http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight/Article.aspx?id=1056989
<http://www.thetimes.co.za/> Castigated and celebrated Published:Aug 29, 2009 ------------------------------ PATRIOT GAMES: The outpouring of support for star athlete Caster Semenya from political quarters could be nothing more than expediency. Picture: MARK DADSWELL/ GETTY Our society’s response to the difference she represents, signifies a significant shift in social norms <http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php> Had the acceptance by South Africans of athlete Caster Semenya’s difference been extended to murdered footballer Eudy Simelane she may have still been alive today, writes Mark Gevisser Two highly accomplished, young, black, female South African athletes are currently in the news. One came home to a hero’s welcome and got to meet the president. The other is dead, her alleged assailants in a Delmas court this week on trial for her rape and murder. Blessed with masculine looks and physiques, both women chose the sportsfield over more feminine pursuits. Both experienced ostracism because they challenged stereotypes and both appear to have dealt with this by devoting themselves to their codes. Caster Semenya, 18, won the 800m at the world athletics championships last week; Eudy Simelane had been a member of Banyana Banyana, the women’s national football team, and was training to be a professional referee when she was murdered in KwaThema aged 29 last year. Both women appear to have been punished — one in the most severe way possible — for their difference and their excellence. Semenya has been dealt the humiliation of having her gold medal withheld until she proves she is a woman. And although the prosecutor failed to establish a connection between Simelane’s sexual orientation and her murder, her friends are convinced she was the victim of an epidemic of violence against lesbians, who are subjected to what is sometimes called “corrective rape” by men seeking to punish or cure them; or who feel that butch women are competing with them by straying into their territory. According to Phumi Mtetwa, director of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, at least 20 women have been killed, in ways similar to Simelane, over the past five years. In the shadow of such violence, what are we to make of the extraordinary surge of emotion and patriotism in support of Semenya? Much of it seems driven by grievance, by the sense that South Africans have been denied a rightful reward. There was conscious reference, by parliamentarians, to Saartjie Baartman, and perhaps the national anger at Semenya’s humiliation arises out of what we might call our Bartman Complex, a particularly South African anxiety, that we will gain notoriety for our alleged abnormality rather than celebrity for our excellence. Or, worse yet, that we will be revealed as Mugabes rather than Madibas; that the world will take away our gold medal and label us freakish instead. But the upside to this anger is the acknowledgement that we strive towards a society based on something different than the repressive notions of gender roles inherited from colonial law-makers and patriarchal African society. Welcoming Semenya home this week, Jacob Zuma gave eloquent voice to this: not only had the athlete “showcased women’s achievement, power and strength’’, but she had “reminded the world of the importance of the rights to human dignity and privacy’’. And so there is a way that the current adulation of Semenya — even if it is fuelled in part by jingoism and wounded pride — vindicates the memory of Simelane, and other young women who have been victimised because they are too butch for comfort. This is not to suggest, for a moment, that Semenya herself is a lesbian, or a transsexual, or intersexed, or anything other than a shy and determined young woman who is a demon on the racetrack. Rather, it is to acknowledge the way our society’s response to the difference she represents — the language it uses to protect her — signifies a significant shift in social norms since the advent of democracy. Listen, for example, to Leonard Chuene, the blowhard South African athletics chief: “I am not going to let that girl be humiliated, because she has not committed (any) crime whatsoever. Her crime was to be born the way she is born,” he said to one journalist in Berlin. And to another: “Why must she be subjected to this? How you look and behave is a God-given thing. You do not have a say in that.” Leaving the nature/nurture debate aside (is how we behave a ‘God-given thing’?), Chuene’s comments acknowledge that Semenya’s gender identity is inherent and integral rather than perverse and pathological. And in acknowledging this, he is using (even if unwittingly) a template provided by the struggle for gay equality in South Africa. The winning argument, in this struggle, was that to discriminate against people because of gender identity or sexuality was to punish them for inherent qualities, and was tantamount to discriminating against them because of their race. But Zuma, who spoke out for Semenya’s rights to privacy and dignity was also quoted as saying in Zulu last year, that in his youth he would “knock out” any effeminate boy he saw before him. He subsequently apologised for any offence caused and claimed he had been mistranslated: what he meant, he said, was that “if you saw a boy who was effeminate, a sissy, he was beaten up because everyone had to learn to fight and be strong”. How, in a macho culture that accepts such behaviour as normative, does one entrench the values of dignity and privacy Zuma alluded to when he welcomed Semenya home this week? And is there more than a little expediency to her current adulation ? We are perfectly happy to have our women be butch so long as they bring home the medal, but when they actually attempt to live lives independent of men, they are often subject to the most extreme violation and abuse. Will Semenya’s voluble supporters stick with her if it is found that she has more testosterone than the International Association of Athletics Federations feels is normal? Or will they feel betrayed by her, and lash out at her deceit, or simply drop her? And given the explicitly paternalistic tone of their support — “that girl”; “our child” — is it predicated on her remaining shy and deferential off the field? Communities accept the stabane — the effeminate man — so long as “she” knows her place: in the hair-salon or in the kitchen. And there is a venerable tradition of tolerating or even celebrating gender-outliers so long as they remain within the confines of entertainment (drag queens) or sport (bull dykes). The tougher challenge is to apply the humanity on display across South Africa this week to all people who challenge conventional gender and sexuality conventions, no matter how uncomfortable this makes us. Wouldn’t it be great if Zuma or Julius Malema used Semenya’s celebrity to speak out against the violation of Simelane’s rights to privacy, dignity and life? Gevisser is Writer-in-Residence, University of Pretoria. He divides his time between South Africa and France -- Do not print this mail unless really necessary. Save paper, save trees..!! If you loose your way while SCUBA diving, the safest direction to head for is UP..!!!
