#dutee chand

[desbianherstory]

Category: Woman (2022, dir. Phyllis Ellis). Stream here.

When 18-year-old South African runner Caster Semenya burst onto the world stage in 2009, her championship was not celebrated, but marred by doubt, her personal medical records leaked to the international media. The public scrutiny of her body, driven by racism and sexism, questioning the most fundamental right of who she is, a great champion. The International Amateur Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) then ruled that targeted female athletes must medically alter their healthy bodies in order to compete. Their naturally high androgen levels, 'deemed' a performance advantage. Category: Woman focuses on four remarkable athletes, from the Global South, forced out of competition by these regulations, the devastation to their bodies, and their lives. Equally arresting is their passion for sport is further emboldened by their conviction to stand up for their human rights. Following her award-winning film Toxic Beauty, filmmaker and Olympian Phyllis Ellis exposes an industry controlled by men putting women’s lives at risk while the policing of women’s bodies in sport remains, in a more nefarious way, under the guise of fair play.

Breaking from this blog's hiatus to post this in light of the racist bullying of Imane Khelif. I'd recommend everyone watch it (it's only 76 min) for an understanding of the issues at play - how the false, easily digestible narrative of "fairness" in fact means unfairness and racist mistreatment for these extraordinary women. Even the introduction is powerful:

"Some bodies are marked. The gender that goes unmarked as male. Women are maked in all the ways that they are different. The unmarked race is white. Some bodies that are black and brown and female have a particular kind of marking. These bodies are marked as insufficiently human. How do you castigate a category of people as insufficiently human? By throwing their gender into doubt."

Dutee Chand, India's first openly lesbian athlete is interviewed in this documentary about the racist mistreatment and scrutiny she received for these issues.

Please watch and spread!

[thedimlaltain]

Dutee Chand has been so brave. Her courage gives me and other Indians hope. Onwards and upwards.

[itgetsbetter]

Sprinter Dutee Chand Becomes India's First Openly Gay Athlete

Chand, who won two silver medals at the 2018 Asian Games, told the Indian Express on Sunday that she is in a same-sex relationship.

"I believe everyone should have the freedom to be with whoever they decide they want to be with.“ 🌈👟

[sallymolay]

Sprinter Dutee Chand, India's LGBT trailblazer

Dutee Chand is India’s fastest sprinter and the nation’s first athlete to reveal she is in a same-sex relationship.

The Guardian writes:

Chand comes from a village in India where homosexuality is never talked about. Unlike urban India where there is growing acceptance among the young of notions of personal freedom, rural India remains largely entrenched in tradition, and tradition says marriage is between a man and a woman.

“It is going to take time for people in my village to get used to the idea,” Chand says. [..]

Having previously supported her running and taken pride in her becoming the first Indian woman to qualify for the 100-metre sprint at the Olympics, some villagers have since decried Chand for “humiliating” them. But she doesn’t see them as bigoted. Nor is it the case that she is no longer welcome in the village or feels threatened there. The displeasure is not aggressive. “They don’t know anything different from what tradition tells them so I am not angry with them,” she says.

Nonetheless, she adds: “That doesn’t mean to say I am not going to follow my heart. I can’t spend my life worrying about others. No one can live without love.”

Read the whole story!

Photos from Chand’s Instagram.

[yourdailyqueer]

Dutee Chand

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 3 February 1996  

Ethnicity: Indian

Occupation: Olympic sprinter

Note 1: India's first ever openly gay athlete. 

Note 2: At Rio 2016 Olympics, she became the third Indian woman to participate for the Women's 100 metres

Note 3: Has Hyperandrogenism

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

It’s been May Gay in India

[not-your-asian-fantasy]

Sprinter Dutee Chand becomes India's first openly gay athlete

Runner reveals she is in relationship with woman from her village in Odisha state

Indian sprinter Dutee Chand has revealed she is in a same-sex relationship, becoming the country’s first openly gay athlete.

Chand, 23, told the Indian Express she was in a relationship with a woman from her village in eastern Odisha state, saying she found the courage to come out after India’s top court scrapped a colonial-era ban on gay sex last year.

[femestella]

Olympic runner Caster Semenya is being attacked.

The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) recently passed a rule stating that female runners whose bodies naturally produce high levels of testosterone would have to take medication to suppress those levels.

The decision is a direct dig at Semenya, who spent nearly a year fighting the decision. But now the ruling has officially been upheld by the Court Arbitration for Sport and the fight is over.

Continue reading here