PUDUKKOTTAI, India — Considering suicide after being stripped of her medal and shunned by the people around her, Indian runner Santhi Soundarajan knows a bit about what Caster Semenya is going through.
Soundarajan failed a gender test after finishing second in the women's 800-meter race at the 2006 Asian Games and was forced to return her silver medal. Semenya, the 800 world champion from South Africa who has been going through the same type of test to prove she is eligible to compete as a woman, is facing the same future.
"I pray that Semenya does not go through what I've been through, it almost drove me to committing suicide," Soundarajan, now 28, told The Associated Press on Saturday in an interview in her southern Indian hometown. "I've suffered immensely due to the stigma of the failed gender test."
Soundarajan, who came from a poor family, was forced to drop out of competitive athletics after she failed the gender test in Doha, Qatar. Finding a job and earning enough money to eat became a daily struggle.
Semenya also comes from poverty, but she managed to win the 800 at the worlds in 1 minute, 55.45 seconds — 2.45 seconds ahead of her closest competitor. It was the best 800 time in the world this year.
Before the race even started, however, the IAAF said it had ordered gender tests to be done on Semenya because questions had been raised about her muscular physique and recent stunning improvement in times.
The IAAF has refused to confirm or deny Australian media reports saying the tests show that Semenya has both male and female sex organs. It has said the test results are being studied and a decision on whether she will be allowed to compete in women's events is expected in November.
Soundarajan, however, wasn't surprised the issue has come up again so soon after her own ordeal.
"With so much of workload athletes go through, there will be hormonal changes. It's bound to happen," said Soundarajan, who has been coaching poor children for the last two years. "The authorities should bear this in mind when they take decisions.
"I cannot forget what I had to go through after my Asian Games medal was taken back. I hail from a poor family, and no one would give me a job. My entire family suffered as people began looking at me with a jaundiced eye, treating me like a cheat."
Soundarajan is hoping Semenya doesn't have to go through a similar experience.
"I do not know about Semenya's family conditions and support, but I hope she does not lose heart," Soundarajan said.
It was through coaching children that Soundarajan was able to change her life for the better.
"It was a tough decision. I was still reeling under the impact of a trauma, but had no available options or choices to make ... so coaching it was," Soundarajan said. "Coaching has given me immense satisfaction, especially as these young boys and girls are now competing for medals in the state competitions.
"During school vacations, I get to train more than 60 boys and girls. The facilities are not very good, but I was delighted when my wards secured the first and third positions in the three-mile run during last year's Chennai Marathon. This year, they'll win the top three places."
Getting her own medal back would be a dream come true, she said. The Athletics Federation of India has said it might consider asking for its return from the Olympic Council of Asia.
"I'll run miles to accept it back. It will change my life," Soundarajan said. "I do hope that people will treat me better when I am relieved of that stigma."
Indian athlete Santhi Soundararajan's 2006 medal should be returned to her if Caster Semenya is allowed to keep hers, an Indian athletics official says.
Soundararajan was stripped of the 800m silver at the Asian Games after failing a test and later attempted suicide.
Tests on Semenya, who won 800m gold at the world championships in Berlin last month, are likely to show that she has an "inter-gender condition".
BBC Sport understands that Semenya will not be stripped of her medal.
Lalit Bhanot of India's Amateur Athletic Federation told the BBC that India will take up Soundararajan's case if Semenya was allowed to keep her medal.
"Rules should be equal for every one. Why should not Soundararajan get her medal back? If they give the medal to Semenya, we can think of fighting [Santhi's case] with the international authorities," he said.
Soundararajan told the BBC Tamil Service that the Indian authorities had not fought her case after she was stripped off her silver medal at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.
"I was not given a chance like Caster Semenya. I don't have the capacity to fight a lonely battle due to my economic condition," she said.
Soundararajan, 28, said she was shunned by her local community after being stripped off her silver medal and banned from competing by the Indian Olympic Association.
"Had I been given a chance, I would have won a gold medal in Olympics. Because of the discriminatory attitude of the sports officials I was left alone and all my sports career ruined and my dreams shattered once and for all," she said.
