Running away from diversity

This Semenya issue has continued to bug me. For so many reasons. It has raised lots of questions about how we view 'gender' and women and I need to list some of them here to make the issue clearer for me - comments appreciated!

First, on the nature of the testing. Newspaper and internet reports say that testing will include a geneticist, a gynae, and a psychologist. So again, if they are testing her 'sex', what does a psychologist have to say about that? Is a psychologist more able to point out a penis from a vagina?

Or are they genuinely trying to test her gender, in which case what is the geneticist doing there? And the gynae? Do some people have more feminine vagina's than others? Are some penises more masculine? Is there a chromosome that makes you able to cross your legs delicately rather than at a 90degree angle with your foot on your knee? There seems to be a disjuncture here. But maybe the psychologist is just for counselling because I'm sure after this process Semenya will need one.

As interesting as this conundrum is the fact that this testing will take months. So, it will take months to prove whether this incredible athlete is a man or a woman. At least this gives some substance to the idea that gender is something developed over time, a bodily existence, rather than something that is assigned at birth with the cutting of the umbilical cord.

Don't think I'm confused here, I know that when a child is born there are expectations. People buy blue or pink blankets, think of boy or girl names and imagine the future they'll have watching rugby with their son or going shopping with their daughters. But often these expectations are met with conflict. And this is for good reason. There is no checklist for gender. There is no template that we can cookie cut people into. And this is exactly why the whole process is flawed. Gender expresses itself in many ways.

The only possibly interesting thing about this test is that it requires an endochrinologist - a hormone tester. This throws a spanner in the works because of the varying levels of hormones that people have in their body. It also could pose a conflict if Semenya is found to have 'abnormal' levels of testosterone, but still be genetically and biologically female. So then what happens? Are we going to say, lucky her, she's got the man hormones. Or are we going to reconsider what makes a man a man? So if there are men with lower levels of testosterone than her, but with male genitals are they going to be seen as womanly? How will this affect our understanding of what it means to be a woman or a man? What is that understanding? Because the fact that they think that they can determine someone's gender, with a couple of tests, then i'd like to know how that allows for diversity?

The second issue I have is the issue of how she ran. If you read the article on the history of testing that's provided in my previous post, you'll see that there was some issue about the length of the strides that female athletes took to run. So its not only that she could be a man, its that she didn't run like a girl. And because running like a boy is seen as an advantage, they had to test her.

I want to start asking wild questions like, I don't know, if there was a male athlete who ran like a girl and won, what would happen? Would his gender be called into question? Would people lable him effeminate? Question his gender? But I don't think they would, perhaps they'd question his sexuality? But even so, he wouldn't be seen as 'wrong', because everyone, running like a girl is seen as a disadvantage.

If anyone has ever read Iris Marion Young, they'll come to understand that running like a girl is not genetic either. It is a process that is stimulated through repeated social contexts and restrictions on women. Young's example was throwing a ball, but its fairly applicable here. Women are encouraged to be dainty rather than bold, to take small steps rather than strides, to keep their arms close to their body rather than use their arms to pull them forward. These are not things that just happen. They are learned and taught. So shock and horror when one woman decides to ignore those encouragements and run her heart out. She must be a man!

And if it is faster, and better, and stronger to run in a particular way, and someone can develop their running style to gracefully master that type of run, then shouldn't we be praising them for their success and skill rather than de-gendering them, or engendering prejudice?

The fact that women were prevented from participating in sports like this for such a long time could be part of the explanation for their slower race times. But Caster Semenya has shown that practice makes perfect, and she has succeeded. So if her running style is seen as 'manly' its only because 'manly' running is the type of running that's been on our tvs and sports fields for time immemorial. Maybe we should rethink this whole stereotype and just label fast running...well, fast.

Well done Caster, and well done to all the South Africans who have responded with support rather than judgement! I just hope that we can now see this testing process as flawed and take the first few fast steps towards embracing diversity.

What's the agend(er)?

Read this article and comments on the Mail and Guardian website here

Caster Semenya, an 18 year old athlete from South Africa wins a race with such speed and skill that she becomes the target of 'gender probes'. Now for those of you who aren't already uncomfortable at the thought of any sort of probe, this one should make you run for the hills.* For people who are confused, here is a distinction that will serve you well for the rest of your life:

Sex: is what bits you have (biology), male/female
Gender: is the way that you live in your body. This performance is stereotyped into two terms masculine/feminine which are commonly used to describe the action of others.

