Pirate Galaxy » I just want to be me. I was

Dutee Chand and Caster Semenya couldnt be more miles apart.Yes, they are both track athletes, but one is a 1.5m-tall middle-distance trail-blitzer and the other a 1.78m tall national 100m champion. Chand is from Chakagopalpur in India, while Semenya is from Potchefstroom in South Africa - an 8,082 km distance that would defeat even Google Maps.Yet these two women share one thing. Their bodies are at the frontlines of a simmering and freshly stirred debate between competitive sport and what constitutes gender identity. Semenya and Chands careers stand on the blurred boundaries between biological, anatomical, physiological and social definitions of what marks the separation between female and male in competitive sport.In fighting for the right to compete, Semenya and Chand are 21st Century challengers of athletics and Olympic sports gender-centric rules that have been rewritten over decades. Version 2011 of these rules - pertaining to higher than normal testosterone readings and hyperandrogenism - sought to establish a cast-iron biological fingerprint for female athletes and offered to engineer a solution for this gender-identity issue through unproven medical intervention.And their appearances at the Rio Olympics will once again amplify to the larger sporting world as their bodies refuse to fit conventional definitions of the female body - conventions that are tied in with some science and much social conditioning.So if you want to get your head around the story of Caster Semenya, you must listen to the story of Dutee Chand. And then the other way around.CASTERS STORYSemenyas past and present seem to occupy wider attention, and she has been making headlines again with her audacious resurgence over the past 12 months. In 2016, the South African has eaten up acres of track and timings in the 800m, an aerobic-anaerobic balancing act, the bruiser of middle-distance races.On July 15 - a little over a month before her first round in Rio - Semenya ran the event in 1:55.33 at the IAAF Diamond League meet in Monaco, the seasons fastest time. It broke her own South African national record, which had held for seven tumultuous years, and marked her fourth straight win in the Diamond League season.Before that race, Semenya had gone under 1:56 only once -- in her breakout 800 (1:55.45) as an unknown teenager at the 2009 Berlin World Championships. The event changed her life and was far from a celebration; it launched her as a figure of public debate.Now, after living in relative anonymity since winning a silver medal in the 2012 London Olympics, Semenyas return to the Olympics and recent success has brought the ghouls looking over her shoulders again - raising doubts over her gender that originate from her physical appearance.Described as the most divisive athlete of the year (Sydney Morning Herald) and athletics next ticking time bomb, (The Times, London but reprinted in The Australian), Semenyas potential success in Rio is being turned into a red alert requiring a re-examination of as it appears, the very ethos of competitive sport.Womens marathon record-holder Paula Radcliffe told the BBC, When we talk about it in terms of fully expecting no other result than Caster Semenya to win that 800m, then its no longer sport. It sounds like pretty epochal, tipping-point stuff except for the fact that the definition of sport being addressed here is fairly amorphous. Well before female testosterone levels, doping in itself should have made capital-lettered Sport no longer Sport.Radcliffe was quick to add that Semenya should not be called out on this the whole time. She has done nothing wrong and the way her case was dealt with originally by the IAAF (athletics international governing body) wasnt fair. Its is not just Casters rights but all the women with elevated testosterone that need to be balanced with those that dont.Speaking on a BBC Radio 5Live podcast recently, British swimming Olympic medalist Stephen Parry said the discussion around Semenya had something voyeuristic about it because it is about gender.Can we not celebrate the fact that maybe she is a strong woman?, he said. We dont exclude others because they have physiology that suits their sport. The world, he reminded everyone, celebrated Australian swimmer Ian Thorpes large size-17 feet, which made him a a much better swimmer, but he was not excluded.Parry added that there was a danger in just focusing on just one measure of physiology. Weve highlighted testosterone but that is only one element of everyones physiology.As female participation and progression across competitive sport has accelerated, so too has the attempt to clearly define what in a female body could possibly constitute a distinct unfair advantage-bearing genetic male marker. After the first gender test on women athletes was officially conducted in 1950, the always-contentious science was to move from humiliating physical examination to chromosome testing in 1968. After gender-verification was discontinued at the Olympic Games in 1999, Semenyas astonishing debut at the 2009 World Championships led to another version of the gender verification