Caster Semenya: The surveillance of sportswomen’s bodies, feminism and transdisciplinary research
Authors: Wheaton, B., Mansfield, L., Caudwell, J. and Watson, R.
Publisher: Routledge
Abstract:Sports feminists have exposed international sport as an important and visible site where female body boundaries are policed, and a range of regulatory practices have been endorsed. In this chapter we focus on the outstanding African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, and the most recent (2019) set of assertions from International Sport’s governing authorities, athletes and the media, that she is not a ‘real’ woman, and that her athletic achievements are somehow ‘unfair.’ Our feminist approach focuses on understanding the sport, scientific, medical, ethical and media issues in the Semenya case following her challenge to the International Association of Athletics Federation’s (IAAF) ruling (1st May 2019) to enforce new regulations for athletes who naturally produce higher levels of testosterone than those considered to be ‘normal’. The case of Semenya illustrates how women’s sexed, gendered and racialised bodies continue to be surveyed in and through elite sport. We outline the scientific-based justifications that have been made for this discriminatory regulation of Semenya’s body, and demonstrate that the arguments claiming women with naturally high testosterone levels have an unfair advantage function to serve the authority of particular science and sport perspectives. We argue that the ways in which Sport Governing bodies operate within these conceptual debates constitutes powerful and privileged knowledge that needs to be challenged through critical, transdisciplinary feminist approaches.
Source: Manual