Running Like a Man, Sitting Like a Girl: Visual Enthymeme and the Case of Caster Semenya

Abstract

Much attention has been given to the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old South African athlete subjected to “sex testing” during the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but far less attention has been given to Semenya's rhetorical response to the media's scrutiny of her body. This essay explores how Semenya's portrait on the cover of You, a prominent South African magazine, employs a visual rhetoric that functions as an enthymeme. I argue that while Semenya hailed audiences to view her as an authentic, feminine self, her visual enthymeme was constrained by medical conceptions of gender. By investigating the Semenya case, I analyze how female athletic bodies are displayed, disciplined, and reinscribed into sexist and racist discourses about gendered athleticism.

Keywords:

• enthymeme
• gender and sports
• intersex
• Caster Semenya
• sex testing
• South Africa
• visual rhetoric

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editor and anonymous reviewers at Women's Studies in Communication for their rigorous and insightful feedback. Thank you, too, to the members of the Comm-rades writing group—Jennifer Dunn, Jimmie Manning, Danielle Stern, Michelle Calka, and Kathy Denker—for all of their support. Finally, a large thanks to my father, Dr. Thomas E. Young, for his careful readings and kind suggestions.

Notes

One of the most well-known principles of photographic composition, the rule of thirds divides an image into nine equal parts in a grid, with the most vital components of a photograph located at those intersections.