Athlete forced to undergo "gender verification testing"
via xtra.ca, by Shawn Syms
Hair above her upper lip. The deep timbre of her voice. A muscular build. Her flatter-than average chest. A growing fixation on these corporeal cues is replacing the cheers that first met teenaged South African athlete Caster Semenya when she took the 800m gold medal at the world championship in Berlin last Wednesday.
Eighteen-year-old Semenya, who grew up in the village of Fairlee in South Africa's rural Limpopo province, has been forced to undergo "gender verification testing" at the hands of a team that includes an endocrinologist, gynecologist, internal-medicine specialist and a psychologist.
As a long-time member of the queer community, I've met a lot of women with deep voices and/or facial hair. In fact, across most people I've met I've seen a wide range of behaviour and self-presentation across the spectrum of culturally defined "masculine" and "feminine" traits, regardless of whether a person identified as a man or a woman. Or defined themselves in some other way.
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