Sex and Gender are not the same. Clear?

Now we should all be clear that a test for your gender does not and cannot require any sort of examination of anybody's genitalia. If you're looking at someone's bits, they could say one thing and the person's performance could say another. Or they could be the same.

If Caster Semenya's gender is under question, they shouldn't be looking anywhere near her sex organs, but should be observing her behaviour. Which is to run fast for 800m alongside several other women. I'm not sure how they escaped the same scrutiny for being unsuitable representatives of femininity - more importantly I wouldn't think that a sports organisation (which has the potential to create unity and pride in the diversity of representations of femininity) would be so confused that they relegated women to the passive category of small strides, long hair and shapeliness.

Kevin Macullum of IOL.co.za said that the issue was "Semenya's appearance, including obvious facial hair, and muscular build". The IAAF has apparently been alerted to the issue where they are conducting rigorous screening tests to assess the claim. I'd like to know what these test include. Possible (retrogressive, barbaric, just plain boring they're so backwards) examples that spring to mind are:

1. Can she walk in heels?
2. Does she knit a good scarf?
3. Does she feel maternal and caring towards the other participants?
(this list may be expanded to include any other qualities that suit those whose duty it is to assess someone using stereotypes, but I am now exhausted).

Can someone bring the IAAF and whoever else was involved in this heretical reduction of women to their senses?! A woman can succeed, and can remain a woman whilst having facial hair and muscles. She can rule the world, run a race fast, be competitive and be successful and none of these characteristics should result in anyone examining her body for signs that she is not a woman.

Shame on the IAAF. Shame on the media who have taken up this topic with such spectacular fervour and ignorance.

* A history of the testing process can be found here
Thanks to the person who contributed this link

Race Erasure?

I took a bus into Cape Town last week, which ordinarily is a fairly peaceful experience, but which this week was disrupted by accusations of racism. A passenger asked the driver to stop at an atypical spot, and the driver refused. The passenger retorted that he was a racist, because he always used to stop at her requested stop for another passenger, who was of the same race as the driver. The driver reacted in anger, saying that this was untrue, and that this had never happened. The angry passenger through a couple more insults at the driver, before getting off at the next planned stop, where insults continued to fly at the driver as the doors were closing.

The remaining 20 or so passengers, including myself, remained quiet during the entire episode. We remained quiet as the driver loudly tried to verbally villify himself all the way to the bus terminal. Nobody came to the driver, or the passenger's defence. Nobody smiled sympathetically at either one. Everyone took the opportunity to gaze out of their dirty windows and examine the street that had never before seemed so interesting.

This issue has niggled at my mind for a week now and I'm sure it is because of my own experience of being labelled a racist. During a lecture at University, a discussion arose about giving back to the community after ones degree. A presenter from Cuba had told us all about how community service was compulsory there, and many people literally went out into the fields to share knowledge upon receiving their degree. I raised the point that this sounded great, but that in a country with as many official languages as South Africa, that this may not be the best way to share knowledge , as most people with tertiary degrees were educated in English. So perhaps alternate avenues could be pursued by people only speaking one language, and other people who spoke in a different official language could work on the on the ground training. The result of my statement was a branding my a fellow classmate as an unhelpful racist. I was left in a stuttering and stammering mess, imploding and wondering how my comment on practicality had been translated into a racist remark. Like the situation on the bus, nobody said a word. Classmates faced forward, eyes directed for the first time at the board, awaiting the lecturer's response. Nobody looked at me, or my classmate. Nobody defended either of us. The lecture was adjourned early, but the issue clearly was not one that could be confined to lecture banter.

After the lecture a few people came to me and stated their outrage at what had happened, they expressed disdain for the lecturer's poor handling of the issue and were unhappy that I had not had a chance to compose myself and respond properly. They noted that my classmate had her own issues with race and that this was clearly a misinterpretation. But come the next class, eyes turned forward again and silence prevailed.

So what was my classmates problem then, and my own problem on the bus. What were we all afraid of that forced us to stand down and avoid dealing with the issue of race? In the race to avoid being raced, it seems that rather than confront the issue we look to distance or other ourselves from people involved in a conflict that is seen as racial so that we are seen as apart from or above it? We fear that the eyes of others will turn on us and judge us at face value. We don't want to be involved, because debates like that remove us of any other standpoint than the colour of our skin.