test being carried by South African athletics authorities, putting the athletes career into deep freeze for 11 months. In April 2011, the IAAFs hyperandrogenism ruling came into play.Semenya was directly targeted by her competitors in 2009 - Italys Elisa Cusma, who finished sixth in Berlin, said, Shes a man. Commentators today ask that Semenya not be singled out as the totem for the (yet unproven) unfair advantage available to athletes with DSD (disorders of sexual development). Yet that particular runaway train has already left the station: the hyperandrogenism ruling was only put into place after her Semenyas 2009 success. Now, she must also contend with the cruel, judgmental beast that is social media. It is what shapes public opinion and builds consensus, turning the possibility of a Semenya gold in Rio into a threat to the hallowed entity called Sport.DUTEES STORYDutee Chand is the third of seven siblings born to a family of weavers in the village of Chakagopalpur. The Brahmani River runs alongside the village 90 minutes north of the state capital Bhubaneshwar, the same distance east of the shoreline and the Bay of Bengal. Her older sister, Saraswati, a state-level sprinter herself, had lifted the family out of economic hardship after being hired by the state police. Dutee trained alongside her sister and ran along the river, but she flew higher and further in the sport. An under-18 national champion in 2012, she won the 200 at the 2013 Asian Championships and, at 17, she was a senior national champion in the 100 and 200.She was preparing for the World Junior Championships in Oregon in June 2014 when she was asked by Athletics Federation of India to stop over in Delhi for routine tests. Fresh off gold medals in the Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Patiala, her aim was to line herself up for a spot on the Indian team for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.The test request was unusual by nature - no blood or urine, but an ultrasound. After a planned move to Bangalore, she was sent another round of tests. This time, it was a far more detailed round of tests at a private hospital: blood tests, MRI, a gynecological examination, an ultrasound, as well as a karyotyping procedure, which allows a doctor extract cell samples to examine a patients chromosome patterns.A few days later, she was told she was ineligible for participation in Oregon and Glasgow. No reasons were given. She returned home crushed and confused before being hit with the knowledge that she had undergone a gender test and she failed it. She found out through the media that her body produced more testosterone than the normal levels found in women.I did not even know what the tests were all about, Chand was to say in an interview to ESPN. What saddened me were not the tests itself but being told that I couldnt compete.Emotionally, I think Im pretty strong... One of the things that very few people know about me is that my never cry, she adds. I may be crying a river inside, but I would have a smile on my face. What left me broken was knowing that all the hard work I had put in, all the hours of training from dawn to dusk and the money spent on my preparations had been wasted.She said, I dont feel sad because Im different from other girls in a certain way because I feel God does everything for a good reason. He gave me an opportunity to do something for my country and earn a name for myself so early in my life.If you read through Chands CAS case, the Athletics Federation of Indias vocabulary over its rationale of putting her through the gender tests, is bewildering and brief. The AFI informed the Sports Authority of India, (SAI) - an umbrella body charged with the overall administration of Indian sport - that there were definite doubts regarding the gender of Chand. The letter goes on to say that those doubts had also been expressed by the Asian Athletics Association regarding her gender issue.Despite those definite doubts being undefined and lacking detail, the AFI requested the SAI to perform a gender verification test. Whether it was a mere gender test (as pertaining to excess androgen in the female body), or a blanket gender verification test (which had been banned by the IOC and the IAAF because of the invasive examinations) was treated as immaterial.The test results were puzzling, and brought with them humiliation. Chand had grown up in a village, part of a community who knew nothing of gender tests, testosterone, androgens. They only knew the little girl who could run through their lanes faster than anyone they had seen before. Chand says, My parents, they are simple, God-fearing people. Im not sure that they even understood the full extent of what transpired.The original definite doubt complaint, she believed, could have come from envious rivals or their coaches. A few athletes who were probably jealous of my performances complained to the AFI, following which the tests were conducted. I dont blame the AFI. They were just playing by the rules. But I was really hurt by the manner in which I was trapped.But Chands belief in her identity as an athlete could not be silenced. She