Categories- do they really matter that much?

A friend wrote a post recently on the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya, particularly the question of how you decide whether she (and similar cases) can compete in women's sport or men's sport.  It's an interesting question.  Since, biologically, she and many others don't easily fit into either category, how do you decide how to treat them?


Whilest I don't want to go into the ensuing debate over definitions of gender, it made me wonder about something slightly different.  Do we sometimes put too much emphasis on placing people in categories?  Do we seek to define 'what' people are rather than who they are?  These categories might include not just sex or gender, but age, job, nationality, colour- even faith.

Much of the argument in the Semenya case revolves around sport: men and women, because of physical differences, compete in different categories of sport.  This often leads to discrimination, where women's sport gets less media coverage and less funding than men's, even though the atheletes train just as hard.  So rather than defining categories by ability we define them purely by gender.  Sometimes that may be the same thing.  In some sports I'm sure it's not, or that disadvantages in some respects are compensated for by advantages in other respects.


I'll point out here that I know very little about sport and mostly care rather less, so perhaps it's silly for me to base an argument on it. One area that I do know more about is singing.  This is another area where men and women are segregated for physical reasons both between and within genders (different sizes of vocal chords determine the pitch of your voice).  I have complained long and loud that the best songs and the best characters are written for men, while the women are often merely stereotypes and their songs mostly variants on "I love him, he loves me" or "I love him, but he doesn't love me."  But this is an area where the groupings are more fluid, and often arbitrary.  Children, especially choirboys, sing in the same range as adult women.  Some men have higher voices than some women and can sing alto parts- I know men who would like to think they can sing as high as the sopranos!- while some women can reach tenor parts.  Sometimes you'll find a role written for a man being sung by a woman.  A lot of the above goes for acting too.  I've heard of actresses playing Hamlet in serious productions.

Perhaps what's wrong here isn't that we have somebody who doesn't easily fit into the categories we use to define people, but that we put too much emphasis on those categories in any case.  I don't mean to argue that all people are the same and should be treated the same in every respect; I mean that everyone should be treated as an individual, not a category.  I am, biologically, genetically (as far as I know!), culturally and psychologically, a woman.  And I'm comfortable with that.  I don't expect to be able to be treated as if I could do certain things that only men can do, what I do expect is not to be treated as inferior because I can't do them. I don't expect my opinion or attempts to be dismissed because I am 'just a woman.'  I am a person, and my needs and abilities should be judged on their own account, not according to the label attached to the category they are in.


P.S. Before you- I'm sure you know who you are- start attacking my 'liberalism' or 'postmodernity' bear in mind that in my accepting what other people think about themselves I don't necessarily mean that I personally agree or think it's right, but that I can accept them in an attitude of love, not patronisingly, but while disagreeing accepting that I can't force them to conform to my beliefs, as I wouldn't expect them to force me to conform to theirs.