By Amber Butts
The double standard between the ways Black female and white male athletes are celebrated, received and admonished goes beyond the arena. Too often, Black female athletes are held to a higher standard than their male counterparts in both performance and how they are expected to exhibit showmanship. Mokgadi Caster Semenya along with Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Naomi Osaka, Amy Keil, Laila Ali, Sheryl Swoopes and Dominique Dawes are some of the greatest athletes in the world. And yet, their anger, gender, composure, dress and attitude are constantly policed. Meanwhile, male athletes are rewarded for their agility, superhuman genetics, ability and fiery tempers.
Similarly, white female athletes are praised for their performances while Black female athletes are scrutinized and constantly have their womanness called into question.
These double standards manifest themselves in expectations about the physiques, chemical makeup and performances of different genders, but it is Black women who bear the brunt of these biomedical, sex and class contradictions. And it is Black women, Black trans and Black intersex folks that we need to be listening to right now.
In April of 2018, the International Association of Athletics Foundations (IAAF) introduced a new policy regulating women who naturally produce high testosterone levels from competing in the 400 metre events. The policy directly impacts international South African runner Mokgadi Caster Semenya, who began her legal battle against the IAAF last June.
Though researchers have found no credible relationship between testosterone and performance in men, the court of Arbitration for Sport declared on May 1st, 2019 that Semenya must take testosterone suppressants if she wants to continue competing in women’s sports. In 2009, Times Magazine published an article titled, “Could This Women’s World Champ Really Be A Man?” after Sumenya’s intersex status was leaked to the media without her consent. She had to go through various rounds of testing, her medical records were reviewed and her genitals were examined and photographed. The IAAF even went so far as to offer to pay for Semenya’s “corrective surgery” should she fail their gender verification test in 2009.
Semenya currently plans on fighting the ruling, echoing her earlier statement, “I am a woman and I am fast.”
On February 19th, 2019, I attended a talk where Jamaican novelist and professor Marlon James was speaking about his newest trilogy and the process of writing. On the queerness and gender of some of the series’ characters, James explained, “Far from me trying to inject a new element in the story, the queerness and the non-binaryness are the oldest elements. I mean, kudos to you for using gender neutral terms. We been using them for 4,000 years.”
Gender is a social construct. And it impacts and influences legislation, realities, conditions and access. African, Indigenous and Asian worldviews have highlighted how unnecessary and unprogressive our reliance on gender is because it has produced narrow, simplistic narratives that function to control and justify the lived realities of those most impacted.
The Western world’s approach and preoccupation with gender informs and is strengthened by the categorizing of race, (dis)ability and class as separate identities. Our communities are skilled at engaging in pre-colonial navigation between these intersections.
Though Semenya’s genitals, identity and status as a woman have been up for public debate, the interrogation and attempt to delegitimize Black bodies is not new. The U.S.’s history of forced sterilization on Black women and girls under the guise of science, progress, population control and eugenics continues. Black folks’ organs, bones and bodies have been put on display at museums, on trees and on sidewalks all in an effort to terrorize and control us.
White folks have profited over categorizing, severing and collecting different parts of us for their use. Policing Black women and non-binary folks’ identities in and outside of the sports arena is an extension and reinforcement of this fraught history.
Genderqueer, trans and non-binary folks’ status and identities deserve to be honored within and outside of our communities. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa fed 40-50 people “dressed as women… who were guilty of the abominable sin of sodomy, who only lacked tits and wombs to be women” to his dogs. This isn’t the first instance or marker of outsiders coming into Black and brown communities and enforcing their religion, rules and punishments. Folks on the margins of these identities have been punished for their refusal to participate in pre-determined gendered performances for hundreds of years.
The intentional capitalist and colonial project of gender has been used to strengthen the political economies of hegemony, anti-Blackness and misogynoir. It seeks to diminish our connection and undermine our futures.
It’s necessary now more than ever to arm ourselves against any institution reliant on our failure. And to affirm our present and our future.
Mokgadi Caster Semenya is a woman. And she is fast.
Suggested Readings:
California was sterilizing its female prisoners as late as 2010“, The Guardian, 2013
Tatenda Ngwaru, “I’m an Intersex Black Woman. My Voice Matters. Listen“, The Root, 2018
Noël Suzanne Harmon, “A study of the experiences of Black college female student athletes at a predominantly White institution”, 2009
*Editor’s Note: This post has been updated on 5/23/19
Amber Butts is a writer, educator and tenants rights organizer from Oakland, CA. Her work has appeared in Blaqueerflow, KPFA’s Women’s Magazine Radio and 6×8 Press. She is currently at work on an afro-futurist novel focused on themes of intergenerational trauma, imagination, Black survival and environmental racism. Amber’s writing challenges multiple systems of oppression through the use of queer and womanist frameworks. She works to amplify the stories of poor Black folks, with an emphasis on mamas, children and elders. She believes in asking big and small questions that lead to tangible expressions of freedom and liberation.
Amber likes cheese and comic books and sings louder than she needs to.
