New Delhi: Over the last week or so, India’s fastest woman, Dutee Chand, has received a lot of attention and support for coming out as the country’s first openly gay sportsperson, even though her family life has been far from a bed of roses. But this is not the first time Chand has been under the scanner for who she is, given that she was once barred from competing because the world of athletics had started questioning whether she was a woman at all.
It’s the same situation that South African runner Caster Semenya now finds herself in — on 1 May, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) passed a decision upholding an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rule on testosterone levels in female athletes.
According to the IAAF rules, a female athlete can only participate in an international event if she is recognised by law as female or intersex; her blood testosterone level must be below 5 nanomol per litre. If it is not, the female athlete must reduce the blood testosterone level by taking hormonal contraceptives for a continuous period of at least six months.
CAS flip-flop
Semenya’s high testosterone levels have been a topic of debate since 2009, and have never really gone away despite her gold medals at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympics, and at the 2009 and 2017 IAAF World Championships. But after the CAS ruling, Semenya is essentially barred from competing if she doesn’t take birth control pills for six months, something she has refused to do.
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Chand, too, has suffered due to the same medical condition — a high testosterone level caused by hyperandrogenism. The Odisha sprinter had broken national records at the age of 16, and won a bronze medal in the 200m at the age of 18 at the 2013 Asian Championships in Pune. She was supposed to be India’s big hope for an Olympic medal in athletics, but just before the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014 she was dropped from the team because she failed a hormone test. The Athletics Federation of India barred her from participation, because she too had refused to take the pills.
Chand was banned from the sport for almost a year in 2015, but she challenged the IAAF rules and took her case before the CAS. In a landmark ruling, the CAS questioned the validity of these arbitrary gender tests pertaining to naturally high testosterone levels in female athletes. It also suspended the IAAF’s hyperandrogenism rules for two years, and expressed its reservation over the lack of evidence regarding the degree of competitive advantage a hyperandrogenic athlete has.
However, on 1 May, the CAS upheld the very same rules it suspended in 2015. In an interview to news agency AFP shortly after the decision, Chand said: “This is wrong. I feel sad for her (Semenya), she has been made to suffer like me.”
The latest CAS ruling means that women like Semenya and Chand with high testosterone levels would have to compete with men or lower the levels of testosterone in their body. This rule applies to women who race in track events from 400m up to the mile.
‘Racist and sexist rules’
Many have called the IAAF’s rules “racist” and “sexist”. Critics have argued that they protect a certain stereotypical image of women, and fail to acknowledge racial differences.
In 2009, Semenya had said: “I have been subjected to unwarranted and invasive scrutiny of the most intimate and private details of my being.”
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In an interview to BBC Hindi in 2015, Chand had also said: “I know people started suspecting whether I was a woman or a man. All the honour I earned, I lost. My friends used to start asking what’s wrong with me, and started to avoid me. In training centres, where girls used to share rooms, I was kept separately.”
Phelps and double standards
Critics have called out the double standards in athletics, as the world had hailed swimmer Michael Phelps as a genetic marvel, since his body produced only half the amount of lactic acid compared to other athletes. Lactic acid causes fatigue, thus he had an upper hand because he could train and exert more without getting tired.
He also had a much larger wing-span, which gave him an advantage while swimming. Yet, his body parts were not scrutinised, nor was he questioned.
The opposing argument
On the flip side, there are people like Indian track legend and coach P.T. Usha who say it is unfair for other female athletes who put in so much of work and train in the best way possible to ultimately be defeated like athletes like Semenya because of her testosterone levels.
ThePrint spoke to Mallika Dang, a former athlete and founder of GoFit, a fitness training company, who echoes the same sentiment as Usha. While she acknowledges that biological differences are a part of competitive sports, she also pointed out that testosterone levels can be increased by taking drugs and that they have always been under scrutiny due to doping tests.
Defiance in the face of fear
After her ban was lifted, Chand fought back to set a new national record of 7.28 seconds in the 60m sprint at the 2016 Asian Indoor Championships in Doha. At the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, she won silver medals in the 100m and the 200m, breaking India’s 16-year wait for a 200m Asian Games medal. And yet, she confessed that she lived in constant fear of being banned.
Semenya is following the same path. She plans to run in the 2,000m at an event in Paris on 11 June, and has also registered for the 3,000m at the Prefontaine Classic which is on 30 June at Stanford, California. She hopes to defend her 800m title at the World Championships in Doha in September.
She said this was more than just about sports: “I don’t know what will happen next. But no one should tell me what to do. If people want to stop me from doing something, that’s their problem, not mine. This is more than a game, more than sports. This is about human dignity, human pride.”
After the CAS had ruled in her favour, Chand had said: “I have got justice. I am a normal girl.”
There are echoes of that in Semenya’s words too: “I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am a woman and I am fast.”
Caster tested XY46, which means Male, with undeveloped genitals. The IAAF did not base their ruling purely on the fat that she has X3 the normal testosterone of a female. She has male chromosomes, internal male organs (instead of female ones), as well as active androgen. If she tested XX, she would not have had to lower her levels. Gender and biological sex are two different things. You can chose our gender, you can’t chose your sex. Caster is not biologically female.. This has nothing to do with racism or homophobia. as much as Caster and South Africa would like people to believe. It has to do with biological sex, and in sport it matters. If people want to claim Caster is a women with a natural advantage, then women with XX chromosomes and ovaries has to be seen as having a natural disadvantage. Athletes like Caster needs a category of their own, or run with the men. I also don’t believe making these intersex or male athletes take birth control pills to suppress testosterone is right, as it would be bad for an XY individual to take medicine designed for a women’s body.