I find it somewhat disingenuous and somewhat ironic to be talking about this subject among many in our own Transgender Community, who also practice the same type of comparisons and place the same, or at least similar, comparisons on others in our own community. Conforming to a rigid set of binary standards in order to be considered "serious" or "real" when it comes to gender diverse is extremely prevalent in our own community and the cause of many disputes in the past and even now.

Here we have a young athlete who is being treated in a way that some may call disrespectful. I agree with that opinion for all the same reasons stated. But do people in our own community ever stop and think that similar rules or standards applied to being one gender or another for the purposes of competition in a foot race, are being applied to most people in our own community just coming out, or those who are out but have not achieved a certain level of conformity regarding gender expression?

What Semenya has done all her life is to naturally blur those boundaries of gender, and live a life that has been documented as tortured to some degree. Probably not because of her native African beliefs, but most likely due to the Judeo/Christian beliefs that have been taught to others around her by Euro colonists over the last few hundred years. She has now reached a level of perfection in her abilities that challenge or at least question her gender presentation. Thus she must be tested, poked, looked into physically in every aspect and decreed to be real, in order to compete, because of a system that separates masculine from feminine performance and presentation.

I have heard this same argument many times at Transgender conventions, support group meetings and within the GLBT community itself. For a person to just say they are one gender or another, if they do not totally, or at least in a major way, conform to that claimed gender presentation, then they are just fooling around, fetishistic, or less than another person who has decided to "enhance" their gender presentation with pills, surgery or whatever makes them more conforming and comfortable, on a constant, every day basis, so as not to confuse the "rules".

What Semenya is having to go through now to prove that she is what she claims to be, is to a great degree, exactly what every Transgender person faces when they come out, or try to come out and live among other GLBTS people.

If there is any basic rule that needs to apply to Semenya and anyone else considering living their gender as they see it, it is that no one should have to conform to certain rules if they want to live as a man or a woman. Going either way along the gender spectrum, no one should be forced to meet certain criteria in order to be more real than someone else.

And that is why people like Semenya make other people feel a bit "icky" deep down in their gut and why she needs to be classified accurately. If she does not quite fit in the box that she wants to live in and we aren't quite sure where she belongs, send in the doctors and draw her blood and tell her what box she does belong in. Anything so that the "icky" feeling will go away.

people ALL need to respect each others
self identity.(SELF)
and not define each other!
one can be binary, non-binary, etc.
but,we are all people. and we should get OUT of each other's business!
(that goes BOTH ways, T community!)
respect is a two way street.
and for ALL glb's, and straight people, too.....
-j

"I don't take estradiol to "enhance" my "gender presentation."

I take it to make myself whole. I never once felt happy in the long years between the onset of puberty, and my first dose of hormones. I had not expected the results - I have rediscovered a range of emotions I had all but forgotten.

I don't want surgery to 'enhance" my "gender presentation."

I want it because the thing between my legs has never felt like part of my body."

Marja,

I guess that is your business and for whatever reason that is fine. But don't sit there and tell me that drugs, doctors, surgery and a lot of other things are not corrective "enhancements" (and I'm being generous with that). They may be necessary for many reasons, but they still play into the creation of a binary system that enshrines the differernces between people and places them into one of two boxes called male or female, which allows for continued discrimination of people by justifying rules for each to live by and boundaries that are unfair, from the way they dress to what catagory they have to run a race in.

It is not so much what you do that I was referring to. But more how people (perhaps like you) treat other gender diverse people when you are finally comfortable in your own gender.

She can't control what her body is, leave her alone and let her compete! I wish I could tell her it will be alright but they are going to bar her from competition. It wasn't right twenty years ago and it isn't right now.