When what’s most important is tested

Imagine you’re a girl who plays rough with the boys and grows up to be a track-and-field world champion. You’ve been teased most of your life for looking and sounding like a boy. Now also imagine that your affinity for competition coupled with your masculine features captures the attention of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). They want to test your gender to see if you are really a woman or a man.

Caster Semenya of South Africa is not imagining but rather experiencing this and the story lends itself to a vast range of questions concerning the integrity of sport. But to the point, and possibly one of many larger principles, Semenya must ask herself what’s more important, standing up against accusations that she is male or allowing the testing by the IAAF to maintain what she has worked so hard to obtain.

If you want to know what someone thinks, force them to choose between something they desperately want and pride. Semenya’s dilemma is not unlike the student who is accused of cheating on a research paper because he doesn’t USUALLY do work this fine. Or take the athlete labeled “lucky” because he/she has posted team leading statistics for the first time in their career. Have you seen the volitile reactions of the accused? And rightfully so given the upsetting nature of false allegations. But don’t you know that skeptics run rampant in the world, especially the world of sports? What is most important is that you weather skepticism. Are you who you say you are? Answer yes and there’s no need for prideful protests based on principle. The only statement an athlete needs to make has been made already by the habits and outcomes related to your character and performance.

The IAAF has a right to be skeptical in this age of rationalized cheating in sports. But when your integrity is questioned, dispel the fraudulent claims by being who you’ve always been. Truth is its own protest.