Caster Semenya Biography

[CaveMum]

Wonder how much misinformation will be in this book? The press release is already thick with hyperbole.

https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/merkybooks-strikes-gold-for-olympic-champion-semenyas-memoir

“Publisher Helen Conford and senior commissioning editor Lemara Lindsay-Prince acquired UK and commonwealth rights, excluding South Africa and Canada, for The Race To Be Myself, from Caspian Dennis and Rachel Clements at Abner Stein on behalf Peter McGuigan at Ultra Literary. It will publish 31st October 2023.

North American rights were won by Nneoma Amadi-obi at Norton and Simon Boughton at Norton Young Readers from Peter McGuigan at Ultra Literary. Southern African rights have been sold to Jeremy Boraine at Jonathan Ball Publishers. A young reader’s edition will be published by Puffin.

The publisher said: “Banned from competing in the sport she loved and trained her whole life for, Olympic and World Champion Caster Semenya is finally ready to share the vivid and heart-breaking story of how the world came to know her name.

Thrust into the spotlight at just 18 years old after winning the Berlin World Championships in 2009, Caster’s win was quickly overshadowed by criticism and speculation about her body, and she quickly became the centre of a debate which continues today about gender in sports, and the right to compete as you are.

“Told with captivating speed, immediate candour and the spirit of defiance, The Race to Be Myself is the journey of Caster’s years as an athlete in the public eye, and her private life behind closed doors. From her rural beginnings running free in the dust, to crushing her opponents in record time on the track; to the falsehoods spread about her by the press and sporting bodies, the legal trial she went through in order to compete, and the humiliation she has been forced to endure publicly and privately.”

Semenya said: “My life has had its struggles, but it has mostly been a joy. Through my example, I want to educate, enlighten and inform about how the world can welcome those born different. You may have heard some of my story over the years, and you might have seen me running or standing proudly on the podium at the Olympics. But there is still so much I need to relate about strength, courage, love, resilience and being true to who you are. I want this book to show people around the world how to do just that.”

Lindsay-Prince added: “I’ve always admired Caster Semenya’s journey as an extraordinary athlete and iconic activist, incredible pioneer and unfortunate pariah. Her fight to run as she is a race for respect, justice and ultimately everyone who has ever been told no and prevented from doing the thing they love.

"This book is her setting the record straight and owning her entire story. It’s unflinching in its honesty and empowering in its tone, and captures the full scope of her life – from a little girl running in the dust, to a record breaking athlete running to be free.”

I've always admired Caster and as a feminist, felt I needed to support her as a woman being attacked for looking too masculine. I read reports of how she had been observed female at birth and raised entirely as a girl.

I'm a little more unsure now and I don't think anyone really knows how to manage the cases of athletes with genuine DSDs.

Caster is not female. Caster has xy chromosomes and has a disorder of sexual development that only affects males. Sure, raised as female but if Caster had been born in a British hospital, casters parents would have been properly advised that caster is male and should be brought up as such.

I might write an opposing book:

”Hachette have announced they have acquired the publishing rights to NotBadConsidering’s searing new book cataloguing the scandal of Caster Semenya’s decade-long dominance as a male in women’s sport.

“Robbed! will be published in late 2023. Subtitled “Stories of the women whose lives were ruined by a male” it documents Semenya’s rise from running free in the dirt, to crushing opponents using male advantage. It covers the discovery that Semenya is a 46XY male with 5 alpha reductase deficiency who has gone through male puberty and the efforts to keep that information hidden from the world.

“It records the heartbreaking stories of all the women who missed out on medals, sponsorship, Diamond League prize money as a result of having to compete against a male. The vilification of Lynsey Sharp for speaking truth is especially sad.

”Told with captivating speed and most importantly facts, Robbed! documents the lunacy of World Athletics having to go to court to prove that males have sporting advantage over women, the complicity of the media in misreporting the reality about Semenya, and the ongoing gaslighting from Semenya’s PR team in insisting Semenya is a ‘woman with naturally high testosterone levels’ instead of a male who stole livelihoods from women.

“NotBadConsidering said ‘maybe finally after reading my book people will stop lying, but I very much doubt it.’”

I’d buy it @NotBadConsidering!

@ZeldaFighter I get where you are coming from, when I first became aware of this I had a lot of sympathy for Caster. But as time has gone on and I’ve learned more that sympathy has turned to anger. According to many reports, when Caster hit puberty it became blindingly obvious to everyone that Caster was male. Initially that led to Caster being exploited by athletics individuals in SA but at some point Caster will have be one fully aware of what was going on and chose to continue.

By all accounts, outside of the competitive sphere Caster lives and presents as male.

Caster has also spoken disparagingly of “girls” on camera in the past.

What voracious greed. It never ends does it?

Completely without any morals.

@ZeldaFighter

I don't think anyone really knows how to manage the cases of athletes with genuine DSDs.

Well, this is the reason that the rules around testosterone levels were developed. Women with DSDs still don't have an automatic right to compete if their DSD gives them an unfair advantage.

With Semanya, Caster has a DSD that affects only men, so despite being socialised as female based on ambiguous genetalia Semanya is a biological man.

In all the talk about trans issues, these kinds of edge cases are probably the only valid use of the term "assigned at birth", and everyone on this board has immense sympathy for Caster, and wants Semanya to live life in the best way, but it is still unfair to compete in a women's event. Indeed, at the Rio 2016 Olympics where Semanya last competed, all three 800m women's medals were won by people with DSDs that only affect men.

