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Track Star a Man And a Woman

Gender Bender

Caster Semenya is a hermaphrodite.

Whodathunk? After critics argued that female track star Caster Semenya might actually be a man, the International Association of Athletics Federations ordered a medical exam—and discovered that the 18-year-old South African is of ambiguous gender, with both male and female organs. Semenya has neither a womb nor ovaries, and testosterone levels three times those of the average woman (the spoils of a set of internal testes). The New York Daily News reports the IAAF has yet to decide whether Semenya will be permitted to keep the gold medal she won last month at the world championships in Berlin, and whether she will be allowed to compete in the future. Semenya had previously protested the medical exam, saying “God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”

Read it at The New York Daily News