Gender and the Olympics

Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old track sensation from South Africa, could be stripped of her Olympic gold medal if a series of tests prove that she is actually a man. According to the New York Times, Semenya came under scrutiny after shaving seven seconds off of best time in 2008, a feat apparently unheard of for female runners. Authorities with the International Association of Athletics Federations said that Semenya's rapid rise to Olympic-level competition left them with little time to investigate Semenya's gender before the race. So instead, Semenya will be met with international attention as doctors perform a series of psychological and physical tests--likely humiliating, and, according to the Times, potentially scientifically unsound--to determine which neatly-defined gender box the world class athlete fits into. 

While the results of Semenya's case are yet unknown, her story illustrates the problems with assuming that all people are either male or female. Gender is a complex and subjective package that is inherently connected to personal identity. What if Semenya identifies as a woman and yet turns out to have some psychological or physical traits inherent to men? Should the test results trump her sense of self? Or what if Semenya is physically female but has some psychological features associated with maleness? Then what? And, while we're at it, why not test the other Olympic athletes who appear to be 100 percent female but may, at one point, have said or done something that sounded a little too manly? 

IAAF officials seem to think that taking Semenya's word on her own gender would open the door to widespread gender fraud in the Olympics. But I think that the officials' real and unspoken anxiety is that Semenya cannot be categorized as male or female. And if that is indeed the case, then the world of gender-specific Olympic sports would be turned on its head. -Naomi 

Women in combat

It has been great to see reporting on women in the military in The New York Times this week, serving as a reminder that gender issues exist in combat zones, too. "The military, of course, is not gender blind, especially in a war zone," and is still struggling to create a comfortable space for women. Some soldiers do view war as near gender blind, arguing that functions are determined based exclusively on skills (like being a gunner) and not on gender: "What’s most remarkable about women serving in Iraq now is how unremarkable it seems, especially for anyone old enough to remember the political furor that once surrounded the issue of women in combat."

The military has finally started to acknowledge that people at war have sex (based on fast-selling condoms), and seems shocked to have learned that people can have sex and still do their jobs well. “There was a fear if we integrate units, you will have a bunch of young people with raging hormones, and it will end up in too many unwanted pregnancies, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth. With good leadership and mentorship, we have been able to keep those problems to a minimum,” said a former commander. Women who do become pregnant are still sent home.

Despite the gradually increasing comfort level with talking about sex and including women alongside men on the front lines, women are still marginalized. As one Sergeant said of assumed norms, “You’re a bitch, a slut or a dyke — or you’re married, but even if you’re married, you’re still probably one of the three."

Sexual harassment and abuse are prevalent, and severely under reported, due at least in part to close quarters that can create an environment of fear and rigidly structured hierarchy, something that The Lady Finger has addressed in the past. Even if women are fighting more frequently alongside men, the military is certainly far from being gender neutral, or even a safe place for women, many of whom carry knives or travel in pairs to protect themselves at night on their bases. -Sara

The Lady Finger radio appearance

On Monday morning, editors Naomi and Sara will appear on a Chicago radio station called Vocalo for the second time in as many weeks. Hear us discuss gender, dating and pop culture at 9:30 by clicking here. 

Politicking through racism, sexism, and homophobia

It was a half century ago that Harper Lee published her acclaimed novel To Kill A Mockingbird, personalizing and immortalizing the fictional, but remarkably representative, story of the white lawyer Atticus Finch who defends a black man charged with raping a white woman in the Jim Crow South.

Maybe I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was too young to grasp its political and the sexual commentary, but fortunately writer Malcolm Gladwell revisited the novel in a racial-political context in the New Yorker last week. Finch was fictional, yes, but the resemblance between Finch and 1950s Alabama Governor Big Jim Folsom is striking. They both humanize "the other," without ever crossing an activist line. They may have talked about a level playing field, arguing that black people deserve to be treated as people, too, but weren't ever willing to really put themselves and their careers on the line. "If Finch were a civil rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. [The defendant, though innocent, is pronounced guilty.] But he isn't. He's not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He's [Governor] Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds." To make race personal and moral is one thing, but to make it political is another entirely, and is something that far too few people were (and still are) willing to do.

Fast forward to today, to the horribly tense political discourse concerning gay marriage. Both Republicans and Democrats chatter on regularly about the gay people they know who are good people, too, and who deserve basic rights like hospital bedside visitation. No constituent would have an easy time arguing otherwise on basic moral grounds. But to argue for gay marriage or for substantive change is politically dangerous territory, and something that our elected officials tend to tiptoe around and never touch.

What's most interesting about Gladwell's musings on To Kill a Mockingbird is the assessment of unspoken presuppositions surrounding rape, women's sexuality, and race. Mayella Ewell, the character charging Tom Robinson, the alleged aggressor, with rape, was actually the sexual aggressor. Atticus Finch tell the jury, "She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it."

Most troubling about the manner in which I was taught To Kill A Mockingbird as a middle school student is the notion that Finch is a beacon of righteous leadership, when in fact he "does what lawyers did for black men in those days. He encourages [the jury] to swap one of their prejudices for another," making Mayella out to be a sex-starved, uneducated, dirty victim of incest with no social standing. It's easy to interpret the novel as an argument for transcending race, but Finch's morality falls to the lowest common denominator when it comes to considering "the eugenicist spirit of the times." Poverty serves as a legitimate legal criticism of Mayella; so does her sexual desire; and most disturbingly, so does her position as a victim of incest at the hands of her father.

The social context for To Kill A Mockingbird is one in which "white women retained their status as innocent victim only as long as they followed the dictates of middle-class morality." The novel succeeds in universally condemning racism, or at least bringing a critical lens to bear. But the novel also assumes that rape can be a manifestation of classism, and not that it is a priori wrong. Nobody stood to win in the hundreds of black man-against white woman rape cases heard in the Jim Crow South, where white women and back men were all positioned as victims, whether the allegations against them were true or not. -Sara