Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

After winning the women’s 800m final at the 2009 World Championships, black queer South African runner Caster Semenya was considered too masculine for women’s track and field. Journalists argued that she looked “manly,” forcing the International Association of Athletics Federations to compel Semenya to undergo tests to “confirm” her eligibility. Her medical results, which indicated “male” and “female” sex organs, were leaked, and newspapers worldwide discussed her ostensible gender variance and “high” testosterone levels. Where many scholars have written about the controversy surrounding Semenya, few have examined the racialized, gendered, and heterosexist underpinnings animating her purported gender variance. How do we situate the media’s “masculinization” of Semenya within a broader history of the “ungendering” of black women? What are some of the challenges that black women, who have historically been masculinized, face in an industry bent on gender binaries? This essay traces the discourse surrounding Semenya during the 2016 Olympics in order to demonstrate how her masculinity—indicated by her “high” testosterone and masculine gender expression—serves as a foil for critics because it allows them to couch racist and sexist sentiments in claims about “parity” in women’s sports. It then examines how two white European female athletes rhetorically position Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba, and Margaret Wambui—the three black African women who medal in the women’s 800m—outside of “female athlete.” Ultimately, I argue that situating claims about Semenya within larger discourses about hypermasculinized black womanhood reveals how black female athletes are rendered vulnerable to masculinization and thereby denied access to “female athlete.”