Caster Semenya Reported To Be Intersex

Rod 2.0 and Joe.My.God are both reporting that South African track & field phenom Caster Semenya who won the 800m gold medal in Berlin last month has been revealed to be intersex. There has been an ongoing controversy and public furor over the supposed "gender testing" of the South African athlete due to her curiously "gender inappropriate" physique and appearance. Now, the reasons have been discovered:

Tests conducted during the world athletics championships in Berlin last month, where Semenya's gender became the subject of heated debate following her victory in the 800m, revealed evidence she is a hermaphrodite, someone with both male and female sexual characteristics.

Semenya, 18, has three times the amount of testosterone that a "normal'' female would have. According to a source closely involved with the Semenya examinations IAAF testing, which included various scans, has revealed she has internal testes - the male sexual organs which produce testosterone.

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When quizzed by South African magazine You on the gender issue, Semenya said: "I see it all as a joke, it doesn't upset me. God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I'm proud of myself. I don't want to talk about the tests - I'm not even thinking about them.''

The use of the word "hermaphrodite" to describe people with both male and female biological characteristics is considered offensive, similar to the use of the word "homosexual" to describe people sexually attracted to people of the same sex. Joe.My.God has posted useful information on the topic from the Intersex Society of North America:

RELATED: The Intersex Society of North America notes that although the term "hermaphrodite" is commonly used to describe intersex people (and this is already happening with Semenya), hermaphrodite literally means "fully male and fully female," which is a physical impossibility. "Intersex" is the proper way to describe a person who may have one or several of a very broad range of atypical gender characteristics, ranging from ambiguous or mixed external genitalia, internal conditions (as in Semenya's case), or an atypical chromosonal makeup. Some intersex characteristics are extremely rare, others occur much more frequently, and studies indicate that some aspect of being intersex occurs in about 1 out of 100 people.