Caster Semenya, the women’s 800-meters gold medalist at the Rio Olympics, got married Saturday to her longtime girlfriend Violet Raseboya in Pretoria, South Africa. It was Semenya’s 26th birthday.
The Sun tabloid wrote that “the 800m Olympic gold medalist wore a Prince Charming-style outfit to wed Violet Raseboya, who looked stunning in a traditional full-length white dress.”
Same-sex marriage has been legal in South Africa since 2006. In 2015, the couple celebrated their union in a traditional South African ceremony. Semenya has never publicly stated her sexual orientation.
Semenya has been at the center of a controversy over her sex, with some labeling her “intersex” over the amount of testosterone in her body. This is an unsubstantiated characterization, as we wrote during the Olympics:
At Outsports, we originally had Semenya and Indian runner Dutee Chand on our list of out LGBTI athletes. We later realized that neither woman has said she is intersex, so we removed them from that category. An expert in biomedical ethics, Katrina Karkazis of Stanford, told us via email:
"Neither of them has publicly confirmed anything about their biology or that they are intersex. For that reason I have not labeled them as such in my writings. I usually use the word hyperandrogenism or say women with naturally high T levels or something like that. Intersex women have hyperandrogenism but not all women with hyperandrogenism have an intersex trait."
We wish the couple a lifetime of joy and they seem truly happy together as Semenya’s Instagram feed can attest to.