was told that if she underwent treatment for her condition, she would be fine. But the treatment and medicines could steal her chance to succeed at competitive sport. I thought to myself that sport is the reason people know me, she says. Its my dream and passion and I cannot abandon it. Even if that means I have to fight the system on my own, I wont quit.The system- be it Indian sporting federations or the government - has in the past been insensitive to individual athletes concerns. In a contest between the status quo and the athlete as underdog, Indian sports administration rarely fights for the underdog. Chand understands the AFI itself couldnt have fought on her behalf, but says a little sympathy never hurt. I requested an AFI official to allow me to compete since whatever the issue was not due to fault but he turned me away. That was when we decided to challenge the ruling.It became a multi-pronged campaign, unprecedented in? Indian sport, involving an entire cast of characters across nations. Leading the charge was the head of SAI, Jiji Thomson who had helped rescue Asian Games 800m silver medallist Santhi Sounderrajan out of a post-athletics life as a manual labourer. He convinced the Indian sports ministry to foot the bills in taking the case to the CAS and the importance of challenging the hyperandrogenism ruling.Sports gender studies researcher Dr. Payoshni Mitra had first alerted Thomson about Sounderrajan, and once again, put up her hand up for Dutee. She contacted a global team of scholars and lawyers who wanted to contest the IAAF ruling on Chands behalf. Along with Dutees Indian team, a multi-national task force fought for her -- American medical anthropologist Katrina Karkazis, Bruce Kidd, a former Canadian Olympian and sports gender equality activist, and Canadian sports lawyer Jim Bunting, whose firm worked pro-bono on the case. When the news about going to the CAS emerged, Chand says the AFI official she had gone to for help mocked me before we left saying I would never win.On July 24, 2015, CAS announced a decision that struck a hammer blow for activists of gender equality in sport and shook world athletics. It suspended the Hyperandrogenism Regulations for a maximum period of two years in order to give the IAAF the opportunity to provide the CAS with scientific evidence about the quantitative relationship between enhanced testosterone levels and improved athletic performance in hyperandrogenic athletes.Chand was free to run again. On August 12, she finished seventh in her heat at the Rio Olympics and 50th in the field of 64 runners in the 100m.CASTER & DUTEEIn Rio, there was no chance of Semenya and Chand sharing a track, but they may have run into each other in the dining hall. I have never met her but would love to, Chand says. Then, she adds with a laugh, More than questions, I think people will be curious to know who among the two of us is stronger.Over the last two years, Semenya has been in self-imposed exile at university, while Chand has been undaunted by a spotlight that in the past has stripped away the soul of more than a few women athletes in India. She realizes that while her CAS case was an individual matter, she was also fighting on behalf of wider group of female athletes with DSD. Like Semenya and others, Chand is trapped in a twilight zone between individual identity and the bodys own politics.In Rio, Chand believes the treatment that is meted out to her and Semenya could carry many mixed messages: I know some people may be applauding us, but deep down, revile us, hate our guts.Yes, many heavyweights still remained lined up against Semenya and Chand, regardless of the far more genteel Lets not single out Caster, but vocabulary used in the current argument. In the run-up to Rio, new IAAF president Sebastian Coe told The Times, London: We are talking people, not robots or machines here, and I dont want it to descend into an insensitive approach. The decision taken by CAS was, to most of us in our sport, slightly surprising. We have until July next year to appeal that decision and will have formed a view well before then.Two months before the CAS ruling, Semenya told BBC, I dont want to be someone I dont want to be. I dont want to be someone people want me to be. I just want to be me. I was born like this. I dont want any changes.It has never been formally confirmed, but is merely implied or assumed that the condition under which Semenya was allowed to compete again was that she undergo the IAAFs recommended testosterone-suppressing medication, medical and psychological after-effects. Her successes over the past six months are being linked to the fact that post the award in Chands CAS case, she has gone off the testosterone-suppressing medication and therefore regained her previous advantage.Dr Ross Tucker, a well-respected South African sports scientist and advocate of the hyperandrogenism rule, told The Guardian newspaper, She is proof of the benefit of testosterone to intersex athletes... Having had the restriction removed she is now about six seconds faster than she had been the last two years. The restriction removal here refers to the limit of the