywhere would scream: CASTER KNOCKS OUT MALE COMPETITORS! or whatever. There, the battle cry would be “You go, girl!” instead of “Get a perm, freak boy!”

I’ve rather viciously bombarded a number of alarmed victims with this idea at parties, and most of them have told me that it would never work, that it would be far too much admin. Why? On a purely practical level, athletes’ hormone levels are already frequently tested, they are classified according to their strength and – more to the point – in practically every sport in the world except Quidditch, athletes are broadly classified into only two categories: male and female. So what’s wrong with taking these same two categories – with an average strength/ weight/ height/ hormone level assigned to each – and just renaming them in a way that could prevent trauma to athletes in future?

Call me an over-simplifier, but I just don’t see the problem.

*Carla, this is to make up for the polagna shout-out. You really are very tall.