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Caster Semenya has come out to narrate how challenging it was growing up as a person with a sexual development disorder and how she identifies.
Caster Semenya rose to fame back in 2009, when she was just 18 and she had won the 800m world title at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany.
However, her win was surrounded by a lot of controversies concerning her gender, owing to her lightning speed, muscular build, and husky voice.
At the time, World Athletics had required Semenya to take gender verification tests the day before the race. Little did she know that it was the start of a journey full of twists and turns that even ended up at the European Court of Human Rights.
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As reported by The Guardian, Semenya grew up in the village of Ga-Masehlong, South Africa and she had been a natural sprinter.
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“I had to sacrifice myself to be the best that I am. There were days when I lived in the dark. Days where I didn’t want to wake up," Semenya stated in her book, The Race To Be Myself.
She also narrates how she was subjected to taking hormone suppression medication she was required to take for six years.
"Those are the things that people don’t understand. F*ck them (World Athletics). Those motherf*ckers must go take the medication themselves, then tell us how they feel.”
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She explained in the book that she was born with a vagina and grew up as a girl but as she hit puberty she noticed she wasn’t filling out with the usual softness of women in her family (including four sisters).
“In this world, we’re all different. We shouldn’t question how we look, or how we speak. Once you start questioning yourself, you’ll never get an answer," she adds.
"You’ll never know the reason why you have that huge nose or a big forehead. Those are the things that you’re made with!
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"You should embrace them. But, instead of that, people in our society start questioning what women should look like because they want women to look a certain way.
"That’s the story that’s going around with me. I’m an African, I’m a woman, I’m a different woman. That’s the only term I can use,” she narrates.
As a child, Semenya got used to adults saying she was more like a boy. "I’d say: that’s who I am. Take it or leave it."
Her sisters, in particular, could tell she wasn’t quite like them. But they let her get on with it as she spent hours running around with her male cousins rather than cooking and cleaning with the girls.
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“They understood me, even back then, when they were protective of me. I don’t remember myself hiding the person I am. What you see with me is what you get.”
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