Harvard invited Caster Semenya as keynote speaker at their Women In Power Conference

Semenya is a male athlete whose achievements are stealing the very top women's awards and opportunities by knowingly and unfairly competing in the female category

Immediate action required!

Harvard Kennedy School invited Caster Semenya, a male runner whose success has come by competing in the female category, to be a keynote speaker at it’s eighth annual Women In Power Conference. This is a kick in the teeth to every female athlete Semenya has cheated over the years, an affront to the spirit of sports, and appallingly misogynistic. The event is this Saturday, April 12. Below is a letter I drafted asking Harvard organizers of the conference to rescind Semenya’s invitation. You can copy and paste this letter, or write your own, and email to: hkswipconference@gmail.com.

Dear Harvard Kennedy School Women In Power Committee:

I am disappointed that your prestigious conference which seeks to highlight and inspire the achievements of women has invited Caster Semenya as a keynote speaker. Caster Semenya is a mediocre male runner who achieved success by knowingly and unfairly competing in the female category at the expense of hundreds of female athletes.

Semenya was born in rural South Africa with a Disorder of Sexual Development called 46 XY 5-alpha reductase deficiency, a condition that only affects males. A feature of this DSD is that at birth external genitalia may appear female, so Semenya was mistakenly observed as female. But those with 46 XY 5-ARD are male—they have a Y chromosome, internal rather than external testes that produce testosterone in the male range, and receptors that can utilize testosterone. This DSD may not be recognized until puberty, when the child goes through male puberty—deepening voice, increased muscle mass, power, and strength—not female puberty.

In his first international race, Semenya won a gold medal in the women’s 800-meter race at the 2009 Track & Field World Championships in 1 minute, 55 seconds—a jaw-dropping time for women, but one that’s routinely run by high school boys. Skeptical, the IAAF, Track & Field’s governing body, conducted their own sex screen (universal sex screening that is being reinstated would have identified Semenya’s sex without targeting him), which revealed Semenya as male with a DSD.

Hamstrung by medical ethics, Track & Field officials were forced to keep silent. Semenya, knowing he was male, knowing he had an unfair advantage, but also seeing an opportunity in his situation, loudly declared he was a woman, and attacked those who suggested otherwise. He continued to compete in the female category from 2009 to 2022, winning two Olympic gold medals meant for women, three World Championship gold medals meant for women, podium places, lanes on the track, opportunities (like speaking engagements) meant for women. Going back to South African schoolgirls whose place he unfairly took, all the way to Olympians, Semenya stole his success from innumerable female athletes. And is still doing it. He has publicly mocked female athletes, telling them to “train harder.” He’s admitted he has an advantage and dismissed it—”So what?” On the BBC Woman's Hour, Semenya famously crowed, “My testicles don’t make me any less a woman.” He delights in playing on “progressive” sympathies.

Contemptuous of women, opportunistic, mendacious, and ethically bankrupt, Semenya is not only not a woman, he’s a poor representative of the human race. I ask that you rescind your invitation to Caster Semenya to the Women In Power Conference.

There is a world of smart, inspiring women: Two I can suggest are NASA astronaut Suni Williams, who just returned to earth after an eight day mission that unexpectedly turned into a nine-month challenge; and retired professional cyclist Inga Thompson, three-time Olympian, three-time World Championship medalist, cancer survivor, and women’s rights activist. You’re spoiled for choice. But please choose a woman.