Have you heard about this?

Caster Semenya is an 18 year old South African female who came in first place at the IAAF games in Berlin. She ran an unbelievable 800M race with an incredible time.

Normally, a victor receives respect and admiration for having accomplished an amazing feat. But that is not what is happening. Rather we are hearing cries of She's a Man, Baby!



Here she is. Critics say she has a deep voice, a little facial hair, and pronounced musculature. Something they are not saying about the winner of the bronze, Jenny Meadows



There have been unconfirmed reports that she has undergone sex-verification. More than just checking out her lady bits, some blood work has also been done which, again unofficially, she has 3x the normal levels of testosterone than a normal female. This is well and good, but it is common for athletes with such low body fat to have elevated testosterone levels. Further testing is required to see if this is related to drug use, though those tests have been performed already.

What this comes down to, is gender policing. IAAF rules create a male and a female category and their rule book does not define either. Our culture believes there is a sex binary, one or the other. When in fact there is a wide variety of perfectly natural variations.

Being clinically intersexed encompass over 10,000 conditions, hermaphroditism being one of the more rare. One of the more common is in males, where the urethra is two separate tubes, one for semen, the other for urine. This is a step towards females who have a separate urethra and a vaginal canal (apologies for anything wrong with my terminology). The functional difference is cosmetic. The man does not produce less or more of a hormone. Yet, in this framework can we say this person is entirely male?

The other big news maker of the event Usain Bolt of Jamaica. He broke a world record twice, once in the 100m and again in the 200m. He isn't as tall as other sprinters. But he does have abnormally long legs, giving him a much longer stride. The Gold Medal wining Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps may have a genetic ability to flush out lactic acid faster than most of the population. Both of these are perfectly natural variations, and yet they are not considered unfair advantages.

Here, what may be a perfectly natural variation on female, is being considered disqualifying, despite no rule against it. This seems to be more about our culture's need to reinforce its unnatural views on gender and less about fairness in the sport.

As a result, an 18 year old who was greeted as a champion at home, is being forced to undergo international scrutiny and embarrassment. Well played IAAF.