I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am one of the greatest track and field athletes to ever run the 800m distance. I’ve won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships, along with dozens of Diamond League meets, and went unbeaten for almost four years. Unfortunately, it is not what I have achieved on the track that has likely brought me to your attention.
Much has been written about me in virtually every major international outlet in the world since I came into the public’s eye in 2009, and most of it is outright lies or half-truths. I have waited a long time to tell my story. For more than a decade I have preferred to let my running do the talking. After what has happened to me, it felt easier that way.
In 2019, the International Association of Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) banned me from running my favoured 800m event, along with the 400m and the 1500m distances. My last IAAF-sanctioned 800m race was on 30 June 2019, when I won the Diamond League Prefontaine Classic at Stanford University. I was not banned because I was caught doping or cheating. Rather, I am no longer allowed to run those distances because of a biological condition I was born with and that I refuse to take unnecessary drugs to change.
I have what is called a difference in sex development (DSD), an umbrella term that refers to the varying genetic conditions where an embryo responds in a different way to the hormones that spark the development of internal and external sexual organs. To put it simply, on the outside I am female, I have a vagina, but I do not have a uterus. I do not menstruate, and my body produces an elevated amount of testosterone, which gives me more typically masculine characteristics than other women, such as a deeper voice and fewer curves. I cannot carry a child because I don’t have a womb but, contrary to what many people think, I do not produce sperm. I can’t biologically contribute to making new life.
I did not know any of this about my body until soon after August 2009, when I won the gold medal in the 800m race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. I was only 18 years old and had been subjected to invasive and humiliating gender confirmation tests without my consent just prior to the race. What followed was a media firestorm that continues to this day.
People believed all sorts of insanity about me — that I was a boy who managed to hide his penis all the way to the world championships, that I was paid to have my penis removed so South Africa could bring home a medal in the women’s category, that I was a hermaphrodite forced to run as a girl for political gain.
Journalists descended into my village and every school I’d ever attended. My parents and siblings, friends, and teachers, were harassed with calls and by visitors, day and night. I can still hear my mother wailing desperately as she tried to explain to perfect strangers that I was born a girl, and that I was her little girl, and why was all of this happening?
I have never spoken in detail about what happened during this time of my life, but I am now ready to do so. It is said that silence will not protect us. From the moment I stepped on to the track for the final meet in Berlin on 19 August 2009, I have been vilified and persecuted.
My accomplishments since have been celebrated, yes, but it is hard to think of another athlete at the elite level who has endured as much scrutiny and psychological abuse from sports governing bodies, other competitors, and the media as I have. It has affected me in ways I cannot describe, although I will try. And while I have faced significant hardships throughout my life, I want to make clear that my story is not one of pain and torment, but rather about hope, self-confidence, and resilience.
I am still standing; I am still here. What has been said about me in the media is not who I really am. I’ve heard myself described as “surly”, “rude”, “shy”, “stoic”, “dignified”, and “superhuman”. All those things may seem true, at times. I’m also quite charming and funny, and I’ve been said to have a biting wit.
Like every human, I am many things — a proud Black woman from Limpopo, […] a daughter, a sister, a wife and now I am a mother to two baby girls: Oratile, who was born in 2019, and Oarabile, who was born in 2021. I feel and I hurt just like a regular person, although I am not considered by science or some people to be a regular woman.
The scientific community has labelled my biological makeup as “intersex”, and I am now one of, if not the, most recognisable intersex person in the world … I don’t think of myself that way. I want everyone to understand despite my condition, even though I am built differently than other women, I am a woman.
Of course, growing up I knew I looked and behaved differently from many of my peers, but my family, my community, and my country accepted me as I was and never made me feel like an outsider. The beauty of my childhood was that I never felt othered or unwanted — this is the source of my strength. I have never questioned who I am.
Caster Semenya: The Race to be Myself is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers and costs R320.