This story had been in the news for a few weeks and it is atrocious. Its the story of the South African runner, Semenya, whose gender has been in question. First of all these people need to get their terminology correct, gender is the social disticntion that characterizes what society perceives to be masculine of feminine. They have claimed to be running gender tests, but what medical test is there to test someone's gender? Is there a tool that one uses to measure how masculine/feminine one is? Maybe they have a check list and they specify criteria such as length of hair, shape of nails, color of lipgloss, size of muscle, preferred clothing, or perhaps the way one speaks. If they were to be allowed to do any test it would be a test to determine one's sex. Yes sex! Sex is one's biological makeup that determines if one is male or female. So after much thought I figured they were indeed testing her for gender confirmation. I guess because she didnt look/act/dress/ feminine enough then she should definitely be in question. There is so much to this story that I want to discuss but I just wanted to shed a little light on the situation. I was looking at the view and they mentioned that the tests proved that she was an intersex. Now what category should this excellent runner be placed in? There is no intersex category and she has lived her entire life as a female so why try to mess her life up to prove some egotistical satisfaction.
Is this feminine enough?
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