Caster Semenya Gender Scandal: Male Or Female?

Source: blogywoodbabes.blogspot.com

One of the hottest topics in sports at the moment (apart from the incredible Usain Bolt) is the gender question raised against a South African athlete. Middle-distance runner Caster Semenya is making headlines all over the world this week, but not because the 18 year-old shocked the world by taking home the gold metal by a mile in the 800-meter competition at the World Track and Field Championships in Germany yesterday. Rather, the reason Semenya is such a hot topic is because many people are wondering: "Is she female or is he really a man?"

As the International Association of Athletics Federation recently confirmed, the young athlete has to undergo extensive gender verification tests. Semenya has to be examined in painstaking detail by a number of professionals, including a gynecologist, an endocrinologist, a psychologist and a gender expert, and it could be two weeks before the final report is revealed. She won the gold medal in the women's 800 meter in Berlin by a considerable margin and has shown a dramatic improvement in running times recently.

I saw the 800-meter race and sure Semenya won by what seem like a mile but what really shock me is the way she acted after the win. I thought Semenya was an American male athlete the way the South African teenager celebrated. Semenya's coach, Michael Seme, says he is well used to the confusion. He recalls stopping to use the facilities at a petrol station in Cape Town recently and as Semenya tried to enter the women's toilets, she was stopped by the petrol attendants. "Caster just laughed and asked if they would like her to take off her pants to show them she was a woman," he said.

One would think it would be easy and rather quick to figure out a person's gender by having a doctor take a look under the hood but things might not appear right. That being said, no one seem to be accuing the young athlete of cheating. IAAF spokesman Nick Davies told ESPN.com that it's "a medical issue, not an issue of cheating," and the tests are being carried out to prove that Semenya doesn't have an intersex condition or a hormone imbalance that could give her an unfair advantage over her female competitors.

South Africa team manager Phiwe Mlangeni-Tsholetsane would not confirm or deny that Semenya was having such a test, but did say "We entered Caster as a woman and we want to keep it that way. Our conscience is clear in terms of Caster. We have no reservations at all about that." Click on pictures to enlarge.