Caster Semenya Reported To Be Intersex

Rod 2.0 and Joe.My.God are both reporting that South African track & field phenom Caster Semenya who won the 800m gold medal in Berlin last month has been revealed to be intersex. There has been an ongoing controversy and public furor over the supposed "gender testing" of the South African athlete due to her curiously "gender inappropriate" physique and appearance. Now, the reasons have been discovered:

Tests conducted during the world athletics championships in Berlin last month, where Semenya's gender became the subject of heated debate following her victory in the 800m, revealed evidence she is a hermaphrodite, someone with both male and female sexual characteristics.

Semenya, 18, has three times the amount of testosterone that a "normal'' female would have. According to a source closely involved with the Semenya examinations IAAF testing, which included various scans, has revealed she has internal testes - the male sexual organs which produce testosterone.

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When quizzed by South African magazine You on the gender issue, Semenya said: "I see it all as a joke, it doesn't upset me. God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I'm proud of myself. I don't want to talk about the tests - I'm not even thinking about them.''

The use of the word "hermaphrodite" to describe people with both male and female biological characteristics is considered offensive, similar to the use of the word "homosexual" to describe people sexually attracted to people of the same sex. Joe.My.God has posted useful information on the topic from the Intersex Society of North America:

RELATED: The Intersex Society of North America notes that although the term "hermaphrodite" is commonly used to describe intersex people (and this is already happening with Semenya), hermaphrodite literally means "fully male and fully female," which is a physical impossibility. "Intersex" is the proper way to describe a person who may have one or several of a very broad range of atypical gender characteristics, ranging from ambiguous or mixed external genitalia, internal conditions (as in Semenya's case), or an atypical chromosonal makeup. Some intersex characteristics are extremely rare, others occur much more frequently, and studies indicate that some aspect of being intersex occurs in about 1 out of 100 people.

Usain Bolt Breaks 200M World Record (Again)!

Following up on his stunning 9.58s turn in the 100m dash earlier in the week at the World Championships in Berlin, 22-year-old Jamaican track and field sensation Usain Bolt broke his own world record in the 200m by running a ridiculous 19.19s, again .11s better than the previous world record.

Bolt humiliated the field, winning by .62s ahead of second-place Alonso Edward of Panama (19.81s) and the pulchritudinous Wallace Spearmon of the United States (19.85s).

In his last 5 championship races, Usain Bolt has set 5 world records.

Intersection of Gender and Race: Caster Semenya

The gold medallist in the 800m at the World Track & Field Championships in Berlin is 18-year-old Caster Semenya of South Africa. Semenya demolished the field in the finals of the 800m by running 1:55.45, more than two seconds ahead of the defending world champion Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya.

Afterwards, there were questions raised about the winner's gender:

Semenya, a muscular 5 feet 7 inches and 140 pounds, was an unknown before she ran a blistering time at the Africa Junior Championships three weeks ago. She did not speak to media after the race.

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Weiss said it could take several weeks to get the results of the investigation, which he said included testing of Semenya in both South Africa and Berlin. Without that evidence, the IAAF could not keep Semenya from running here.

"We entered Caster as a woman and we want to keep it that way," South African team manager Phiwe Mlangeni-Tsholetsane told the Associated Press. "Our conscience is clear in terms of Semenya."

The issue of gender testing is so controversial that the International Olympic Committee suspended widespread gender testing in 1999, reserving the right to do psychological, gynecological and chromosome investigations "if there is a valid suspicion," IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch said in an e-mail.

Of course, what they are actually talking about is sex, not gender. Gender consists of the socially constructed meanings, characteristics and associations with the state of being male or female. Sex is the state of being either male or female. Neither are binaries, they exist on a spectrum.

Interestingly, the Los Angeles Times goes on to summarize the controversy over the determination of sex in track and field over time.

There have been controversies about gender in track and field for several decades.

An autopsy after her 1980 death found that Stella Walsh, who won the 1932 Olympic gold medal in the 100 meters for Poland, had male genitals and mixed male and female chromosomes. She retained her gold medal and a silver she won in 1936.

At least two women have been banned from track and field since 1967 because they failed chromosome tests, although one was reinstated. An Indian distance runner lost a 2006 Asian Games silver medal after failing a gender test.

As recently as the 1987 Mediterranean Games in Syria, only a visual inspection was used for gender verification. By that time, mouth swabs to reveal chromosomes were the accepted method, but questions about their accuracy led to the IOC ban on using them exclusively to determine gender

How do you think the line should be drawn between "male" and "female"?

Usain Bolt DESTROYS 100M World Record: 9.58s!

Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who won the 100m and 200m Gold medals in world record time (19.30s and 9.69s) at the Beijing Olympics one year ago shattered his own record in the 100m dash with a staggering 9.58s run yesterday at the World Championships in Berlin. See the video above.

Tyson Gay, the top American sprinter, ran a career-best 9.71s, the third-fastest time in history, but even that time would not have beaten Bolt's time from last year, and was nowhere close to the Jamaican 22-year-old's stunning mark of 9.58s, a full .11 second faster than the previous world record. The largest delta (or change) in the history of digital record keeping which began in 1977.

Hat/tip Rod 2.0