Caster Semenya, the South African runner who won the women’s
800-meter race at the World Track Championships in Berlin last
month, has been unofficially declared intersexed. If she is, it
means that she was born with some discrepancy between her
external genitals, internal sex anatomy (ovaries or testes and
her hormones and chromosomes). The International Association of
Athletic Federations (IAAF) will not make its official ruling as
to whether it considers Semenya a woman until November, but an
increasing number of news outlets around the world have reported
that she’s “a hermaphrodite.” What does this mean, exactly? The
media’s terminology itself reflects the ignorance and confusion
surrounding intersex. Doctors and lay people no longer use the
word hermaphrodite because it is vague, demeaning and
sensationalistic. “Hermaphrodite” continues to conjure images of
mythical creatures, perhaps even monsters and freaks. It’s thus
not surprising that most have rejected the label. Historically,
hermaphrodite has be