FanHouse Caster Semenya

It's not often two women steal the week's sports show. If Caster Semenya (right) qualifies as a woman, we just had a rare double bill.

Her gender-bending had the world scratching its head, at least until Serena Williams had us all covering our children's ears.

She called a linesman everything except a "hermaphrodite" in a U.S. Open meltdown that will live forever on YouTube. Not that there's anything wrong with being a hermaphrodite, unless it helps you become a world track champion.

Then you have a full-blown international crisis, the kind that allows sportswriters to use words like "hermaphrodite" not merely as a gratuitous cheap shot at the WNBA. If anybody deserves cheap-shotting it's Serena, not Semenya.

After easily winning gold in the women's 800 meter race at August's World Championships in Berlin, South Africa's Caster Semenya found herself the target of allegations that she was not actually a woman. At the time, International Amateur Athletics Federation officials were quick to note that Semenya was undergoing gender testing, but the results would take a while.

Well, it's been a while, and the results are now in. Semenya is reportedly intersexed, possessing both male and female genital organs.

It was almost two centuries ago when, I suppose, the first indigenous young woman of what is now called South Africa showed up in Europe and was greeted with ugly fascination. She was paraded around, poked and prodded (sexual assault we'd call it today) because she looked so different than the European aesthetics of a female. Her name was Saartjie Baartman. She was 22 and she became known infamously as Hottentot Venus.

You would think 199 years later that we, as a more civilized society, have moved far beyond that. But the contrails of the world track and field championships that ended last weekend in Berlin are highlighted by an equally disgusting story about an 18-year-old black South African girl named Caster Semenya, who ran away with the women's 800. Semenya is being investigated to see if she is, instead, male.

Caster Semenya (pictured right) is an 18-year-old South African runner who may be the fastest female middle distance runner in the world right now. There is little question that Semenya is as fast or faster than any of the women she competes against.

There is considerable question as to whether Semenya qualifies as a woman.

Before you start quoting lines from Juwanna Mann, let's get one thing straight. No one is arguing that Semenya is a man competing in drag. Given the fit and styling of women's track uniforms, I doubt even Industrial Light and Magic is up to that particular task.

So just what is all the fuss about, anyway?

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