Never Slow Down For The World, One Day it will Catch Up With You

On the 1st of May 2019, coincidentally my birthday, the IAAF announced new rules that require hyper androgynous (women with naturally high levels of testosterone) athletes to take medication to lower their testosterone levels in order to compete in the 400m, 800m and 1500m. Essentially what this means is that Caster Semenya (born female with naturally high testosterone levels) who has been at the centre of invasive gender speculation for her entire sporting career spanning 10 years can no longer compete unless she is willing to take drugs to reduce her testosterone levels. Understandably, and rightly so, for her, it is non-negotiable. Her sporting career is over.

For me the decision was just heart breaking, as a woman, as a black woman. Honestly reading the story just made me feel like all the air got taken out of me. When decisions like this are made, I feel weak, powerless. If someone as strong as Caster cannot beat them, then what hope is there for the rest of us? And I’m not talking about her physical strength, but her grit and determination; the kind of strength it takes to have to ‘show you’re a girl’ to your doubters from childhood, and then being expected to do it all the way into adulthood. Nothing is on ‘show’ now except the innermost private details of her body that she does not owe anyone an explanation for, put on display, and then even worse, debated on, with the whole world as her audience. As if her body is an object that they can’t decide the colour of, so they ask each other what to do with it? There is only one answer to this question that should never have been asked. Nothing. It’s HER body, it’s the way she was BORN. And that should be the end of the matter. Yet in 2019, apparently the bodies of black women are still nothing more than objects to be taken possession of, and its apparently totally okay for some random board of probably white people to decide what happens to her body when the only person with executive rights over her body should be Caster.

And yes, this is an issue about race because of Sara Baartman, because of Serena (who it seems rarely ever actually gets spoken about for her tennis) because being a black woman means that inevitably at some point in your life you will either be masculinised, hyper-sexualised or fetishised. Because our Western society with a Eurocentric view of what a woman’s body should be like sees the body of a black woman as ‘other’. Because there is a masculinity bias and the black female body is more likely to be seen as masculine by default. There have most definitely been other women with ‘intersex’ traits in Olympic sport before but why didn’t we hear about them? Because there is a different line for ‘masculine’ with black and non black women and a non-black woman with ‘intersex’ traits might just about get looked at twice, but there would be no investigation. It would end there.

I understand how the other athletes feel, it’s not nice to lose to someone who is better than you – but their treatment of her? Unacceptable. Where is the investigation into the bullying and vitriol Caster has had to deal with throughout her sporting career? Frankly, for her competitors to act as though she has an unfair advantage is outrageous and is nothing more than throwing a tantrum! That’s what the Olympics is! Its not a fair game by any standard. It’s a game for the people on the extreme end of the normal bell curve, THAT’S what it takes to get gold, by being extremely different to everyone else in a way that makes them especially adapted for their sport!

And while this is lauded in men such as Bolt and Phelps who are praised for being ‘freaks of nature’ and given gold medal after gold medal, the same rules do not apply for a black woman who is actually not that drastically different physically to her fellow competitors and who does not have an extremely large victory margin over her competitors. Unlike Bolt who had such a great victory margin that he literally watched his competitors eat his dust as he crossed the finish line. Where was the fuss then? Is a 6’7 man who can run way faster than men of his height usually can or ‘should’ be able to, running against men up to a foot shorter than him more fair? If Phelps was still competing would they make him take injections of lactic acid before his races to ‘even out the playing field’? Is there a cap to the testosterone level of men before they need to start doping to be allowed to compete? People didn’t care about ‘fairness’ then so why has Caster been singled out? To say that the only way she’ll be allowed to compete is if she starts doping in a sport where doping is illegal is just the height of hypocrisy! What this ruling says to me is ‘this is our game, and you can only play by our rules – which are subject to our (biased) feelings – or not at all’, and a committee with no real standard and fluctuating rules on a case by case basis is not a fairness committee at all. They should either investigate everyone and take away everyone’s ‘unfair advantages’ or investigate no one at all. Of course, they wouldn’t do that because the performance level at the olympics would drastically drop, and most of the top performing athletes would either be eliminated or have to undergo forced doping.

The final sting is that by settling on the ruling they did, the IAAF are suggesting that the only thing that got Caster to where she is her higher than ‘usual’ testosterone. Suggesting that any single woman with intersex traits (naturally high testosterone levels) in the world can become not just an Olympian but a gold medalist for 10 years running! That shit takes graft! And dedication! And true excellence and it’s not all to do with her hormones! Her hormones aren’t what made Caster Semenya a gold medal winning Olympian, she carved herself into one with discipline, hard training regimes, strict nutrition and all whilst fighting the world. THAT is laudable. That is inspirational. Caster Semenya, YOU are inspirational, thank you for fighting the world and being stronger than I could ever be.

Are you holding back?

Are you holding back right now? We’ve all done it before. Maybe we ‘didn’t put full effort in’ to a test we did; that way if didn’t score as highly as we wanted to, we can always fall back on the fact that ‘I didn’t even try my hardest anyway…’ to assuage our dissappointment, and find solace in a supposed reserve of potential that we haven’t yet tapped.

