Which athletes will take up Caster Semenya’s fight? A certain boxer comes to mind.
After Caster Semenya has ended her years-long legal fight, who will take the torch she passes on for inclusion of women in sports? The post Which athletes will take up Caster Semenya’s fight? A certain boxer comes to mind. appeared first on Outsports.
Mark
Seeing Caster Semenya ending her legal challenge last week was saddening, but not totally surprising.
She has been jeered more than cheered. Known more for perception than athletic performance.
Caster Semenya leaves the stage having been robbed of magic moments she still had left, in addition to the acclaim she should have earned outside of South Africa — her home country where defense of her is unwavering.
Imagine being 18 years old. You win a world championship — the biggest moment of your life as a young athlete. Then you find all your business put out on the street without your consent, and you have to go through the ugliness that she went through since.
Imagine being called a “man” when you are a woman. Being called a “man” because you happen to be strong, Black, from the Global South and just better at what you do.
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“In this world, we’re all different. We shouldn’t question how we look, or how we speak,” she lamented to the Guardian in 2023. “People in our society start questioning what women should look like because they want women to look a certain way. That’s the story that’s going around with me.”
The story wasn’t anything new. The misogyny surrounding all of this has been around since the modern Olympic torch was first lit. It’s persisted all the way to the return of testing today. The IOC dropped it once, and the person who discovered the science behind the mechanism used now, Dr. Andrew Sinclair, is publicly saying this isn’t a good idea.
As we move into a post-Semenya era, we see the clock turning back, and I wonder who will be the athletes who will take up her fight next?
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Boxer Imane Khelif poised to take up the fight
One of those could be Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.
She has stated that the next Olympics in L.A. is on her agenda, even with World Boxing publicly calling her out as part of their announcement of
In September, Imane Khelif filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport which accepted the appeal, but denied her request to allow her to compete in the championships.
Perhaps a Lia Thomas, who was denied a hearing in the CAS last year, a CeCé Telfer or a Sadie Schreiner, who has anti-discrimination cases pending in two venues, will step in further?
True, Caster Semenya is not trans, nor are any of the athletes past or present caught on the wrong end of these regulations. However, the matters of “differences in
This comes out in the way certain analysts and commentators have described Caster Semenya and are no different than some of the mean tweets and hate emails, that Thomas, Telfer, Schreiner, or this reporter have gotten in our travels.
Caster Semenya never received the fair hearing that political scientist Dr. Roger Pielke, who testified in her 2019 case in the CAS, said all athletes should have in regard to this issue.
“One of the things that the judges were very careful about is they said we’re making no judgment about whether Caster is a biological male biological female. She is according to our standards a woman the only question is does she have an unfair advantage,” Pielke stated in a panel discussion at this week’s Play Your Game conference in Finland.
“The sports organizations can handle this issue by simply saying this is an issue within the women’s category. It’s only about unfair advantage. We are not going to misgender people. We are not going to call people names. We’re just going to evaluate fairness.”
When I think of Caster Semenya, I also think of baseball player Curt Flood. Different issues, but both come down to the same idea that an athlete is a human being and should be treated as such. They should not be demonized whether by the reserve clause or by body shaming, just because you won a race, but “don’t look the part” in the opinion of some.
Much like Flood, I hope that Semenya’s example sparks another athlete to pick up the torch, fight and win for a better future for sports.
That is the challenge for us in this current moment. We must forge forward and resist falling back.
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The post Which athletes will take up Caster Semenya’s fight? A certain boxer comes to mind. appeared first on Outsports.
