Double Olympic champion Caster Semenya says she intends to fight against the introduction of gender testing for the female category at the Olympics, a policy the South African insists "undermines women's rights."
The International Olympic Committee unveiled the policy last week, and it is expected to become a universal rule for competitors in female elite sports after years of fragmented regulation that led to controversy.
Semenya has been at the center of one of those controversies due to her long-running legal case against World Athletics over her right to compete on the track despite having a Difference of Sexual Development (DSD).
Olympic star Caster Semenya vows against gender taboos:
As reported by Reuters, the 35-year-old player expressed in a latest interview, "We're going to be vocal about it; we're going to make noise until we're heard."
"Now it's a matter of women standing for themselves to say, 'Enough is enough.' We are not going to be told how to do things."
"If we are really accepted as women to take part, why do my appearance or my voice, why do my inner parts need to be a problem to take part in the sport?"
"But what I say is that if you're going to be a great athlete, it's through hard work."
The test that will be applied to all athletes who want to compete in the female class will be conducted by a cheek swab or saliva analysis.
Additionally, there will be further investigation for any athletes who test positive for the SRY gene, which is on the Y chromosome and triggers the development of male characteristics in mammals.
"What this decision does, it undermines women. It undermines women's dignity. It violates women's rights because we know historically, these (tests) have failed before," Semenya said.
"Women need to be celebrated. Women are not supposed to be questioned about their gender. Why that is their physique? Why it is how they look like? It doesn't matter. Nor also the hormone level. Those are the things that are obviously genetics that cannot be controlled," Semenya added.
The Olympic star said, "There's no science" that XY-DSD gave an athlete an advantage. "I've been there, I've done that. There's no such thing as that."
She also expressed, "There are people who are delusional. There are people who are convinced that because a woman is masculine or born with intersex conditions, the DSD, they've mentioned all those things—they have an advantage.
Semenya, who won two Olympic and three world titles in the 800 metres before being limited to shorter events, believes the IOC got the science wrong.