Holding back is a defence mechanism, and we defend ourselves when we’re scared. Scared that we are in some way lacking, scared that we aren’t as capable as we think we are, scared that we’ll fall short of our own expectations; so we don’t want to put it to the test, just in case we’re proved right. 

Perhaps there was a time that you achieved something amazing unexpectedly. Because you didn’t have any expectations you didn’t have the awareness to hold yourself back and you caught yourself by surprise. You know it’s incredible and you know you should follow it up, and put the effort in to achieve that result again, and make sure something good comes of it, but you… just leave it. You don’t do anything with it. You don’t follow it up. And your amazing achievement becomes a… fossil. Perfectly preserved in that moment in the past, but perfectly dead and unable to give birth to further greatness or opportunity. 

Well this is all FEAR. Fear that somehow if you try to follow up on your amazing achievement and turn it into another one, you’ll fail this time around, now that you’re AWARE of your expectations. Fear that you can’t do better than the best you’ve currently achieved, that you won’t be able to do that well again. That it was a fluke! 

Well I say screw that! Results don’t come from nowhere. If you’ve done it once you can most certainly do it again! It won’t be as easy as the effortless first time and you’ll have to put in a bit more hard work for sure, but as long as you’re consistent – you’ve just set the bar higher. Add the fuel of work ethic to your fire that is natural talent and you’ll be UNTSOPPABLE.

When you achieve a great result work HARDER until you do it again and again, instead of shrinking back in the fear that you can’t! The greatness came from inside YOU and nowhere else! Embrace your greatness and fine-tune it. Keep on doing your best until your best is your norm. Keep on setting that bar high, then smash it and reset it higher. Give us your best today, don’t hold back, I’m telling you, you WILL do better in the future!

‘Don’t be afraid to walk in your light’

– @Goldensoulflower

Calypso Sky

I amble into the field, a path I have walked many times, this is familiar territory but still the never ending expanse of green and beige stuns me. I walk slowly, apprehensively thinking about the jacket I do not have, worries flittering through my mind like flies that pester you in the summer. I bite down hard on the sweets I’m eating to comfort me, the sweetness, the chewiness keeping those thoughts at bay, and I walk feeling like I came to a picnic unprepared. I leave Melody and Samia as the sharp smell wafts towards me. And when I stop, staring at the evening sun, as it cuts crystals into my vision through my maroon curls that drape, framing the scene in front of me, as though a silken drape over a painting I just absorb it. I sit. I fling my sandals to the side, they’re not free enough. I want to feel the cool grass on my feet… I want to connect. I sit on the imperfect ground in Freyent country park, on a slight incline, watching the sun go down. The final rays of sun for the day bleeding through the trees, silhouetting them perfectly. I feel like this is a picture I will remember forever. 

I can still hear the cars, but they’re no longer the first thing I hear, I have to try to hear them. The birds are the strongest singers here, this is their concert hall. Sitting here on this imperfect patch of grass, in my imperfect stance, the birds and the crickets and the rustling of wheatgrass is the chorus I hear. 

The clouds herd toward the sun, speckling the sky, their underbellies cast the lightest gentlest coral. They don’t move. A picture which has existed since this world was born. And now a plane streaks across the sky, painting a strong luminescent white line through this portrait,but it does not destroy it, it creates contrast, jumping out. The perfect blending of the eternal and the modern. God made meets man made. 

The sun is red now. I can no longer see it. The light wanes but it is now that the sky is most beautiful, the warm coral at the bottom of the sky hiding behind silhouette of the trees. What j would call a calypso sky. The magic is strongest just before it departs. It’s a fission. An explosion of beauty to console us for the darkness to come, the coolness to come. 

Now I feel the breeze, a rush of it brushes past me, calling all the hairs on my body to attention. But I don’t feel cold, I no longer think about the thick jacket that perhaps I should have brought. Instead I feel alive. Invigorated. The pinkish hue of the sky, the bleating of the crickets and my hairs standing on edge. This is my universe. I am consumed by The Power of Now. 

The Right Kind Of Silence

The right kind of silence is what you want to hear.

You don’t want to see me cry

You want the lie

You want the smile.

But cry is what I do, cry out in anguish and rage

as I rattle the walls of my cage.

Walls with bars made of oppression, bolted with insecurity,

and padlocked with the feeling that I’ll never be good enough.

A padlock with no key.

I want to be honest

I want to be free

But this mask isn’t a choice, it’s compulsory.

‘The gram’ doesn’t want my truth or honesty.

Filters on our pictures

are filters on our soul

Our imperfections and doubts trapped inside

Festering

Mani-Festering

So that they can like us, verify us, reify us

How much more can we take until we’re overcome?

Trying to have the right kind of smile

The right kind of lie.

The Right Kind Of Silence.

 

Definition: Reification imposes an arbitrary value on that which transcends value. –Agenbite_of_inwit