I wonder if any of the people that have been writing about Cassie Samenya’s gender have stopped to consider where she comes from. Her parents live in a small village outside of a rural town in Northern Limpopo, which is about 400km north of Johannesburg.
There, a school teacher spotted her running in races at the school, and from there, she progressed to where today she is in the middle of this huge controversy.
I am sure if you had to ask her what the difference between gender and sex was she would probably not have an answer, let alone testosterone.
Anything that may be uncovered in these supposed tests are entirely her own business. Can you imagine being told that you are not a woman when everything you see is female!
I believe the journalists have been completely insensitive to her as both a woman and an athlete competing out of the bush of Africa.
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September 12th 2009 @ 9:07pm
Jameswm said | September 12th 2009 @ 9:07pm | Report comment
seriously – dasilva you are kidding yourself. Let her run as a woman when she has male organs internally? It is grossly unfair to all her competitors and anything she did would have an asterisk next to it.
I do feel very sorry for her though. The IAAF could have handled it a thousand times better, and SA Athletics have a lot to answer for, allowing her to be exposed like this. It has been amateurish administration and they should have been worldly enough to do their own examination before it got to this.
I don’t know in what category she runs, though.
September 12th 2009 @ 10:13pm
southernwaratah said | September 12th 2009 @ 10:13pm | Report comment
You’ve obviously never worked in the media!
September 13th 2009 @ 12:56am
Matthew Maguire said | September 13th 2009 @ 12:56am | Report comment
The issue is the poor girl has done nothing to give herself such an advantage. No performance enhancing drugs are involved and it now appears she may well have been completely unaware she is a hermaphrodite. Her elite athletic ability is just her natural body and with no rules in place dictating how many times the level of testosterone a female can have over and above the average female, who is to say a hermaphrodite should be considered more male than female?
September 13th 2009 @ 3:06am
Doug said | September 13th 2009 @ 3:06am | Report comment
Big al how about you play like Sherlock holmes and get a clue. How can you compare someone who is born with both gender traits to someone who has a sex change operation