Is this sex test graded on the curve?
By smartyboots • Aug 5th, 2008 • Category: In the News, Trans Sexuality, scienceOh boy! It’s time for the Olympics again - I think of it as a time of gratitude. Usually I take this time to reflect on how grateful I am that San Francisco didn’t get chosen as the site for the Olympics, because I like to keep my daily commute to under three hours each way. This year I’m also grateful that I’m not in Beijing for the actual Olympics, where the pollution is apparently so bad that my asthmatic self probably shouldn’t even watch them on tv.
You may reply to this, “Um, sex blog? Hello?” That’s a fair response.
Another thing I’m thinking about the Olympics is sex testing for female athletes*. Yesirree, if you’re competing in women’s sports in the Olympics, and you seem masculine, based on completely non-objective measures, you may be “evaluated (on your) external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination”. Sex testing was the norm until 1999, when the IOC officially stopped it, probably because in the 31 years it was required, gender testing has never found a man masquerading as a woman. For some reason it was deemed appropriate to bring it back for the Olympics this year, though.
There’s a great post over at Bioethics Forum (my current favorite science blog) where some pertinent questions are posed, along with some great explanations of biology, genes and gender.
If women aren’t allowed to be naturally too strong, how about sex-testing male athletes for being too graceful in sports where grace counts? I’m thinking diving. And figure-skating. If a diver or figure-skater who is a man seems a little too graceful, why not sex-test him to see if he’s really a female?
Sex testing has been destructive in the past - Santhi Soundarajan was stripped of a silver medal in 800 meters at the 2006 Asian Games because she was found to be chromosomally male, probably due to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (which wouldn’t actually provide a performance advantage), subsequently attempted suicide. It has never been successful in it’s intended purpose. Singling out “masculine” women for testing is worse than testing by itself, and if anything un-levels the playing field instead of making things more fair, because the specter of sex testing could be used as a threat - “You beat me in this race and I’ll say it’s because you’re really a man.” It’s easy to imagine an athlete going through the rest of their careers with an asterisk after their record because she was suspected of not being a woman. The only good news is that the resurrection of sex testing seems to be universally considered to be stupid, and news articles about it are an opportunity for education about sex and gender, which you don’t usually see in the New York Times.
* see how I brought it back around?
smartyboots is a blogger here at Good Vibrations.
Smartyboots likes technology, comic books and country music. She is a member of The Whoreshoes, San Francisco's premiere all-female country band.
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great post! speaking of the new york times, check out this editorial on the topic from last sunday’s paper, by jennifer finney boylan: LINK