The International Association of Athletics Federations has offered to pay Caster Semenya’s medical expenses should she require gender surgery or other treatment to continue competing as a woman.
The IAAF is still awaiting the final results of the gender verification test carried out on the South African teenager during the World Championships in Berlin in August, though leaked reports have indicated that she is a hermaphrodite with internal testes and has three times the normal level of testosterone for a female.
If that is confirmed by the panel of scientists studying her condition, then the issue for the IAAF will be whether her raised testosterone gives her an unfair advantage over her rivals – a situation that would require remedial treatment if she wishes to race again in women’s competitions.
But there is also a concern for the athlete’s health because internal testes carry a heightened risk of testicular cancer….
Telegraph.co.uk - IAAF offers to pay for Caster Semenya's gender surgery if she fails verification test - Click to read article.
Editorial comments:
- OII Australia does not favour use of the term hermaphrodite, although some intersex people reclaim the term. It’s not generally appropriate (nor scientifically correct) for news media to use a term that many intersex people find demeaning.
- If the IAAF is so desperately keen to know what Ms Semenya’s gender is, why do they not simply ask her if she is a woman or a man?
- There is no actual evidence that having internal testes inevitably causes testicular cancer. It appears that, empirically, there may be a possibility of cancer later developing in 3% to 9% of people who have internal testes, although we have yet to find hard evidence for that assumption. By way of comparison, 10% to 12% of women contract breast cancer. Yet, surgeons do not remove all women’s breasts as a matter of course. Surgeons in western countries do remove the testes from all AIS, CAIS and PAIS women as a matter of course. It would appear that the authorities simply do not like the idea that some women may have testes.
- We find the idea that the IAAF may require Ms Semenya to undergo surgery to remove possible internal testes in order for her to continue competing inappropriate and completely unjustifiable.
