Doing Epistemic (In)justice to Semenya

Citation

Amy-Chinn D (2011) Doing Epistemic (In)justice to Semenya. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 6 (3), pp. 311-326. https://doi.org/10.1386/mcp.6.3.311_1

Abstract
In August 2009, Caster Semenya won the women’s 800m event at the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships in Berlin. This victory became a global news story not because Semenya was a newcomer to athletics who had outperformed an established field – but because of the fact that before the race she had been asked to undergo tests to determine whether or not she was a woman. This article uses a hermeneutics of suspicion to argue that the controversy surrounding Semenya was based on a set of assumptions that, although incorrect, drew on hegemonic understandings of sex and gender that dominate the discourse of sport, and were adopted by the media without question. As a consequence, Semenya became the victim of what Miranda Fricker has termed epistemic injustice – a condition that arises when individuals or experiences are marginalized as a result of the absence of concepts and language that would enable us to articulate reality differently.

Keywords
Athletics; BBC; DSD; Gender Verification; Intersex; Sex Testing; Sport; Justice (Philosophy); Women athletes; Sex determination, Genetic

Journal
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics: Volume 6, Issue 3

• Semenya MCP Article.pdf