IN THIS RACE, THE ONLY THING CLEAR IS WHO IS DOMINATING
Confluence of human rights, gender and testosterone is a knotty place
How fitting that one of the most simple events of the Rio Olympics — a foot race — should have been wrapped up in one of the most difficult, complex and nuanced issues in the modern world.
This was the women’s 800-metres, won handily Saturday night by South Africa’s Caster Semenya, with silver and bronze respectively going to Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and Margaret Wambui of Kenya.
All three have faced public questions about their testosterone levels, Semenya most famously and painfully, having been banned from competition for a time and ordered to take drugs to suppress her levels.
But in July of last year, the so-called hyperandrogenism regulations established in 2011 by track and field’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, were suspended for two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in an excruciatingly dense decision that runs to 161 pages.
Though the decision was in relation to a young Indian woman named Dutee Chand — she too competed in Rio, but ran only one heat of the 100-metres with a time that was 50th out of a field of 64 — it also applied to Semenya.
Though their cases have been widely discussed with Semenya and Chand routinely described as intersex women with high testosterone levels, some details remain private, as do the women themselves. Only sufficient details as to be mortifying and shaming appear to ever leak out in the public domain.
And yet, nothing is clear-cut in these stories because, as British runner Lynsey Sharp told the Daily Telegraph earlier this summer, “Everyone can see it’s two separate races, so there’s nothing I can do.”
And Sharp, who finished sixth with a personal best time, wasn’t wrong.
She, Marina Arzamasava of Belarus, American Kate Grace, Poland’s Joanna Jozwik and Canada’s Melissa Bishop, who finished fourth and set a Canadian record, did look as if they were running in one race, this for slight, slender, conventionallooking white women.
Semenya, Wambui and Niyonsaba, all strapping, powerful, flatchested African women, looked to be running in another.
And there’s the rub, or one of several in this knotty business.
What sort of advantage do naturally occurring high levels of testosterone (it’s called endogenous testosterone, versus the exogenous kind, or from outside the body, seen in athletes who dope) give a non-doping female athlete?
The answer is far from certain, which is precisely what the court of arbitration found: There is “insufficient evidence about the degree of the advantage,” it said in its ruling.
But racial overtones are at play here, too. The suspected intersex women who have been publicly outed are from emerging nations. Are high testosterone levels more unfair than someone who is born tall, or with huge hands, or with long legs? Those are advantages, too. And what of access to sophisticated coaching and biofeedback programs and the like, all the advantages a first-world athlete would have in Canada or the United States or Britain?
Like Semenya, Canada’s Bishop has been discreet to the point of avoiding international reporters whenever possible, knowing what they likely want to ask her about.
But after the Saturday race, Sharp tearfully admitted it had been “difficult” competing against such athletes.
“I have tried to avoid the issue all year,” she told the BBC. “You can see how emotional it all was. We all know how each other feels.”
Sharp, Bishop and Jozwik all hugged together after the race in what Sharp said was a show of unity. “We see each other week in, week out,” she said. “So we know how each other feel.”
Sharp also said she has “a tremendous amount of respect for Caster,” who was lovely and gracious in victory, seeking out the women she’d just beaten to shake their hands.
Athletes — and many others — appear tormented about the issue: The court of arbitration heard from experts galore who described the dilemma of wanting a fair playing field, but also a way to determine one that is fair and a process that won’t be ruinous to those who don’t fit neatly into male or female slots.
Sex in humans, as one expert told the court of arbitration, “is on a continuum with no clear or singular boundary between men and women.”
At the moment, it appears to be one of those issues that in the abstract is about human rights and the complicated business that is gender — unless you’re in the lane next to Caster Semenya, and then, probably, it just feels wrong.