What makes a woman? According to the International Olympic Committee, the most important thing is what she lacks: specifically, she must not have more than the regulation level of testosterone.
That’s the level that Laurel Hubbard (a mediocre male weightlifter from New Zealand who now identifies as a woman) was required to maintain for a minimum of 12 months in order to compete at this year’s Olympics against women. That’s also the level that South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya (who won gold in the women’s 800 metres in 2012 and 2016) refused to medicate herself down to. Consequently, Semenya is banned from defending her title in Tokyo. (Although eligible for the 5,000 metres, she did not qualify.)
For over a decade, Semenya has been both a celebrated athlete and the object of harsh, probing curiosity. In 2008, when Semenya was the world champion in the 800 metres, the journalist Ariel Levy visited Semenya’s former club in the devastatingly poor Limpopo province. Here, Levy met a small girl who informed her: “I will be the world champion. I want to participate in athletics and have a scholarship. Caster is making me proud. She won. She put our club on the map.”
But even before Semenya had made a name beyond her birthplace, it was being asked whether it was right for her to compete at all, never mind win. There were murmurs that Semenya — tall, narrow-hipped, flat-chested, deep-voiced and powerful as she was — must have an intersex condition. Bluntly, people wondered: was she female at all? Semenya’s former coach told Levy that the young runner was routinely summoned to the toilets so she could prove to her rivals that she had the right genitals for her race.
If Semenya was able to accept such intrusions philosophically at first, over time they became more and more profound, until eventually she found herself in front of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2019, fighting against the requirement to suppress her natural testosterone levels. (The 5 nmol/L ceiling is still over twice the normal level for women.) CAS ultimately upheld the limit: the judgment it issued is lengthy, technical and heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking, because what is clear throughout Semenya’s testimony is that she has never doubted that she’s a woman. The public scrutiny of her sex, she said, had been “atrocious and humiliating” — and discriminatory too, since she argued that no comparable questions would be asked of a male athlete. The medication she took to reduce her testosterone made her ill, and any drop in her performance should be put down to that rather than seen as confirmation that she had an unfair hormonal advantage. It felt, she said, like a “punishment” for her body.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe