Western gender ideas outrage supporters of South African runner

The international brouhaha is evaluating Caster Semenya, claiming that she is too masculine to compete in women's track.

International track officials said Semenya needed sex-determination testing to confirm her eligibility, the New York Times reported.

After a winning a 800-meter race at the track and field world championship in Berlin, Semenya returned home to enthusiastic supporters.

The New York Times quotes Leonard Chuene, the president of Athletics of South Africa.

"We are not going to allow Europeans to define and describe our children,” Chuene said.

I thought this story was especially interesting in its comparison of Semenya to Saartjie Baartman, "an African woman taken to Europe in the early 19th century and exhibited like a wild beast under the name Hottentot Venus," according to the New York Times.

Some commentators think this is more a question of race than gender. I think both perspectives are equally applicable. In Western culture, gender performance is so strictly binary that any differences are ostracized to the point of dehumanizing.

We'd be naive, if we did not at least consider the possibility that mainstream American culture has had particularly damaging effects to women of color. The story of Saartjie Baartman reminds me of the decades of sexually demonizing images of African American women. Semenya's story is a little different because it brings up the question of gender.

How should a woman look, and does any official have the right to answer that question?

Check out Newsy.com to get multiple perspectives on this story and comment.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/a_question_of_gender_race_or_status