Caster Semenya
Ambiguous gender identity in another can trigger anxieties about our own unconscious homosexual fantasies, says psychoanalyst Coline Covington
By Coline Covington
FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53626,news,why-the-world-is-scared-of-hermaphrodites-like-caster-semenyaI see it all as a joke, it doesn't upset me. God made me the way I am and I accept myself." This was Caster Semenya's response to accusations made following her exceptional victory in the women's 800m final at the recent world athletics championships that she is a man, not a woman.
However, Semenya made this statement when she was convinced she was a woman. Now it seems the facts are not so clear and leaked medical tests, conducted under the aegis of the IAAF, indicate that the 18-year-old South African winner has both male and female sexual characteristics. The 'joke' has turned nasty. Semenya has been transformed from star to monster in the eyes of the world - seen, mistakenly, as neither man nor woman but as hermaphrodite.
