ABSTRACT
At the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, Germany, newcomer 18-year-old South African Caster Semenya won the gold medal in the 800-meter sprint. But it was her deep voice and flat chest-not her athletic success-that garnered the attention of sports officials, the popular press, and the public. Suspicions circulated that she was not really female and a worldwide controversy ensued over whether her assumed intersex*1 body would offer an illegitimate advantage over her fellow female competitors. She became what I will call intersexualized. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF ) ordered Semenya to undergo gender testing after she had been awarded the gold medal. This genderor sex-verification test requires numerous medical evaluations that involve gynecologists, endocrinologists, psychologists, and internists, as well as a gender expert. Semenya excelled in the white domain of the 800 meters, and her case triggered widespread debate. I argue that Semenya’s case-although purportedly exclusively about her sex_gender-also carried a racial dimension. Leonard Chuene, the head of South African athletics told The Associated Press that “if it was a white child, she would be sitting somewhere with a psychologist, but this is an African child” and he added: “who are white people to question the makeup of an African girl?” (The Observer, UK on August 23, 2009) The ensuing debate in the media all over the world included statements about the sexist, racist, and neo_colonial aspects concerning Semenya’s treatment in the proceedings of the IAAF. Various scholars have since interrogated the panoptical gaze of the media, which Semenya was subsequently subjected to and the gendered and racial panic that erupted around Semenya was discussed widely (e.g., Cooky, Dworkin, & Swarr, 2013; Nyong’o 2009; Watson, Hillsburg, & Chambers, 2014; Vannini and Fornssler 2011). In professional sport, notions of race, gender, sexuality, nation, ability, and more, are being negotiated, shaped, and reshaped. Because sport inhabits a highly visible position in public media it is a domain in which public spectacles are portrayed and which thereby reflects on issues relevant to society at large. The case of Semenya covers a number of aspects in, what I call cross-cultural intersexualization; this book enfolds the many aspects present in the quest for a scientifically verifiable distinction between the sexes genders and in the accompanying racializing processes.
