The first thing that we are going to need to know, is, what exactly is Intersexuality?
Then we are ready for the history behind sex testing. Transgriot starts off with Gender Drama at the 1936 Olympics
Robert Ritchie, John Reynard and Tom Lewis continue with Intersex and the Olympic Games
In the following 30 years, the sporting media speculated that several other female athletes had DSDs because they possessed physical attributes which would generally be associated with the male sex. Still without formal gender verification, these rumours remained as such, fuelled by the media who were fully aware that there would be never be any scientific evidence to disprove them. Thus, journalists reported that genetically male Eastern Bloc athletes were binding their genitals and competing as females. Gender controversy also surrounded Irina and Tamara Press, two Russian sisters (Figure 2) who were dominant in a variety of female track and field events during the 1950s and 1960s. They won 26 world records and six Olympic gold medals.
As media hype [eyeroll] reached fever pitch, compulsory gender verification in the form of a gynaecological examination was introduced prior to the 1966 European athletics championship. In these so-called ‘nude parades’, athletes were forced to stand naked in front of a committee and were subjected to an inspection of their external gentalia. 243 women attended for examination and no abnormalities were reported. Neither of the Press sisters attended and they were never to appear in athletic competition again. Their absence was widely interpreted as evidence they both possessed abnormal external genitalia. It is still not known whether the Press sisters deliberately misrepresented their gender or, as seems more likely, they both had a DSD.….
Notably, gender testing in athletics has never identified an individual deliberately misrepresenting their gender.11,12 Testing has, however, created controversy and embarrassment for a significant number of female athletes competing, often unknowingly, with some form of intersex disorder. Indeed, there is no evidence that female athletes with DSDs have displayed any sports-relevant physical attributes which have not been seen in biologically normal female athletes.6,12 MORE
Need a couple of examples of athletes who have been fucked over by this ridiculous system? I am so glad you asked! Thats a man:Ewa Klobukowska, Erika Schinegger, Maria Jose Martinez Patino, Santhi Soundarajan More on Santhi Soundarajan.
But there is more to it than that, although, frustratingly, I missed my chance to present it to you. There is an essay that was online up to last week. It is one of the best essays on the history of this topic that I have read, The Olympics: The Early Days of Gender Testing, by Patrica Nell. Unfortunately, she has taken it down. It is in her anthology, though, and I for one think that that essay alone is worth the book price.
Let me give you a hint. Pay attention to the bit on the Cold War
Sociological Images out with a great post The question of Caster Semenya’s sex
If you were to try to decide what qualifies a person as male or female, what quality would you choose?
I can think of eight candidates:1. Identity (whatever the person says they are, they are)
2. Sexual orientation (boys dig girls, vice versa)
3. Secondary sex characteristics (e.g., boobs/no boobs, pubic hair patterns, distribution of fat on the body)
4. External genitalia (e.g., clitoris, labia, vaginal opening/penis and scrotum)
5. Internal genitalia (e.g., vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes/epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate, etc)
6. Hormones (preponderance of estrogens/androgens)
7. Gonads (ovaries/testes)
8. Chromosomes (XX/XY, the SRY gene)Most of us assume that these criteria all line up. That is, that people with XY chromosomes have testes that make androgens which creates a penis, epididymis, vas deferens etc… all the way up to a male-identified person who wants to have sex with women. We also assume that these things are binary (e.g., boobs/no boobs), when in reality most of them are on a spectrum (e.g., hormones, also boobs, likely sexual orientation).
But these criteria don’t always line up and sex-linked charactertics aren’t binary. Examples of “syndromes” that disrupt these trajectories abound (e.g., Klinefelter’s syndrome). And all kinds of practices, including surgeries, are sometimes used to force a binary when there isn’t one (e.g., intersex surgery to fix the “micropenis” and “obtrustive” clitoris and breast reduction surgery for men).
If these criteria don’t always line up, then we have to pick one as THE determinant of sex. But any choice would ultimately be arbitrary. MORE
Indeed. As links, Where’s the Rulebook for Sex Verification?
HHMI BioInteractive website takes you inside a gender test, with lots of information along the way. (Click particularly on the brief history of gender testing link.)It felt pretty creepy and invasive to me, though, so be warned. The Gender Test
The Third Lane: Intersex and the Modern Athlete contains more info about the different variations in our bodies that challenge the binary that society has, until now, clung stubbornly to.
Because of society’s assholishness in dealing with this issue, it is very hard to find a good list of intersexed athletes currently competing, or having competed until recently. That said, here are a couple:
Edinancni Silva, Brazilian judo, Sarah Gronert, Tennis (That headline writer needs to be hit with several clue by fours, by the way. It was the best article I could find, however. sigh. ) Rob Newbiggen, boxer Just decided to transition to female, hopes to get a female boxing license. You all have anymore to add?
Finally, have you noticed something with these athletes so far? One of their biggest problems come when they beat their opponents…and the opponents promptly accuse them of being men. (by the way, seriously, do read the articles. because they will state that there is NO scientific evidence that any intersex athlete has any advantage over their other competitors.) For a case of tragic schadenfreude, see Nigerian gender chickens coming home to roost: The case of Intersex football (what you all call soccer) striker Bessy Ekaete Boniface
Thats it for today, folks! Next week: Transgender female athletes.
