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1) Fausto-Sterling uses a lot of images in her writing. What do you think/feel about the images in the reading? Do they help us understand the issues?

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2) Did you learn about the biology of sex at school or at uni? What do you remember about what you learnt? Do you find any of the material for this week surprising?

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3) Parents who give birth to a baby who does not fit clearly into conventional understandings of sex can be faced with difficult decisions - about names, about pronouns, and about medical intervention. Can you find any Australian guidance about what should happen? If it were you, what sort of information and help do you think you'd want?

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Caster Semenya is an intersex cisgender athlete, known for standing up against the IAAF's sex testing and fighting for the recognition of human rights. Semenya has faced obstacles in appealing the IAAF's decision, including a continued fight to be able to participate in sport. Semenya highlighted that she felt unsupported in her plight, though she has progressed insofar as to create an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Many activists and allies characterised the IAAF's response as "racist". The South African Parliament passed a unanimous motion in support of her cause.

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Caster Semenya was required to engage in sex verification testing only after she beat her own personal bests. This illustrates the sexism of the industry as she was only called into question after she achieved great success, a success that was undermined. Although the results were never released officially, they were then leaked by the media. Demonstrating how the media can often strive to demonise those who don't conform to conventional norms.

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Astrid, Eve, Tanya, Imogen, Julia and Erin

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Astrid, Eve, Tanya, Imogen, Julia and Erin

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Caster Semenya is a South African athlete and Gold medalist in middle-distance-running. Caster has naturally elevated levels of testosterone but identifies as female and was assigned female at birth. In 2019 the IAAF changed their rules, which meant that Caster Semenya, who was previously subjected to sex testing and allowed to return to the Olympics, was excluded once again on the basis that her testosterone levels were too high. She was told she couldn’t return to the competition unless she took medication to lower her levels of testosterone.

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Caster Semenya is a south African middle distance runner who has completed at olympics, she identifies  as a intersex cisgender woman. She was banned from competing as she had higher levels of testosterone than the average female. Other than when the test results were leaked she hasn't really had that much representation in main stream media. much of her own identity was taken away from her she had to fight to be recognized as a woman. she was banned from the long distance runs as it is believed  that having high testosterone allows you to be able to run longer.

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"I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am a woman and I am fast."
This statement - an assertion of self-identity made by athlete Caster Semenya - has been scrutinised by sports committees, media outlets, and other athletes. It reveals how society, and science, aims to govern the bodies of those who don't conform to conventional notions of womanhood/femininity. As intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis claims “Certain bodies are never allowed to be female, are never allowed to be women, are never allowed to just be".

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The complexity of determining sex lies in categorising the genetic, gonadal and anatomical aspects of an individual. This is too narrow as human bodies are complex. The process of categorising sex post-testing also entails determination by using a constructed spectrum of what is acceptably 'female' and 'male'.

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In response to Caster Semenya, South African's maintained that the decision to impose sex verification testing had undertones of European imperialism and racial bias, in that the Global North did not want the Global South to succeed.

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Astrid, Eve, Tanya, Imogen, Julia and Erin

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Astrid, Eve, Tanya, Imogen, Julia and Erin

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From Semenya’s fight to compete we can see that determining the sex of athletes is complex, highly contestable and influenced by sexual identity and class. Sex testing raises many issues because you should not be allowed to police bodies – sex is a spectrum, just as gender is a spectrum, and thinking about sex categorically is inadequate. It seems that sex testing is more than just about ensuring that competitors are ‘physically equal.’ It is about maintaining the gender division by containing those people that don’t fit in either category because their bodies are neither male nor female. Sex determination is also mixed up in racial prejudice and sexual identity. Semenya's race, sexual identity, and bodily physique would have played a part in the reason she was sexual tested, with the IAAF making a judgment about her being more like a male based on these factors.

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The attitude of two simple biological sexes in present in the IAAF and the possibility of natural variations in sex is not considered. Semenya's case clearly demonstrates that there are plenty of natural variations of sex that may not be visually apparent on the surface level. Racial stereotypes play into the case, as there have been recent complaints from other athletes of targeting based on being from the "global south".

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Genetic Mutations that are not related to gender are often accepted and even praised in sport, for example Michael Phelp's reduced lactic acid production.

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Fausto Sterlings work illuminates these complexities by asking questions sensitive to the variability of sex as a biological concept.

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Astrid, Eve, Tanya, Imogen, Julie and Erin

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Astrid, Eve, Tanya, Imogen, Julie and Erin

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Fausto-sterling illuminates these complexities by addressing the regulation of intersex bodies, and how intersex bodies create an issue for our binary notion of sex and gender. She also discusses how scientific ‘fact’ is not objective and is a formulation of our understanding of the world. In this sense then, the categories of sex, which have been determined by science, are not free from the influence of politics.

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Fausto-Sterling highlights these complexities by discussing phallometrics and the inclination of the Western society to crush ambiguity surrounding sex, and thus, gender.

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Fausto-Sterling illuminates the complexities of the binary and disparate view of biological sex through dissecting the assumptions the population has on the regulation of intersex bodies such as Semenya's. There is no variability in definitions of gender or approaches to the definition of sex, which results in the exclusion of intersex people from things such as sport, despite their personal merit.