{"id":234,"date":"2009-10-12T21:54:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-13T04:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/?p=234"},"modified":"2010-01-10T16:39:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-10T23:39:26","slug":"intersexual-female-athletes-critical-reflections-on-sex-gender-and-sexuality-injustice-in-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/2009\/10\/12\/intersexual-female-athletes-critical-reflections-on-sex-gender-and-sexuality-injustice-in-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Intersexual Female Athletes: Critical Reflections on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Injustice in Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"line-height: 7px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-254\" title=\"Caster Semenya\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/files\/2009\/10\/caster-semenya-gold-medal__13164566__MBQF-1250848872templateIdrenderScaledpropertyBildheight3492-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Caster Semenya\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>While Castor Semenya\u2019s recent \u201cnews\u201d seems to have shocked the world, the concern about \u201cgender verification\u201d in sport has taken place for quite some time. The tests have changed over time\u2026but the point has not (e.g. when women are \u201ctoo good,\u201d they must not be women).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 7px\"><span style=\"line-height: 7px\">Some examples of other intersex track athletes include:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 7px\"><span style=\"line-height: 7px\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 7px\"><strong>Stella Walsh,<\/strong> a 2 time Olympic medalist in the 1930s, running for Poland. She won a gold medal in \u201936 in the 100 meter dash during the Berlin Olympics. It was only when she died that an autopsy revealed that she had male genitalia, XX chromosomes, and XY chromosomes as well.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 12px\"><strong>Eva Klobukowsk<\/strong><strong>a<\/strong>, a Polish sprinter who won a gold medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics failed a sex chromosome test in 1965. She was banned from competition. (She gave birth a few years later).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 12px\"><strong>Maria Patino<\/strong> from Spain was a sprinter and failed a \u201cgender\u201d test in 1985\u2014she was banned from sports competition but was reinstated later when it became clear that she was resistant to testosterone. Since she was deemed resistant to testosterone, the fear that she had an \u201cunfair advantage\u201d or was \u201ca man unfairly masquerading as a woman\u201d was squelched.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 12px\"><strong>Santhi Soundarajan<\/strong>, an Indian runner who failed a gender test in Doha in 2006 and was stripped of a previous medal.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-249\" title=\"maria patino\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/files\/2009\/10\/maria-patino1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"maria patino\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-250\" title=\"Santhi Soundarajan\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/files\/2009\/10\/santhi1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Santhi Soundarajan\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-251\" title=\"Stella Walsh\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/files\/2009\/10\/stella-walsh1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Stella Walsh\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-257\" title=\"Eva Klobukowska\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/files\/2009\/10\/EwaKlobukowska3-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Eva Klobukowska\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The list goes on and on. And then, most recently, there was South African Caster Semanya.<\/p>\n<p>Semenya was subject to a \u201cgender verification test\u201d (it is a sex test not a gender test). She was born female, raised as a woman, identifies as a woman, and has no ovaries or uterus. She also has undescended testes. It was also found that while she produces \u201c10 times less\u201d testosterone than \u201cmost men,\u201d she has exceeded the average of women by \u201c3 times.\u201d (Why are we comparing elite athletic women to &#8220;average women&#8221; who may not train as rigorously or build muscle mass as much)? Unlike many other countries which stand by and allow international governing bodies to carry out these tests and toss their athletes out of sports competitions forever more, the South African parliament filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The International Association of Athletics Federation wants her to be disqualified from future events and has suggested to her that she should have \u201cimmediate surgery\u201d because of the \u201cgrave health risks\u201d of her \u201ccondition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is a complicated issue, but I will be brief here and spread my thoughts over a number of posts.<\/p>\n<p>Let me at least say this: The International Olympic Committee mandated \u201cgender verification\u201d of women since the mid 1960s but in 1990, the International Amateur Athletics Federation called for the abandonment of gender verification. A working group was developed, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.womenssportsfoundation.org\/\">Women\u2019s Sports Foundation website<\/a> reports that the working group concluded that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>women with birth defects of the sex chromosomes did not possess an unfair advantage and should be permitted to compete as females;\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 12px\">the only purpose of gender verification was to prevent men from masquerading as females; <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">people who have been both legally and psychosocially female since childhood (including pre-pubertal sex re-assignments) should be eligible for women&#8217;s competition regardless of their chromosomal pattern; <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">post-pubertal sex re-assignments should be handled on a case by case basis; and\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 12px\">women athletes should undergo pre-participation health examinations.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">Unfortunately, at IOC events, the IOC continues to sex test despite the discrimination it entails and the harm it causes to athletes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">What I would like to see is parallel gender verification treatment of male athletes:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">Let\u2019s determine the normal range of testosterone for men and if there are male athletes who naturally produce more than other male athletes\u2014ban them from competition for being \u201ctoo much of a man\u201d? (Unnatural advantage).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The other men just don\u2019t have a chance against them, do they?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">All of the above trends are of course, contextualized in sport as a social institution, which, since its inception was formed by and for men, in order to make boys into men (for a history of these claims, see the following books: Michael Messner, <em>Power at Play<\/em>, Susan Cahn, <em>Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century Women\u2019s Sport<\/em>, or Varda Burstyn\u2019s, <em>The Rites of Men<\/em>. Another important piece of context: recognition that sport is constructed to explicitly segregate the sexes into two dichotomous beings who don\u2019t compete with one another and to support ideologies of \u201cthe two sex system\u201d (Ann Fausto-Sterling\u2019s term, in her book <em>Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality<\/em>. She is a biologist, by the way). This is the case even though sport as an institution could be set up to reward the best sports performances (no matter where sex or sexes land).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">For excellent work on the two sex system in sport (and for the inspiration for the title of this post), check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca\/ojs\/leddy\/index.php\/SSJ\/article\/view\/670\/580\">Ann Travers\u2019 piece in <\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca\/ojs\/leddy\/index.php\/SSJ\/article\/view\/670\/580\">Studies in Social Justice<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca\/ojs\/leddy\/index.php\/SSJ\/article\/view\/670\/580\"> (2008, Volume 2, #1) \u201cThe sport nexus and gender injustice.\u201d<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">\u2026and don\u2019t miss Mary Jo Kane\u2019s 1995 &#8220;seminal&#8221; work in the <em>Journal of Sport and Social Issues<\/em> titled \u201cResistance\/Transformation of the Oppositional Binary: Exposing Sport as a Continuum.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 12px\">Finally, if this topic is one that you just plain enjoy, I have a few of my own books on this topic, such as, Leslie Heywood &amp; Shari Dworkin\u2019s (2003): <em>Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon<\/em> (University of Minnesota Press), and Shari Dworkin and Faye Wachs (2009). <em>Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness<\/em> (NYU Press).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Castor Semenya\u2019s recent \u201cnews\u201d seems to have shocked the world, the concern about \u201cgender verification\u201d in sport has taken place for quite some time. The tests have changed over time\u2026but the point has not (e.g. when women are \u201ctoo good,\u201d they must not be women). Some examples of other intersex track athletes include: Stella [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261,1976,50,190],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intersex","category-masculinity","category-sport","category-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}