Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Response to the Semenya response

So in response to the comments of athletes, notably a female runner from Canada, about the recent performances of Caster Semenya, another Canadian, bike racer Kristen Worley, has made some very insightful comments.
Worley is is male to female transsexual who competes internationally. She called her fellow Canadian, Diane Cummins, to task for her comments that running against Semenya was the same as running against a man. Worley, who co-founded Coalition of Athletes for Inclusion in Sport, worked behind the scenes on Semena's behalf during the whole ordeal, which she describes like this:
“But when a woman does it [excels like Usain Bolt], [a woman] who didn’t actually set a world record (in winning at the Berlin worlds last year), who (more than 10) women have run faster than..., who didn’t set a meet record, we throw her into stirrups and virtually rape her. We did that because of the way her face looks and her voice.”
I was a little concerned that Worley revealed Semenya's condition, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, during the interview with a Canadian newspaper. As far as I knew that was being kept under wraps. Not sure if it will make things better or worse now that it's out.
But Worley clearly sees that this is more than just science and medicine:
“Anything we don’t understand, we fear. So when it comes to gender differences which are normal, it hits to the very core of us as human beings, it puts each one of us into question. That’s the challenge. (IOC president) Jacques Rogge said to me a couple of years ago from his office in Lausanne ‘Kristen, this is a medical problem.’ I said ‘Mr. Rogge, this is a social problem."

1 comment:

kristenworley said...

Ken I posted on the Women's Sports Blog... More allocable space to write a response. Kristen


http://www.womentalksports.com/items/read/55/649996