It is a horde of people thinking they have a right to decide where you belong with only an ignorant impression of your gender proclivities and expression with zero understanding of your internal sex. And their opinion is to be given credence over your own. Transpeople undergoing Harry-Benjamin style therapy for “permission” to transition know this feeling very well. It is humbling, infuriating, and leaves you feeling powerless and adrift.

And for her there’s no point at the end of it, just the threat of the removal of everything that has brought you joy, the threat that all of this can be taken away because you were suspicious. Now the public and an arbitrary standard noone fully understands can remove the one passion that has defined your life and remove from you the dream of a little girl (to compete, perchance to medal in the Olympic games, to bring honor to your country and family, and most importantly to yourself).

Gone in an instant.

So when the test came back that she is in fact a form of intersex, a condition that is inconsistently ruled upon, that giant maw of uncertainty grew wider still as well as increasing the amount of vitriolic speculation amongst the public over how much advantage it has given her (and little examination over the possibility of none above the rest of her nongendered abnormalities).

Thankfully, her country is fighting for her, though she has already dropped out of her next race as the rumors continue to fly and as the deliberating bodies continue to put her training and competitions on hold until they decide what to do with the rest of her life.

And again, not hyperbole, if she is found to be “too manly” for the arbitrary standard (testosterone levels and receptors, something not similarly examined or enforced in male athletes outside of doping laws), she will be barred from competing in female competitions as well as likely male competitions. She’d be struck out from that euphoric moment of dreaming of an Olympic medal she has worked her entire life training for to never being able to run in a competition again.

As such, this should only surprise the terminally devoid of empathy.

Caster Semenya has been placed on Suicide Watch and yet another paper reporting on it decides her gender for her declaring her “proved a hermaphrodite”.

The world is trying to enforce their ideas on gender on her, a deliberative body will decide if she’s “too secretly male” to compete as she always has without incident or complaint for 18 years, to decide if she will ever be allowed to run at a moment most athletes begin the fevered dream and focus that they might be able to make a run at an Olympic gold medal, perhaps even being considered a favorite.

But hey, she “may” be allowed to keep the one gold medal she won though her competitor “may” also be awarded one as well you know to make clear what they think of Caster.

And so, this bright beautiful young butch woman is under suicide watch.

I end with this quote from lawmaker Butana Komphela, from the South African sports committee: “She is like a raped person. She is afraid of herself and does not want anyone near her. If she commits suicide, it will be on all our heads. The best we can do is protect her and look out for her during this trying time.”

No shit.

It’s time for the IAFF to get over themselves and accept the reality of gender in this world, the incongruity of sex and stop creating the type of world where they are pushing a strong woman to the brink of death “figuring out her sex for her”.

And it’s time for all of us to stop thinking ourselves the only real arbiters of someone’s real sex entirely from ignorant assumptions of gender performance.