Semenya’s eligibility no clearer despite media leak saying she has male and female sex organs

Semenya’s status no clearer despite media leak

LONDON — South African runner Caster Semenya’s eligibility to compete as a woman is no clearer — even though reports say she has female and male organs.

Semenya, who won the women’s 800-meter title at last month’s world championship in Berlin, has had a gender test, and the results given to track and field’s ruling body were leaked to Australian newspapers.

Former IAAF medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist would not comment specifically on the Semenya case, but he cautioned that a person’s gender is not always easy to define.

“There is no simple, single lab test that can tell if you are a man or a woman. It is not black and white,” Ljungqvist told The Associated Press by phone Friday from Sweden. “A person who carries a legal certificate showing that he is a man or a women, then they are a man or a woman.”

Semenya comes from a poor village in rural South Africa and first drew attention when she won the 800 title at the African junior championships. With her muscular build and deep voice, more questions were raised at the world championships.

The International Association of Athletics Federations confirmed that Semenya was undergoing a gender test on the day she won the gold medal in the 800 by a huge margin.

Australian newspapers reported that Semenya has no ovaries and has internal testes, which produce testosterone. The IAAF didn’t confirm or deny the reports, saying it was reviewing the test results and would announce its findings in November.

“There are many, many other reasons why a woman looks male,” Ljungqvist said. “Probably the most common has nothing to do with intersex: production of steroids from the adrenal gland. Most of the women you see who look like men are not intersexed. Some men have a very womanlike body shape.”

Another key issue is whether an intersexed person can make use of the natural male hormones they may be producing.

“High levels of testosterone is not a relevant parameter. It’s whether they can make use of that testosterone,” Ljungqvist said. “Most of them are insensitive to the testosterone because they do not have the receptors to use it.”

Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and women’s studies at Brown University, said making use of testosterone to gain a competitive advantage depends on the level of intersexuality.

“Some give no advantage,” Fausto-Sterling said. “You really have to know the specifics, and every individual is different.”

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, speaking a day before the Semenya test results were leaked, said the issue surrounding the South African teenager was a difficult one.

“On one hand there are so many different forms of normality in the human body and the human chemistry,” said Rogge, a retired orthopedic surgeon. “You have all kinds of possibilities there. And it is very difficult to have the unanimous advice of various experts. It’s not a clear-cut discussion.”

Alice Domurat Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University in Chicago, said it was not uncommon for someone to be raised as a woman even if they have both sets of sex organs.

“We are raised based on what adults think our sex is at our births,” Dreger said on her Web site. “Various conditions can lead to a baby being born with female genitalia (labia, clitoris, vagina) and internal male sex anatomy (including testes).”

For people with Androgen insensitivity syndrome and 5-alpha reductase Deficiency “the baby has testes inside, even though she’s clearly a girl,” Dreger wrote.

Gender testing in sports is not new, but it has taken on a new twist. In the old days, it was simply to ensure no one was cheating.

“The gender testing as such is intended to make sure that men do not compete as women,” said Ljungqvist, who joined the IAAF medical commission in 1981 and left in 2002 before taking over a similar position with the IOC.

At the 2006 Asian Games, 800 champion Santhi Soundarajan of India was stripped of her medal after failing a gender test. Perhaps the most famous case is that of Stella Walsh, also known as Stanislawa Walasiewicz, a Polish runner who won the 100-meter gold medal at the 1932 Olympics and was later found to have ambiguous genitalia.

“Such cases are extremely rare in a grown-up population,” Ljungqvist said. “Usually intersexed people are diagnosed at birth.”

Until the 2000 Sydney Games, the IOC tested all female competitors to make sure no one was cheating, but Ljungqvist fought to change the way that was done. A panel of experts remains in place to help resolve questions about someone’s sexuality.

“Screening was based on the identification of a Y chromosome,” Ljungqvist said. “This gender testing by chromosome was completely unscientific and therefore unethical. It took nine more years to get away from it.”