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“Sometime in 2012, Dr. Bermon was part of a group of doctors at the Department of Reproductive Endocrinology at the University Hospital in Nice, France. They performed gonadectomies on four young women, all considered elite athletes at the time. The paper was published in a medical journal in 2013. It reads like a horror movie to me. I remembered that doctor’s name—this Dr. StĂ©phane Bermon was the same person back in 2009 who told my legal team their method of dealing with my condition was surgery. These girls were all from “rural or mountainous regions in developing countries”—meaning they were all probably coming from a place with little resources. Developing countries meant they were definitely not European. The girls were between the ages of eighteen and twenty. They were all unnamed, although Annet Negesa, the Ugandan girl, has publicly said she believes she was one of the girls used in the study.

SemenyaThe Race To Be Myself
p.236

Related Quotes

“I can’t biologically contribute to making new life. I did not know any of this about my body until soon after August 2009, when I won the gold medal in the 800-m race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. I was only eighteen years old and had been subjected to invasive and humiliating gender confirmation tests without my consent just prior to the race. What followed was a media firestorm that continues to this day.

SemenyaThe Race To Be Myself
p.2

“This skepticism about surgery is what may have saved my career years later, but at this point, my parents understood the traditional ways weren’t going to help, and surgery was the only option for me to ever walk properly again. Unfortunately, our public healthcare system was what it was. I had to wait for a specialist who could do the operation, and I would remain in the hospital for almost seven months before one became available.

SemenyaThe Race To Be Myself
p.37

“I hear that in the Western world, a girl like me would have been diagnosed and “treated”

from birth or at least as puberty began. This didn’t happen to me because no one thought there was anything to treat. We noticed I was different, but different didn’t mean wrong. Some girls are what they call late bloomers, anyway.

SemenyaThe Race To Be Myself
p.53

“With the help of a journalist who was also an academician in gender matters, Dutee announced she would bring a legal challenge to the IAAF’s hyperandrogenism regulations at the Court of Arbitration for Sport that winter. The case eventually went to CAS in March 2015. I was not aware of Dutee, or even aware of the IAAF’s medical study on the four young runners, until much later. The IAAF’s position was that women with high testosterone levels had an unfair advantage equal to the advantage that male athletes had over female athletes.

SemenyaThe Race To Be Myself
p.238

“It would be better for athletics and athletes if Sebastian Coe focused on real cheaters instead of focusing on rare but completely natural biological variations in women or the transgendered athletes who are supposedly waiting to take women’s medals. It would be even better if the sporting powers focused on the things that women really need to become better athletes—they can start with equitable pay, making sure we can do our jobs without being harassed physically and mentally, creating a system where resources are distributed fairly.” (Semenya “The Race To Be Myself”, p.295)

“I think of marathoner Eliud Kipchoge’s words on his success: “Learn to say no, learn self-discipline, avoid complaining.

SemenyaThe Race To Be Myself
p.300