I have no sympathy for Semenya. I might have years ago, but I don’t now. Semenya knowingly competed despite knowing about having male advantage.

I hope the book covers the methods by which Caster became a parent.

I'd buy it @NotBadConsidering (now hoping this is true!)

caster was not raised as a girl. There are multiple accounts and photos of Caster at school as a teenager wearing the male uniform. The DSD they have is one that more or less resolves at puberty when the testes take over testosterone production, though genitalia may remain visually non standard for a male. CS colluded with their coaches to cheat at women's sports. I don't really blame CS in the early days as there would have been huge financial incentive and it would have been a route our of poverty for CS and in fact their entire village, but eventually they will have known exactly what was going on and yet they have agreed to this book that shows no remorse for years and years of taking medals away from women and preventing women from holding world records, including that now infamous Olympics race where all 3 podium places were taken by males with DSDs.

My sympathy for CS and the fact that CS is a male born with a DSD, which is not CS fault, pretty much evaporated when I saw this video of CS describing growing up and playing sports with the boys being very disparaging of the girls CS went on to knowingly rob of their places and sporting dreams:

Caster Semenya may have been recorded as female at birth due to ambiguous genitalia ( she had an undiagnosed DSD) but by all accounts was dressing and acting as a boy all through childhood.. She was apparently " too rough" with the girls when playing football, and so played with the boys instead. She says she was always mistaken for a boy and even her own father says she sounds like a man on the phone.

I've seen an interview with her and her wife, in which she looks and presents every inch the man; sitting with legs wide apart, being dismissive of 'girly' things.

It is unfortunate for her that her condition was not recognised from an earlier age - and many of the struggles and difficulties she has been through have been down to the mismatch of her recorded sex and the reality of her actual biological sex; which became even more pronounced after puberty.

From 0.53 in that video: "I grew up with bits and Girls are boring and soft"

Boys

Caster Semenya chose to race even after having confirmation they were male. The narrative that they were female with ‘naturally high testosterone’ has been used to deliberately mislead.

That this scandal was allowed to happen in the past 20 years is remarkable with the knowledge around these conditions.

I would buy notbad’s book.

There are other athletes that made the opposite choice than Semenya after the confirmation of their medical condition.

Semenya knew. Semenya was talent scouted because of the cluster of males with that condition in that area.

I'd also like to know more about how CS's biological children with their documented female wife were conceived and whether that gave CS any pause about the morals and ethics of continuing to insist it wasn't fair that they could no longer race against women. I wonder if that will be in the book?

It's really patronising to paint Caster as a naive innocent bystander to her cheating - Caster knew of her male advantage and took every opportunity to exploit natural advantages of testosterone. Couldn't be more male!

Didn't he father two children after he was done with all the athletics cheating? Getting quite some use out of those womanly testes he's been trying to pretend don't exist.

I'm sure Caster has a DSD and it's clear to me that Caster needed to have confirmation of the nature of the condition, if that means no more competing against females then that's just tough. It's possible that the DSD caused Caster to be wrongly thought to be female, but again, that's something Caster will have to come to terms with. I don't think it's likely we will be told the actual truth though, it will likely be 'my truth'.

Caster is ultimately a very ordinary club standard male 800m runner who's made a very handsome living off the back of essentially an administrative error, being 'rumbled' within days of her first major medal didn't stop her eking out another decade or so's worth of largely undisturbed competition and endorsement deals.

Me, too. Please write it, NotBad!

Indeed. I think people like Zelda seem to think women are just men without testicles or something.

The physical advantage Caster has goes far beyond genitals, and means that even as an average athlete he will have far more opportunities to win than the best women.

We know the truth. Caster has 5 alpha reductase deficiency. It’s in the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s judgment. Semenya knew this after testing around the age of 19 or so. We know this condition leads to a deficiency of dihydrotestosterone which is the hormone responsible for the full development of the external genitalia - the penis - in the male fetus. Therefore we know that Semenya didn’t have this so was taken to be a girl because of the external appearance as a newborn.

This is the truth that we all know, it’s in official documents and can be accurately inferred. So we don’t need to be told the actual truth, because it’s already known.

"This book is her setting the record straight and owning her entire story. It’s unflinching in its honesty

Bets?

It’s actually worse because we now know the corrupt SA sports authorities had already tested Caster before CS’s first world championships and knew full well that CS was male with a DSD. They made the decision to have CS compete knowing that they could make a big fuss after about CS being discriminated against - basically they took the act first, don’t apologize later route. CS was only 19 then so I blame the Federation, but the whole narrative about how CS didn’t know and it was evil jealous racist competitors who complained is totally false. The public nature of CS being tested/having medical records revealed was horrible but it was caused by the SA federation who knew full well and allowed CS to go through all that just so they could win medals. And they made it public on purpose to manipulate the situation.

CS claims to “live as a woman” yet all accounts are that off the track CS lives as a man. In a deeply homophobic country where lesbians are frequently raped, CS lives openly with a woman and got married - everyone knows CS is a man so they don’t care. CS also wears male track uniform, and it has nothing to do with being a lesbian there are lesbian women in track who do not dress that way.

What is actually racist is CS manipulating the idea that black women are more masculine and basically just men. All the rhetoric around African women having “naturally” higher testosterone is extremely disgusting and racist, as if black women are a different species.