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.”

Caster was assigned female at birth, in error.

XY foetus does not produce the hormone to grow external male genitalia or the structures to produce sperm.

I believe that's incorrect. They may not produce the hormone until puberty, but then they do. In fact, I believe that another man with exactly the same condition as Caster Semenya has fathered children. Not something that could ever happen to a woman.

A woman is not a man who has a DSD. Specifically one the only males have!

Good lord. Women really are second class, aren't they.

We're not just made up of the bits and pieces that men don't require or are lacking. We are human, in our own right, you know.

With a full set of characteristics which make us an exclusive category, entirely separate to men.

Strewth, it's like people forget that women are responsible for growing every single human being on the planet throughout the whole of time.

“A conservative, traditional society” where teenage girls are allowed to go swimming in swimming trunks with teenage boys. Hmm.

I think Casters story is very sad, it’s not a good feeling to realise that a child from a poor background with few opportunities for advancement has been exploited and encouraged to lie, by both their family and national sports bodies, in order to cheat and win medals, and is now so entrenched in the mythology of their story, and I assume addicted to the material gains it has brought, that they are determined to continue the lie.

I have no doubt that the initial determination of Casters sex was made through ignorance, but although Caster claims that the determiner was the presence of a vagina, I think it far more likely that the absence of a visible/ viable penis was the clincher, no matter how the rest of the area looked.

Caster was assigned female at birth, in error.

I don't believe there was any formal "assigning" at birth at all. My recollection from accounts I've read is that there wasn't any formal birth registration, but they retroactively created a female birth registration, given pseudo-plausibility by the DSD, during the scouting-for-a-male-for-female-sports process.

If there had been any sort of formal record-keeping, I like to think the person tasked with doing it would have taken enough care to notice that Caster wasn't female.

This seems to be a case of "no medical professional took a look, and parents initially assumed female due to lack of obvious penis, but fairly rapidly realised during early childhood".

"Parents not noticing your penis when you're a newborn" is not sufficient to qualify for women's sports!

People involved in elite sports have to justify their medical situation all the time. It's part of the package.

@Datun

You are correct, the DSD that Semenya has means Caster has the internal reproductive structures that produce sperm, and has testes but these are undescended.

External genetalia are ambiguous.

The DSD is one that only men can have.

It would appear that CS only lives 800m of their life as female.

And looks down on women. And Transwomen. But is happy to make money.

My sympathy has left the racetrack.

The Guardian review. You have to wade through the treacle in the first part of the article before the reviewer reluctantly admits (third paragraph from the end) that nowhere in the book will you find a mention of the court of arbitrations view that athletes with a 46XY DSD, which is what CS has, have an unfair advantage over female athletes. Even then the reviewer is unable to acknowledge that 46XY athletes are male. Though strangely is able to recognise that female athletes have XX genes.

But they return to pure Guardian form in the last two paragraphs when not only are we are encouraged to acknowledge the struggles DSD - and oh yes trans athletes - have and to be kind because this is apparently a more complicated and difficult situation than we realise, but the reviewer, despite clearly understanding the advantageous effects of 46XY DSD , still refers to “athletes reported female at birth” as though the effect of a flood of testosterone at puberty is of less influence than a piece of paper. And of course no sympathies are expressed for the female athletes whose dreams ,ambitions, training opportunities and financial rewards have been crushed by the deliberate inclusion of DSD athletes in both National teams and international competitions.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/05/the-race-to-be-myself-by-caster-semenya-review-running-for-her-life

Brilliant! 🤣

CS was right to compete when the rules [kinda] allowed it; right I suppose to campaign for inclusion in the female category [there were arguments in both directions, it was understandable that CS would want to make the strongest possible case]; right now to publish a book about it since her life story is indeed an interesting one.

The disappointing aspect of all of is, I suppose, not so much the flagrant lies she makes to this day about 'identifying as female' [which, when you strip away all the appeals to emotion and whatnot is at the very core of her claims for inclusion], since that's a subjective thing really, but rather the suggestion that how an athlete identifies can have any bearing at all on what sports category they end up in. Weight categories in combat sports, age categories, Paralympic categories, qualification has to be objective for the categories to have any meaning.

and by the way, this is the infamous seaside photo that CS chose to include in the book.

maybe not a 'girlmode' day?

One can feel sorry for Caster Semenya. They got shown a world where they could succeed, win honours, earn large amounts of money without having to try as hard, train as hard as the women they were competing against.

Then their right to compete got challenged. Of course they fought against it.

The alternative would have been to compete amongst male athletes. To do that would mean training harder, trying harder. Ultimately they wouldnt have enjoyed the same level of success and reward.

One can feel sorry for Caster Semenya.

I think Semenya has been quite mercenary about competing in the female category.

I’ll save my sympathy for the women athletes (especially the African ones from similarly poor backgrounds) that have missed out on opportunities, team places, funding, podium places etc to these DSD athletes.

I have no doubt that the initial determination of Casters sex was made through ignorance, but although Caster claims that the determiner was the presence of a vagina, I think it far more likely that the absence of a visible/ viable penis was the clincher, no matter how the rest of the area looked.

