One person, both sexes

Sep 12, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Intelligent Design? The tests to determine whether a South African runner is male or female are complete and the Australian Sydney Morning Herald newspaper is reporting that Caster Semenya has both male and female sexual organs.
Fundamentalist evangelicals have been bombarding us for years about how their God intelligently created only male and female genders in some garden in the Middle East.
Rational people have been countering that sexuality and gender identification is a much more complex issue that cannot be simplistically understood through myth.
The gender tests ordered by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) were conducted by an endocrinologist, a gynecologist, an internal medicine specialist, and a psychologist. No pastors were asked to recount how their God made only men and women. The Australian newspaper reports that the medical examination of the 18-year-old Semenya shows she has no ovaries, but rather has internal male testes, which are producing large amounts of testosterone.
Clearly, sexuality and gender are more complicated than religious fundamentalists would have us believe.
Even more interesting is how the IAAF appears to view the results of the gender tests. “She was naturally made that way,” a spokesman said, “and she was entered in Berlin by her team and accepted by the IAAF.
Our legal advice is that, if she proves to have an advantage because of the male hormones, then it will be extremely difficult to strip the medal off her, since she has not cheated.”
“Naturally made that way,” – now that’s an interesting phrase.
Justin de Freitas

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