Are men and women universal/natural categories?

A public forum on meanings of masculinity and femininity
 
Date     : Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Venue   : Southern Sun Elangeni Hotel / Durban
Time     : 18h00 to 20h00
Speaker : Dr. Antje Schuhman Department of Political Science / Wits University    
RSVP     : Nondumiso by fax (031 306 2261) or e-mail Nondumiso@ddpdurban.org.za (by latest October 23, 2009)
 
 
The purpose of the public forum is to critically reflect on how Caster Semenya’s “gender-testing” experience speaks to conventional narratives of what constitutes manhood or womanhood, and to explore the opportunities and challenges for constructing alternative meanings of masculinity and femininity that recognise the intersection between gender and other identities, i.e. race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, etc.       
 
Context: The recent decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to verify Caster Semenya’s gender has caused a great furore within the South African society. The sounds of distraught voices resonated through places of work, the streets, public forums, etc. A flurry of media articles were churned out, decrying the gender-test and affirming Semenya’s female identity. Some in our political society issued racially inflected statements, arguing that gender-testing is an act of racism, and questioning the alleged ‘silence’ of white South Africans.
 
However, Semenya’s supporters failed to draw a connection with the intersecting political, social and economic forms of discrimination that subsume the daily live experiences of many women, gays and lesbians, who’ll never enjoy the kind of royal treatment she experienced, based on codified stereotypes about manhood and womanhood. In fact, it is argued that solidarity for Semenya was largely predicated on essentialist perceptions of gender and sexuality, i.e. “I bathed with her, I know”, “She is beautiful”, etc.