If you're interested, Google 'Molly Seaton' to see how the confusion could arise with children born in a time or place with no real medical know-how or genetic testing. Seaton played women's football in the 1920s, (it wasn't banned in Northern Ireland) for a Belfast team, and was an outstanding player, judged nearly unbeatable, and known for her aggressive tackling. OK, I don't want to sully her memory, but looking at pictures, I'd hazard a guess that she was an XY male with ambiguous development, probably just judged female at birth by whoever was assisting – births weren't even supervised by nurses back then, let alone doctors. Zero healthcare for poor children, obviously. She was born into a poor family, worked in the mill (where everyone was scared of her, even the men, who she got into physical fights with) and was said to have been 6'0 tall and with a very loud, deep voice. But back then, who would even have known why she was so different?

There was a skier as well, with the same condition, it was only really figured out when he was at the very elite level and they did testing.

I feel sorry for Caster Semenya in the same way as I feel sorry for anyone who has gone through life being told they are special only to find out that the thing that makes them special is actually a defect.

Like going through life thinking you are brilliant at school only to discover that you are 3 years older than everyone else.

My concern is that they are part of a wider conspiracy. How were they first spotted? Given that they presented as a boy, who first realised that they could be passed off as female?

There is a lot of money in sport and a lot of cynicism. The 'talent' is just a commodity. Caster Semenya has been mercenary but so as everyone around them.

Perhaps this will help Gnome.

look up Ekkart Arbeit.

https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/east-german-track-coach-ekkart-arbeit-caught-caster-semenya-gender-controversy-article-1.397564

Plug into wayback machine.

Ekkart was well aware of how testosterone works and has been said by others in South Africa to have specifically sought athletes such as Semenya to get around the regulations.

Here is some more background.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-04-22/olympic-champion-hires-former-east-german-drug/1841668

Yes, Erik Schinegger. 'She' won the women's world downhill championships in 1966 but after those tests - just before the Winter Olympics - revealed his condition, he didn’t decide to continue insisting he was a woman, he had surgery and became known as Erik rather than Erika. And he personally gave his gold medal to the second-place finisher. Caster Semenya, take note.

(Just to add, as far as I'm aware, Schinegger's DSD was not the same as Semenya's).

Most empathy I had left evaporated with Semenya declaring that Lynsey Sharp should have kept her mouth shut and trained harder. Which is the epitome of hypocritical coming from a male who has probably known they are male from childhood, but officially since a teenager being tested but who is desperately clinging to competing as a female. And going to extraordinary lengths to do so.

(Just to add, as far as I'm aware, Schinegger's DSD was not the same as Semenya's).

Actually we don’t know they don’t have the same condition. All that is described for Schinegger is “pseudohermaphroditism” which is a descriptor, rather than a condition in its own right. One of the underlying conditions that can cause the description of pseudohermaphroditism is 5 alpha reductase deficiency, Semenya’s condition.

Although it doesn’t matter. 46XY DSDs with androgen sensitivity at puberty are all under the same umbrella for sports purposes, as per the Cas ruling.

I’ll save my sympathy for the women athletes (especially the African ones from similarly poor backgrounds) that have missed out on opportunities, team places, funding, podium places etc to these DSD athletes.

This. People can see Semenya to feel sympathy. But they have no idea who Semenya even displaced.

Just to add, as far as I'm aware, Schinegger's DSD was not the same as Semenya's.

I was under the impression it was, actually, or at least very similar. But I've not seen anything definite.

Good little 12-minute piece interview-based documentary on Schinegger here. Whether or not their DSD is the same, their character certainly isn't. Semenya is no Schinegger.

Article in Unherd by Kat Rosenfield. To my taste the piece is a bit of a curate's egg. It gets to the right place via a route that is a bit 'be kind'. Perhaps it's written sincerely, or perhaps a sop to the both-siders out there?

https://unherd.com/2023/11/womens-sport-should-be-a-ghetto/

https://archive.ph/rbq1V

This is the main interview with Schinegger I was going with (I plugged it into archive since unfortunately 12ft ladder has been forced to close) - he says the midwife didn’t recognise that his male genitalia were entirely undescended when he was born. In adulthood, once he'd recognised that he was indeed male, had an operation to correct this and fathered a child. But it may be that he does have the same DSD as CS, I don’t know - I might be misinterpreting the way he describes it.

Yes, this seems mostly to be a story about sports corruption. Semenya is just one piece. And who knows, may not be in much of a position to change the story, I would not be at all surprised in the people who pushed this have made that almost impossible.

I’d never seen that beach picture before 😲 In theory I would be interested in reading Caster’s book but in practice I think their story will be told in such a way to uphold the current narrative, so won’t be the true story at all, just what fits with the ‘woman with naturally high levels of testosterone’ spiel.

I did have sympathy with Caster at the beginning because they were young and being thrust into the spotlight in the most invasive way, but as time has gone by the fact Caster has continued to push to race against women has made me lose any sympathy. Even supposing Caster was unaware of the DSD until she came to prominence, to continue to race and push for inclusion after that was wrong IMO. Caster could have quietly withdrawn. Then there wouldn’t have been all this additional interest and personal details released into the public domain. So, they brought all these latter things on themself.