And were these two incidents examples of racism on the part of the bus driver and myself? Do we have a predisposition to be more helpful to those who are 'like us' in race/class/gender terms? Or are these simply easy stereotypes to fall back on when our expectations of humanity in other people are disappointed?

I still wonder what myself or the bus driver could have said to convince those on the attack that we were not attempting to be unjust. Is there anything?

Undressing the issue

Under Article 152 of Sudanese law, anyone 'who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing' will be subjected to 40 lashes. Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a journalist for the UN mission in Sudan has waived her UN immunity and says that she is ready for more than 40 lashes in an attempt to change the law in Sudan. You can read the article here. What was she wearing to cause such consternation? A loose top, green slack pants and an headscarf.

Whilst the regulation in Sudan is because of particular law, this is not the only way that women's bodies are regulated. Last year in Umlazi South Africa a young women was stripped of her clothes and made to walk naked through her home town for wearing pants. Her home was first ransacked and then set alight, because she was in violation of a community-imposed ban on women wearing pants in T-junction (the area of Umlazi where she lived).

Why the aversion to pants?

The clothing techniques of everyday fashion have sought to enhance women's otherness - stiletto heels make it difficult to walk and hence entail a particular way of walking. Wearing a long skirt has similar implications for running and moving quickly. To regulate the wearing of particular clothes is to regulate the way in which women can move and live in their bodies. Feminine (or feminized) styles of dress come to be associated with a coded moral language which allows the clothing to inform the wearer what they can and can't do. Clothing that is heavy and elaborate means that women cannot perform physically arduous tasks because they are unable to move freely.

Clothing then becomes part of the control and restriction of women. If women wear clothes than ensure that they continue to take tiny steps and walk slowly, they will remain 'stereotypically feminine'. This allows men to remain in a position of social superiority because of the value placed on performing the 'heavy lifting' type tasks. So to break free of skirts and to break into the masculine domain of pants is to break free of feminine movement. It is to break into the domain of men.

Another possible reason that these women are being chastised, abused and degraded has to do with the way that women become sexualised bodies through their clothing use clothing reveals or conceals skin. The display of skin has been historically gendered. To reveal some skin is to entice the thought of sex and sexuality, but to reveal too much is to become obscene, grotesque, or in some countries it is seen as violating public morality.

In many countries, disguising their sex appeal in order not to distract, or entice men, is women's responsibility. Particular 'traditional' ways of dressing encourage women to cover up, so that men are not tempted. This allows for arguments in support of women abuse when women are not covered - ie 'she was dressed that way, what did she expect?'. In Soweto, South Africa, in 2008 Nwabisa Ngcukana was abused, beated, and sexually assaulted for wearing a mini-skirt inside a taxi rank in the area. The men who assaulted her cited her clothing as the reason for the attack, and chastised her for insulting tradition.

What this says to women is that they are responsible for men's inability to control their behaviour. It says to women that they must wear particular clothes in order to be free of violence. It says to women that they are responsible for their own rape, or abuse againt them, or their arrest, or their imprisonment.

In Sudan, the law acts against women to prevent them from moving and dressing freely. In South Africa, the law exists for women to wear what they want. Yet, in both instances women are subject to the same scrutiny and violence. I am worried that if women in a country with legal protections for them cannot dress how they would like to, that the battle is far from over for women in Sudan and elsewhere.


I wish this journalist and all the women who are fighting against similar restrictions luck and support.

It won't happen to me myth: alive and well.

The 2009 Female Nation Survey undertaken by women24 shows some really alarming statistics. You can look at the results of this survey here.

Most worrying is that 47% of the over 8000 women who responded NEVER use condoms when having sex. The majority of respondents to this survey were in the 25 to 34 years age group. South Africa's current statistics show that the HIV prevalence in that age group is around 23 and 39% for women, and between 12 and 23% for men.

The majority of respondents to this survey live in cities, and have access to the internet (that is how the survey was completed), and have a tertiary degree.

1 in 3 respondents to the survey had cheated on their partners, and almost 1 in 4 of them knew about their partner having an affair. It suggests a worrying trend of sexual behaviour that is not taking sexual health into consideration. his survey shows that the 'it won't happen to me' myth is alive and well.

I hope that women who responded to this survey read the results and become worried. We are responsible for our own sexual health and must continue to practice safe sex, whether with one partner, or multiple partners to ensure that HIV prevalence does not increase.