Standing with Caster

[Butterfly]

Standing with Caster
The Progressive
By Dave Zirin in the November issue


http://www.progressive.org/zirin1109.html


South African runner Caster Semenya should be on top of the world. Instead she is on a suicide watch. She set a world record in the 800 meters and became a national hero. Now her life is in tatters. For that, we can thank Athletics South Africa (the South African athletics federation), and the utterly backward way international track and field attempts to understand gender.

Semenya is eighteen years old. She was raised in a village with 80 percent unemployment that only recently got electricity. But she set about at a young age to prove that she was in that miniscule top 1 percent who could outrun the destitute poverty of her existence. There were boys who would tease her about her athletic skill, as if it meant she wasn't quite a "girl." There were the girls who wouldn't play with her. But she just kept running and causing jaws to hit the floor with her remarkable skill.