Punished for being

So I'm thinking of this short story today, a nifty bit of satirical scribbling from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut. The name of the story is "Harrison Bergeron." It's about a 14-year-old boy who's taller, stronger, smarter and better looking than the average bear.

This is a problem.

It's a problem because, in Vonnegut's tale, the year is 2081. Amendments to the Constitution have decreed that every American is finally and completely equal. Which means that by law, no one can be smarter, better-looking, stronger or faster than anyone else. There's even a Handicapper General, name of Diana Moon Glampers, whose job it is to make sure the Harrison Bergerons of the world are appropriately punished for being smarter, better-looking, stronger and faster.

This means Harrison Bergeron must, by law, carry around 300 pounds of metal. He also has to wear huge headphones and big glasses meant to blind him and give him headaches. Oh, and he also has to wear a red rubber nose and black caps on his perfect teeth.

I'm thinking of this today because it turns out Harrison Bergeron is real. Only she's a woman, and her name is Caster Semenya.

Semenya is a two-time Olympic track champion from South Africa, and the other day she lost an appeal against the IAAF, track's governing body. This means, like Harrison Bergeron, she has to handicap herself if she wants to compete in international track-and-field.

Semenya, it seems, naturally produces higher levels of testosterone than the average woman. (She is not, however, transgender. This is a Fox News invention designed to incite backlash against transgender people among Trump groupies seeking validation for their disdain of transgenders.)

Anyway ... the IAAF has decided it's unfair to her competitors that she was born this way. So it's decreed that Semenya must take medication to lower her testosterone levels if she wants to compete.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Isn't that discriminatory on its face?"

Why, yes it is. The IAAF even admits as much. Its rationale for this is that's it's necessary, because ... well, because Semenya is just darn too good. Or at least that's what it boils down to.

The hypocrisy in this, of course, is that Semenya is being targeted for genetic advantages that have propelled athletes to greatness since time immemorial. As Monica Hesse of the Washington Post points out here, no one forced Michael Phelps to have corrective surgery on his double-jointed ankles or made him take meds to boost his absurdly low lactic acid levels. We just celebrated all the gold medals he won because he was a genetic freak -- or at least in part because of that.

But then, Phelps is male. Semenya is female. Thereby, presumably, hangs a tale.

And Harrison Bergeron?

In Vonnegut's story, he breaks out of prison, sheds his handicaps, and is gunned down as a subversive by Diana Moon Glampers herself.

That's not going to happen to Semenya, of course.

Although Diana Moon Glampers sure sounds like the IAAF's kinda gal.