Long Time, No Blog

By Phyllis

And I am going to break this silence by sharing my view on Brett Favre and his coming out of retirement to sign with the Minnesota Vikings. So here's my view: who cares about this? Not me. I never liked the Packers, Favre, the Vikings, or people who repeatedly retire and unretire. Maybe I will be interested at the end of the year when we see the results of this signing: 20 TDs, 18 INTs, and mediocrity in the NFC North.

I'd rather spend more time on this story. Seriously, a gender test? As the story says, there are "concerns she does not meet the requirements to compete as a woman." What, pray, are those requirements? The story does not say exactly, but apparently it is an "extremely complex, difficult" process. Apparently I missed a few days in Biology class.

And, no, we are not dealing with a Jarmila Kratochvilova situation here. Remember her? I do. That awesome year my parents got me a Sports Illustrated subscription for Christmas (including the swimsuit issue I snuck out of the garbage) I read all about her. And saw the pictures. The first thing I thought as a naive youngster was, "Hey, that's a dude!" Turns out it wasn't--just a woman roiding it up to break world records.

But I don't think dude when I see Caster Semenya. At least not for a couple seconds. And even if I do, it isn't because of roids or HGH or something like that. I mean, what is going on here? Protandry? A Pseudohermaphrodite? A sequential or simultaneous hermaphrodite? None of the above?

In any case, I don't envy Caster or those performing the tests or those reporting the results, either to us or to Caster. If Caster has cheated (however it was done) that is one thing. But as International Association of Athletics Federations spokesman Nick Davies says, "If it's a natural thing and the athlete has always thought she's a woman or been a woman, it's not exactly cheating."

No kidding, but have fun breaking the news to her.