She participated in eight international competitions and won 12 medals before being banned.
Soundararajan now runs a small training academy for athletes in her native district of Pudukkottai in India's southern Tamil Nadu state.
By Julius K Kaggwa, Ugandan intersex activist and founder of SIPD
I have been following the story of Semenya and the controversy that has arisen from her outstanding achievement at the world games simply because her athletic ability and appearance are perceived to be too masculine for her to be a woman.
One of the greatly disturbing details is the irregularity in gender judgment by IAAF between the time Semenya registered for the games and the time of her win. Is it possible that Semenya looked more of a man than a woman after she won the gold medal than she did when she was entered into the games? Are chromosomal, hormonal, and gynaecological tests a standard “requirement” for participating in sports as a woman or a man? One would wonder which is a worse violation: – exclusion from event participation or denial of the gold medal on the basis of Semenya’s body type, yet none of the two compare to being forced to undergo humiliating invasive “gender verification” tests.
Even more disturbing is the implied gendering of performance in sports, particularly depicting women as having less sports competence and the suggested exclusion of intersex and gender non conforming individuals in mainstream sports participation. This unwarranted uproar around Semenya’s gender can only mean further isolation and discrimination of intersex and gender variant people and perhaps the introduction of patronizing ‘special’ sports events for people like us just like there is a sports category for the ‘physically disabled’. Even so, subjecting Semenya to humiliating, invasive non-consensual ‘gender verification’ tests just to satisfy IAAF’s stereotypical binary gender dichotomy, is committing both gender sadism and a major human rights violation against Semenya and against all intersex and gender variant individuals in Africa.
As an intersex rights advocacy voice in Uganda, SIPD condemns both IAAF and The Guardian’s decision to turn Semenya’s physical appearance into an unnecessary gender identity controversy; and the conjecture that she perhaps is intersex and if so, then she needs surgery to be a ‘real’ woman.
Many athletes of every gender are muscular owing to the amount of physical exercise and nutritional specifications their bodies are subjected to. Several of these graced the line up at the world games and to single Semenya out of all of them shortly after a gold medal win appears pre-meditated and is outright discriminatory. What seems to be Semenya’s crime? Is it that Semenya’s body is more masculine than is socially desirable for a woman? Is it that her athletic ability matches that of men? Or is it that she is suspected to be intersex? The charge against Semenya is simply that she is a human being whose gender presentation is traditionally non conforming. Does she have a problem with it? Certainly not! But IAAF does and with this gesture, IAAF is encouraging gender violence and discriminatory treatment towards African gender variant people.
We condemn this gesture by both IAAF and “The Guardian” as racist, and offensive to African gender non conforming people and particularly intersex people. Having been born intersex in Africa, I know first hand how those desperate to justify social injustices against people like myself and Semenya who are different will either equate or compare us to every falsehood imaginable. How for example could a conversation between Semenya’s grandmother and a reporter negate Semenya’s identity as a woman? Scarier than this falsehood is the verdict Semenya awaits after the tests by the “experts”. Who can determine if she is a woman or a man except Semenya herself? And what if she is neither man nor woman? Because that too does exist! Which ‘expert’ will determine for me which side to stand on if God has crafted me uniquely in between or all-embracing? The plain question is why is diversity too painful to embrace? After all, diversity is a divine key characteristic of the universe.
Whilst male athletes undergo simple blood tests to detect the use of drugs, a young African woman has to be forced to undergo extremely invasive and traumatic tests to ‘detect’ her gender! This is not simply outrageous, it is a violation, it is wrong, and it is a direct attack on Semenya’s person and on all of us born with bodies that are not typical and we strongly contest it.
SOPHIA GROOTBOOM AND KARABO KEEPILE - Sep 20 2009 06:00
By Mary Beth Sammons 
Nicky Phillips never thought of herself as anything but a girl.
As a child, growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, she wore little-girl dresses, shiny shoes, and bobby socks. When she got a bit older, she started to wear lipstick and pearls and fuss about her hair.
Puberty brought with it the same uncertainty and awkwardness it brings most young women. But in Phillips’s case, her body wasn’t changing in the same ways it was for other girls.
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