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American Women Athletes Part Two: How intersex athletes are punished by the gender testing system
The Frailty Myth (a book about the idea that women are/should be weaker than men, and its very bad effects) holds that, if height (and weight?) is the same, trained people of whatever sex are equally capable. Maybe there should be height/weight classes for all sports, and no gender divisions.
In other news, it turns out that “throwing like a girl” is exactly equivalent to throwing like someone who is inexperienced at throwing.
The obvious fix is to make all athletic competition single-gendered; golfers are golfers, runners are runners, weightlifters are weightlifters.
The downside of this is that there wouldn’t be much room for successful female athletes (or so goes the standard assumption). There are some very good female golfers; few of them would show up in the high-end standings of a unigender golf world. There are some great female runners; their times are generally significantly slower than male runners at the same level of skill and training. (For example, the South African athlete currently in the news has a time of 1 minute, 56 seconds for the 800 meter – she’s the fastest woman in the world at the moment. The female world record is 1:53. The male record is 1:41; even the men’s records from 100 years ago are faster than the best women’s times today.)
And so on. There’s probably a big feminist argument to be had here, about whether in a world of equality etc. we would see these phenomena as temporary, and of course 50% of NFL linebackers will be women in gender utopia. I’d take the other side of that argument, but regardless of where we come out, I think everyone can agree that right now, today, collapsing everything into one gender would mean there would be little or no female presence in many high-end sports, other than the sports where there are relatively few men. Track and field, in particular, would be a boy’s club.
So how do we maintain a sporting environment where women have a place and a presence, without forcing people to knuckle under to a gender binary? I suppose we could simply go on the honor system – if you say you’re a woman, you’re a woman. But given the real performance differences, and the real history of men impersonating women to improve their relative performance, doesn’t that also screw over the honest female athletes trying to practice their craft?
I don’t see any easy answers.
In the Netherlands we had Foekje Dillema
I’m stunned, stunned I tells you, by the number of vowels and English-unfriendly syllables in those names. Dark-skinned women are all a bunch of men, aren’t they?
Yes, I understand the Cold War and nationalism and no, I don’t think that explains all of it. I think an Elizabeth Smith from Canada or Britain would equally be protected in a way an Amaka Kagawe wouldn’t – even if the latter also was representing Canada or Britain.
I don’t want to agree more than 10% with Robert, just because I have a reputation to maintain, but if there’s going to be a “Women’s” category, how does anyone police that?
Do we decide that policing “Women’s Sports” is pointless, and allow anyone who says they are a woman, even if they are Arnold Schwarzenegger in a dress and it’s absolutely and completely obvious? Or do we find some way that’s less offensive, like checking birth certificates and leaving everyone with their clothes on?
What the gender testers ignore is that everyone at that level of competition has some advantage over the rest of the unwashed masses. More than one of my female cousins are taller than the average man, and all the ones I’m thinking of have been pregnant at least once, so I’m pretty sure they aren’t secretly men (besides, I’m older than the tall cousin side of the family, so I’m sure they didn’t secretly run off and change sex at age 1 or 2 …). But should they be bared because they have “taller than men” genes and women’s sports is just for people with “shorter than men” genes?
I agree with Robert and Julie Herds Cats on this. (Let the ‘head exploding’ commence!)
I think the divisions should be divided by some such “handicapping” criteria that makes sense per each sport, instead of gender. In basketball, there would be an over 6′ division and an under 6′ division for example. Wrestling could be about weight class as it is now but be all inclusive. Perhaps golf could be handicapped as it is now but without gender classifications.
I know that this would take some sifting through, but the para-olympics have done it to a great extent. There are point systems for functioning for quad rugby teams. Each team needs so many players at each level of functioning. Amputee skiers compete against other amputee skiers, where as wheelchair/uniski skiers compete against each other. There has long been a push to get these highly trained para-olympic athletes integrated into the standard olympics while keeping some fair system of division classification. It doesn’t seem like this couldn’t also be done in some way to move beyond gender. You could get some great basketball players that would never have a chance in the current system (such as 5’5 men and/or women) a chance to show their stuff, and the integration would make for interesting play.
Lexie, chopping up athletic competitions into so many slices means that athletic federations, already hard pressed, are unlikley to be able to adequately fund the administration of such a system. And people have this tendency to want to watch the strongest, fastest and overall best athletes. The non-open divisions are likely to only attract friends and spouses to watch. They’ll have to be supported by the revenues the open divisions attract. There’s an analogy to this in college sports; in most colleges, the only sports that make money are the men’s football and basketball teams, and income from them has to provide support (outside of direct subsidies from the college itself) for all the rest of the teams.
Let’s remember here that the opportunity to participate in athletic competitions is not a right. The leagues and federations have every right to determine the qualifications for their participants and to set rules and regulations to govern them. If that excludes some people that doesn’t mean that those people’s rights have been violated.
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I have been active and a big supporter of womens athletics all my life. Unfortunately, when the competition gets to these high levels, women and men will both do what they have to to get the edge. It must be difficult competing at a high level, living clean and training hard when your competitors are not and seem to get a way with it. Let alone the expectaction level the puplic, family and friends can have. There is no easy answer
thanks for the hint to the aol article re: sarah gronert, didn’t know that one yet (though the pundits quoted are partly almost as stupid as the title, “disorder”, “condition”, go away!) and included it in my stab at the topic.
ps:
justice for santhi soundarajan!
ioc, oca, give santhi her medal back! NOW!!