Project 2

For my second project, I chose to create a drawing around the topic of discrimination; more specifically, discrimination of women and nonbinary individuals within the realm of high performance athletics. The subject of my piece is Caster Semenya, a South African runner who dominates in the 800m event. Semenya has won two Olympic gold medals and numerous world championships, but since her first big victory in the 2009 World Championships, Semenya has been subjected to sex testing, racial discrimination, and forced withdrawals from competition starting just at the age of 18. It has been an uphill battle for Semenya over the last ten years, as many call into question her scientific classification as a woman based on her testosterone levels. She has been placed on numerous suspensions while juries determine her eligibility to compete, and in her most recent trial has lost to the IAAF, who have said she is ineligible to compete unless she starts hormone therapy to lower her naturally occurring testosterone levels for at least six months. When Semenya's legal team responded to this ruling calling the decision discriminatory, the IAAF responded saying "such discrimination is a necessary, reasonable, and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF's aim of preserving the integrity of female athletics." I chose these words as the text-based portion of my piece because I think it highlights the absurdity of the thinking of the powers that determine who is and is not able to compete as a woman. Such a ruling has been met with backlash from many, who say it is specifically targeting Semenya as the hormone level rules apply only to the one mile event and lower. The thinking behind this is that increased testosterone would give female athletes an advantage over others because it raises the force output of muscles for shorter duration events. If this were true, other events such as javelin and shotput would be limited too as this theory would apply more to those events than running. However, this thinking is totally unjustified as a study of over 600 Olympic-level athletes determined that 13.7% of the women had testosterone levels that would be classified as "too high" whereas 16.5% of men had low testosterone levels. Not only does that study prove the irrelevance of testosterone levels in athletic performance, but it also raises the question of why hormone level limits are not imposed on men as well. Overall, Semenya has faced more discrimination than is deserved, and the IAAF's attention is in the wrong place when doping is such a prevalent and ongoing occurrence that largely goes unnoticed. Semenya is the face of a victim of an issue of unjustified discrimination and ignorant reasoning for it. I wanted to not only honor her but bring attention to a problem that will no doubt be a continued uphill battle which most have not heard about.