Week 2 Blog

Week two was very interesting to me. The whole Caster Semenya controversy had a lot of people thinking and bringing up a few interesting points. The entire sex testing issue could bring up some grey areas and concerns. Who do you test? How often do you test? When do you test? These are a few concerns I have with gender testing. As for who you test, I believe everyone if anyone should be tested. Or in simpler terms, if you test one individual, you should test everyone just because that individual is going to raise questions on why he/she is being tested. Moving on to how often you test, I don’t have an answer for that one. You can’t test the same person every event they enter (depending on how spread out these events are) and you can’t “judge a book by its cover” or judge a person by their appearance.
Personally, I believe Caster Semenya should be tested. I’m not judging her and thinking she is a guy, but she has many masculine features and I believe people should know one way or another. I understand people from different cultures and/or countries look different, but she looks too masculine to take for granted. However, this brings up a few concerns as to what happens next. If she ends up being a male, obviously her records won’t stand, but what happens to the track and field industry? On the other hand, if she is a woman after all, what will people talk about? Will people say the test is wrong? Will people respect her more for what she has done? Usain Bolt is an unbelievable male runner why can’t Caster Semenya be an unbelievable female runner? These are just a few things I have thought of and the only explanation for these questions is I believe our society isn’t ready to accept a masculine female into the sport industry.