South African runner, Caster Semenya, who recently won a gold medal at the World Track and Field Championships, has had her gender tested on order of the International Association of Athletics Federation, and reports are leaking out of Australia that she may be intersex, exhibiting both male and female physical characteristics.
Raised in a poor village in South Africa, it is very possible Caster herself, who has lived her life as a woman, did not know this fact.
What can be learned from Caster’s story? Read here to learn more about the current controversy over her testing. Click here for noted sociologist Mike Messner’s thoughts from a post to the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. For more about what intersex means, click here.
We here at Common Ground have been thinking a lot about gender lately. For example,
- Sexual assault and stalking remain problems on campus, as they do on many campuses.
- Joe Boehman, the new RC Dean, is asking what it means to educate men for the 21st century.
- The One Book, One Campus initiative is hosting discussions of Ellen Bravo’s Taking on the Big Boys: “What we want isn’t just more women in power, but more power to women as a whole and others who have been disenfranchised.”
- HR’s job reclassification project uncovered and corrected numerous gender-based pay inequities.
- And, for a long while now, many people have wanted the University to create an on-site childcare facility.
When you think of gender issues and the University of Richmond, what comes to mind? In what areas are we doing a good job? Where do we need to improve?
Let’s talk about it.
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