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"[T]he IAAF now have the whole ANC and the whole of South Africa on their backs."

After the International Association of Athletics Federations finds that runner Semenya Caster lacks a womb and ovaries and has internal testes and that this is reason to disqualify her from women's competitions and strip her of her medals, South African politicians are saying it's "racist and sexist":

[A]n IAAF source was today quoted as saying: "There certainly is evidence now that Semenya is a hermaphrodite.... Everything is going to have to be done absolutely by the book, no question of a challenge to our findings. There's all sorts of scans you do. This is why it's complicated. In the past you used to do a gynaecological exam, blood test, chromosome test, whatever. That's why the findings were challenged, because it's not quite so simple. So what they do now is they do everything, and then they can say look, not only has she got this, she's got that and the other. The problem for us is to avoid it being an issue now which is very personal: of the organs being a hermaphrodite, of not being a 'real' woman. It's very dramatic."

And the family sees it in terms of religion and their own personal history:

"It is God who made her look that way but she IS a girl."...

The athlete's uncle Lesiba Rammabi, 51, said her relatives were 'very humiliated' by the reports.

He said: "I believe Caster is normal, inside and out. What does it matter whether she can have babies or not? Many people cannot have children, why else do parents adopt? Are those women not women also? We are a normal family who looked at a child when she was born, saw that she was a girl and raised her as any other family would do. Are we now being told that we are wrong? We are very humiliated by what has been said and do not understand how it can be true. This is a woman who was raised a female. She will always be female, no matter what people say."

That would all be fine except for the fairness to the other athletes. And there is also the question of what Caster herself wants to do. You could be raised as a female because that's what your parents thought you looked like but on reaching puberty decide they made a mistake. She didn't dress in a feminine style but she did go along with this makeover and photoshoot for You magazine:

Full post as published by Althouse on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).