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Caster Semenya has fired back at her critics after new regulations were released that compel women athletes with high levels of naturally occurring testosterone to take medication to reduce them.
The champion athlete took to Twitter and posted a series of defiant quotes after the latest move by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to introduce new eligibility regulations for females with “differences of sexual development”.
Yesterday Semenya tweeted: “God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I am proud of myself.”
The day before, she wrote: “Opinions aren’t facts. Stop worrying about what people think about you.”
Meanwhile‚ Professor Steve Cornelius has resigned as a member of the IAAF disciplinary tribunal in protest against the new rule. According to Team South Africa‚ Cornelius wrote to the IAAF president, citing his reasons.
“On deep moral grounds‚ I cannot see myself part of a system in which I may be called upon to apply regulations which I deem to be fundamentally flawed and most likely unlawful in various jurisdictions around the globe.
“It would also be unethical for me to devote time and energy to expose the warped ideology behind the new regulations while serving on the disciplinary tribunal,” Cornelius wrote.
“Sadly I cannot‚ with good conscience‚ continue to associate myself with an organisation which insists on ostracising specific individuals‚ all of them female‚ for no reason other than being what they are born to be.
“The adoption of the new eligibility regulations for female classification is based on the same kind of ideology that has led to some of the worse injustices and atrocities in the history of our planet.” – TimesLIVE