View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by KU ScholarWorks FROM MONSTERS TO “WOMEN”: SEX, SCIENCE, SPORT, AND THE STORY OF CASTER SEMENYA By © 2013 Jaclyn Howell Submitted to the graduate degree program in Communication Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________ Dr. Dave Tell, Committee Chairperson _______________________________________ Dr. Robert Rowland ________________________________ Dr. Beth Innocenti ________________________________ Dr. Donn W. Parson ________________________________ Dr. Elizabeth MacGonagle Date Defended: November 15, 2013 ii The Dissertation Committee for Jaclyn Howell certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: FROM MONSTERS TO “WOMEN”: SCIENCE, SEX, SPORT, AND THE STORY OF CASTER SEMENYA _______________________________________ Dr. Dave Tell, Committee Chairperson Date approved: November 15, 2013 iii Abstract My dissertation examines the various rhetorical techniques used to administrate gender and sex in the context of sport. Since the 1960s, the category of female has been treated as a prize to be won, reserved only for those who passed a variety of tests and who, quite literally, carried cards attesting to the authenticity of their sex. Given these restrictions on the category of the “female athlete,” I conclude that women in sport have always been a rhetorical creation. I use the controversy over South African runner Caster Semenya as an entry point to explore these techniques in their various forms from 1966 to the present day. In 2009, Semenya was subjected to a variety of gender tests – from stripping her of her clothes, swabbing her mouth for chromosomal analysis, or extracting blood samples for genetic analysis – each of which had a long history in sport, many of which had been officially banned, but all of which still influenced whether or not she counted as a female. By analyzing the long history of these gender tests and their application to Semenya’s body, my dissertation examines some of the most enduring practices of female naturalization in public memory. Caster Semenya’s story figures as an important reminder of the political and very material grip that past technologies and policies still hold even after their formal abandonment and the role of rhetoric in the creation of gendered and sexed identities. iv Acknowledgments There are many people to thank. Each person has played an integral role in my academic development and has truly shaped me as the scholar I hope to become. Thank you to Dave Tell. You were a superb dissertation advisor. Your attention to the details of this project was pivotal in it coming to fruition. Thank you for encouraging me to take on this project, for listening, for helping me to own the arguments I make in it, and for always seeing value in it, even when it was hard for me to do that myself. Thank you for sticking with it until the very end. Thank you to Dr. Rowland. It is precisely because I worked with you that I am able to make the arguments that I do in this project. Thank you for helping me to become a better writer, thinker, and critic. Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t, for giving me opportunities for development I otherwise would not have had, and for supporting me. Like you have always said, I cannot repay these things, but I will do my best to pay them forward. Thank you to Beth. From Steinem, to obscure nineteenth century novels, to stories of largely unknown civil rights icons, you have always been an advocate for my projects, no matter the content or angle. Thank you for being a wonderful Masters advisor and for having me revise one chapter several times. Thank you for supporting my decisions and for always being positive about my work and the future. Thank you to Dr. Parson. Thank you for forcing me to make arguments with propositions. You helped change me from a listener to an active participant. Thank you for making me realize that I could do this. I am indeed grateful you assigned me Brockriede. I consider that assignment pivotal in changing me from listener to arguer. Thank you for your wise counsel, for your enthymemes, and for all of those feminist assignments. Thank you to Suzy. Thank you for the time you gave to this project, for asking me tough questions, and for the feminist vantage point that you provided. Thank you for modeling what really good feminist work looks like. Thank you to my family and v friends. Thanks Mom, Dad, Alex, Kristen, and Tootie. Last, thank you to Pete. This journey was much better with you by my side. