Actually, gender testing is still done for the Olympics, it is just no longer mandatory. When it started in the sixties, it was a physical exam, later adding hormonal testing, and then genetic testing. When they made genetic testing mandatory, they caught a lot of false positives. One of the more common causes was androgen insensitivity which can cause a child to be externally female, but have XY chromosomes. I read something I can’t find right now leading up to the Olympics about how this condition is rare the general population, but significantly less rare in top female athletes.
If they are “in between” female and male, then they are by definition not female. I’m certainly willing to allow some leeway on the definition of female if the genetic difference doesn’t mean a significant athletic advantage. Judging by the pictures of this runner, there is definitely something going on. She has the hips, shoulders, face, and muscular build of a man. She is either genetically male or chugging steroids.
Maybe, but since sex is a social construct, if the person FEELS like a female, isn’t that good enough?
No. I might feel like a pro wrestler today, but that doesn’t mean I suddenly gained a foot in height and a hundred pounds of muscle.
I FEEL like you’re wrong, isn’t that good enough?
Sex is biological. Gender is a social construct.
I took it as mere hyperbole (hey, an oxymoron). The point made that is quite valid. should some guy who may be able to pass as a female decide he wants a medal and game the system without him being questioned?
Going through gender reassignment surgery and taking feminising hormones is quite a major step to take just to win a few races…
No, because a feeling, even if its a FEELING, doesn’t change inherent biological advantages.
I think the idea is to hire blind people to FEEL the athletes up and let them determine their sex ;).
It would be interesting if that were true, because to the extent that testosterone provides an advantage in sports then women with AIS would actually be at a disadvantage compared to other women. A blood test would show a woman with AIS to have much higher testosterone levels than other women, but for practical purposes a woman with AIS is the same as a woman with no testosterone because her body is insensitive to the hormone. The average woman on the other hand naturally has some testosterone (although much less than the average man) since it is produced by the ovaries.
There is a third option, and it seems to me that it is SFG’s key point: your binary divisions of male/female and stronger/weaker need to be deconstructed and dehegemonized – why did it not occur to you that Caster Semenya is a woman through-and-through and also as strong and as swift as a man.
I read a lot of facile “men are better athletes, it’s not fair to make women compete with them” talk above. But, it is obvious to me, although I’m not sure it’s obvious to that premise’s proponents, that the claim already presupposes this essentialized notion of women as weaker. That is, Caster Semenya’s male-equalling athletic performance is itself taken as evidence of her non-womanhood.
Considering bri1600bv’s posting history around here, methinks he’s being sarcastic.
One or two rare performers do not disprove a universal generality. By any reasonable standards, Caster Semenya is an extremely unusual physical specimen of a female.
Her performance wasn’t male equalling. She’s 10 seconds behind the top male runners. And lets be honest here. No one is questioning her womanhood because she ran fast. They are questioning it because she looks like a man and has a deep voice.
And the last thing we want is someone’s inherent biological advantage affecting the outcome of a sporting event.
Not when we have designed our competition to exclude a specific genetic advantage.
If she hadn’t run fast, no one would be calling for tests.
What advantage?
I know that sounds coy as hell, and I apologize, but I think it’s a valid question. Male and female aren’t distinct states for many people.
Say she had XX chromosomes, and female anatomy, but a inherited a genetic quirk that gives her male levels of testosterone. Should that disqualify her?
What if instead she was an androgen XY female? How about an XXY? What if she was intersexed?
The question amounts to what is the line in the sand here?
Well that wouldn’t really give her an advantage because the testosterone doesn’t affect XY women.