Caster Semenya is being forced to alter her body to make slower runners feel secure in their womanhood
The courts decided that discriminating against some women is required for athletic competitions to be “fair” to other women.
South Africa's Caster Semenya celebrates winning gold in the Women's 1500m Final at the Carrara Stadium during day six of the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, Australia.Martin Rickett - PA Images / PA Images via Getty Images
May 1, 2019, 5:24 PM EDT
By Chase Strangio
UPDATE (Sept. 9, 2020, 9:38 a.m. ET): This piece has been updated throughout to reflect that, on Sept. 8, 2020, Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court announced that it was denying Caster Semenya's appeal and upholding the Court of Arbitration for Sports' decision to require her to take special drugs to alter her body's natural state if she wished to compete in certain races.
Discrimination against some women is “necessary” to protect other women, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sports' and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court's rulings in the Caster Semenya case.
The CAS' and Swiss court's decisions come in a challenge to the International Association of Athletics Federations’ regulations for athletes with differences of sex development brought by
Semenya, the Black South African runner who produces more testosterone naturally than has been deemed typical of cisgender women. The regulations that Semenya challenged would require her to artificially suppress her hormone levels in order to continue to compete in women’s events. In the executive summary of the still-confidential full decision,
the court explained that the “regulations are discriminatory but that ... such discrimination is a necessary.” That decision was upheld by the Swiss court on appeal.
Notably, the regulations and decision apply only to eight events — three of which are the races that Semenya generally runs.