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1: From Monsters to “Women”: Science, Sex, Sport and the Story of Caster Semenya Introduction 1 Key Terms 19 Methodology 33 Chapter 2: Nudes Parades, Leonard Chuene, and the Visual Body 45 Leonard Chuene, Caster Semenya, and the Nude Parade 48 The Emergence of Nude Parades 61 Chuene’s Lie 74 Chapter 3: Chromosomes, Mike Hurst, and The Deep Body 78 The Reign of Chromosomes 83 Chromosomal Journalism and Caster Semenya 100 Chapter 4: Ariel Levy, Feminism, and a Critical Turn 121 The End of a Universal Mandate 126 Caster Semenya’s Rhetorical Body 135 Conclusion 166 Notes 181 Bibliography 224 1 From Monsters to “Women”: Science, Sex, Sport and the Story of Caster Semenya Chapter 1 Introduction In January 2010, representatives of sport’s most powerful governing organization, the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.), gathered together at its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. There was just one agenda item. The question on the table was this: exactly what makes a woman a woman? After struggling to legislate this question (with formal policy) for the previous fifty years, the I.O.C. was no closer to a resolution. Yet, with the London summer games on the horizon, the organization felt compelled to once more attempt an answer. As one attendee, Dr. Eric Vilain, a medical geneticist from U.C.L.A., remarked, “You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere.”1 Even more pertinent to the twenty-four doctors, scientists, and policy-makers in attendance than the upcoming games were the events of the past year surrounding the South African runner Caster Semenya. Indeed, it is not too much to suggest that her body provided them with a reason to convene. A few months earlier, on August 19, 2009, the then-eighteen-year-old Semenya took the world by storm when she won the 800 meter race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. Her record-breaking dash was soon backgrounded when rumors began circulating about her body, one that was noticeably masculine. Rather than praise or accolades for Semenya, in which she “won the eight-hundred-meter title by nearly two and a half seconds,” fellow runners, athletics officials, and spectators around the globe were consumed by the appearance of her body.2 Semenya’s story went from curious to salacious when, a few weeks later, medical reports were leaked to the press about so-called “gender tests” conducted on her in Berlin one day before the 800 meter final. It was suggested that, “During those tests . her genitals were 2 photographed and her internal organs examined.”3 Shortly following those tests and Semenya’s win, the International Association of Athletics Federations (I.A.A.F.) banned her from track competition for eleven months, leaving her sex a murky matter and the authenticity of her medal up for grabs. The story of Caster Semenya “ripped around the world” within days of her controversial win and the reports leaked a few weeks later accelerated the dispute over her body into a “full- blown political scandal.”4 The press coverage emphasized not her remarkable athletic prowess, her incredible victory where she “cruised past her competitors like a machine,” or even the fact that her qualifying time for the World Championships “beat the South African record” for the 800 meter race.5 The question that consumed the press dealt with Semenya’s body. As The Times of London reported, “No sooner had Ms. Semenya won her gold medal at the World Championships in Berlin on August 19, [2009], than questions were being asked about her deep voice and muscular frame.”6 The Observer chronicled, “Semenya was just another pupil in . South Africa until her body propelled her to international glory and very public humiliation.”7 These events made the January 2010 meeting of the I.O.C. all but inevitable. As Ellison chronicled, “in the wake of Semenya’s case, and the international scrutiny it prompted, the I.O.C. announced that it would try, once again, to devise a way to decisively determine what makes a woman a woman.”8 On June 22, 2010, the I.O.C. published their answer when they opined “that the determining factor making men men and women women – and the source of what was deemed an unfair competitive edge – lies in naturally-occurring levels of testosterone.”9 The organization deemed testosterone “the factor most likely to confer competitive advantage, due to its typically high distinction between males and females.”10 With this determination, the I.O.C. specifically focused their attention on women with hyperandrogenism, a condition characterized 3 by “naturally high testosterone levels.”11 Numerous invested parties challenged the I.O.C.’s findings by claiming that hyperandrogenism’s link to athletic advantage is tenuous at best. Jordan-Young and Karkazis argued, “Testosterone is not the master molecule of athleticism. One glaring clue is that women whose tissues do no respond to testosterone at all are actually overrepresented among elite athletes.”12 Despite objections – and there were many – their ruling about hyperandrogenism constituted that “line in the sand” demarcating who was a woman and who was not a woman.