Look South Column
Give the gift of dignity, not column inches
One of the sad realities of the world is that, once a newspaper story breaks, it is impossible to stop its spread. The story of 18-year-old South African athlete Caster Semenya is a case in point.
As everyone on the planet now knows, Semenya is at the centre of a global row about whether she is, theoretically, a man or a woman. The controversy followed the revelation by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that it was carrying out tests on Semenya shortly before the women’s 800 m race at the recent World Athletics Championships. Semenya’s dramatic winning margin, coupled with the announcement, created a media frenzy. If you type ‘Caster Semenya’ into Google, you now get over 700 000 references.
But the situation has been disgraceful. The IAAF, presumably for a range of good reasons, made confidential information public, breaching numerous ethical standards. The world responded by feeling it appropriate to discuss Semenya’s physical characteristics causally and in public. Even those claiming to support Semenya often made their case by referring to how she looked or acted. The more this happened, the more she became objectified.
The result is that it seems everyone has now lost perspective and the debate continues unabated, when the priority…
