Caster Semenya, The Real Middlesex?
By Moira Cue
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100226180448ente.nb/topstory.htmlGender is no different. As small children, we learned to distinguish between boys and girls, with differing toys, clothes, bathrooms, sports teams, and so forth. But what about people who fall in between? The recent media maelstrom over South African runner, Caster Semenya is a true life example of a person who was raised as female but biologically was a hermaphrodite, having both male and female sexual organs. In Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning novel (2003), Middlesex, the saga's eventual protagonist, Calliope Stephanides, was born with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, or 5-ARD, a condition which decreases the level of testosterone to such a degree as it can mask the individual's maleness. 5-ARD, and the author's intensive research into its intricacies, is Middlesex's "hook," the one line description that gets the reader interested.
