Running Like a Man, Sitting Like a Girl: Visual Enthymeme and the Case of Caster Semenya STEPHANIE L. YOUNG Department of Communications, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana, USA Much attention has been given to the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old South African athlete subjected to ‘‘sex testing’’ during the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but far less attention has been given to Semenya’s rhetorical response to the media’s scrutiny of her body. This essay explores how Semenya’s portrait on the cover of You, a prominent South African magazine, employs a visual rhetoric that functions as an enthymeme. I argue that while Semenya hailed audiences to view her as an authentic, feminine self, her visual enthymeme was constrained by medical conceptions of gender. By investigating the Semenya case, I analyze how female athletic bodies are displayed, disciplined, and reinscribed into sexist and racist discourses about gendered athleticism. Keywords enthymeme, gender and sports, intersex, Caster Semenya, sex testing, South Africa, visual rhetoric On August 20, 2009, at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, Germany, an 18-year-old South African named Caster Semenya won the gold medal in the women’s 800 meter, finishing two and a half seconds ahead of her competitors. Her performance at the World Championships became the opening scene of an international controversy involving IAAF, Athletics South Africa (ASA), and Semenya’s body. Following her victory, questions were raised about her sex (Slot, 2009; Clarey & Kolata, 2009), as Semenya’s muscular appearance and extraordinary performance prompted many to ask whether she was ‘‘really’’ a woman. Commentary focused on things that made her appear masculine, such as her muscular physique and deep voice (Daum, 2009; Sawer & Berger, 2009; Smith, 2009a). According to the New Yorker, Semenya was described as ‘‘breathtakingly butch’’ with a ‘‘torso like the chest plate on a suit of armor’’ (Levy, 2009, para. 11). British news source Daily Mail compared her ‘‘boyish running shorts and powerful, flat chest’’ to male Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt (Malone, Miller, & Maclean, 2009, para. 11). Several of her competitors argued that Semenya had an unfair advantage. ‘‘Just look at her,’’ Mariya Savinova (a Russian who finished in fifth place) told journalists after the race. Italian runner Elisa Piccione was even more direct, saying, ‘‘For me, she’s not a woman. She’s a man’’ (quoted in Clarey, 2009; Sawer & Berger, 2009). Statements like these by com- peting athletes encouraged speculation about Semenya’s sex identity and prompted Address correspondence to Stephanie L. Young, Department of Communications, University of Southern Indiana, 8600 University Blvd., Evansville, IN 47712, USA. E-mail: slyoung@usi.edu Women’s Studies in Communication, 38:331–350, 2015 Copyright # The Organization for Research on Women and Communication ISSN: 0749-1409 print=2152-999X online DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2015.1046623 331