This essay is on a proposed new, more precise and ethical way to systematically test athlete's hormone levels to check their eligibility for competitions. The feminist theory, in regard to how sports reproduce gendered ideas and practices related to sexuality (Group, 2020), is the theory I felt most aligned with the issues to be discussed.
It is a mostly accepted belief, that due to the natural, physical advantages males have, sports should be separated by male and female to create a fair playing field. Most sports authority organizations around the world segregate their athletes.
Prior to puberty, there is no difference between males and females in terms of athletic ability and performance. Once puberty starts, a male’s testes begin producing 20 times more circulating testosterone than their female counterparts which triggers major physical and physiological changes.(Handelsman et al., 2018) In regards to sports, the changes in a male’s height, bones density, muscle gain, muscle retention and lung capacity due to postpubertal hormone changes, are the main differences used to explain the separation of sexes.
Sex is a biological and objective label based solely off of the chromosomal makeup of an individual. Sex is mostly assigned at birth coinciding with the external genitalia; overall 99% of assignments are correct. The exceptions being those born with undetected discrepancies with their internal and external reproductive organs i.e., intersex individuals. Gender is a subjective label, based on not just biological determinants but cultural attitudes, personal experience, and self expression. The distinction between the two is crucial because nearly all sports institutions operate on the idea there are only two sexes and all athletes regardless of gender identity or expression must be assigned to a sex in order to compete.
Converse effects of reduced athletic performance in athletes who undergo suppression of circulating testosterone concentrations from those in the male and female range have been reported. Amongst recreational (non-professional) athletes, an observational study showed a consistent deterioration in athletic performance of transwomen (M2F transgender) athletes corresponding closely to the suppression of circulating testosterone concentrations(Handelsman et al., 2018)
The beginning of policies that questioned and policed the sexual identities of athletes began once sports took the world stage in the beginning of the 20th century.
As a general rule, the competitor who is taller, has a higher muscle-to-fat ratio, and the larger heart and lungs (plus some other cardio-respiratory factors) will have the sporting advantage. It is therefore inevitable that any woman who is good at sport will tend to demonstrate a more ‘masculine’ physique than women who are not good at sport. What the sex test effectively does is provide an upper limit for women's sporting performance; there is a point at which your masculine-style body is declared ‘too masculine’, and you are disqualified, regardless of your personal gender identity. For men there is no equivalent upper physiological limit – no kind of genetic, or hormonal, or physiological advantage is tested for, even if these would give a ‘super masculine’ athlete a distinct advantage over the merely very athletic ‘normal’ male.(Heggie, 2010)
Existence of intersex athletes and female athletes with hyperandrogenism, historically under diagnosed, is nothing new. At the moment, while females diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome make up between 6% to 12% of the reproductive aged females in the US they are vastly over represented in the world of sports.(Handelsman et al., 2018) Plenty of female athletes over the past century have competed in female sports simply because for all intents and purposes, they were female. Even those with mild hyperandrogenism competed with their peers without interference; unfortunately athletes with unknown disorders of sexual development i.e., outwardly identifiable intersex conditions are not given the same grace.
... the IOC switched to a different method of chromosome testing that disqualified athletes from women’s sport based on the presence of a Y chromosome rather than the absence of a second X. Yet even this method of testing produced many false positives, such as in 1996 when 8 of the over 3,000 female athletes tested for the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games tested positive for a Y chromosome but were permitted to compete after further testing revealed that these athletes were insensitive to testosterone. Significantly, chromosome testing never revealed a single case of gender fraud—male athletes pretending to be women. Many criticized the practice for excluding or causing stress and anxiety among athletes with intersex conditions for whom no biological basis existed for exclusion from women’s sport, as well as for an affront on the dignity and privacy of all female athletes who were forced to submit to testing.(Sartore-Bladwin, 2013)
Over the decades, various methods of testing have been used to determine eligibility for male versus female competitions. From going based off of genitalia, to birth records, y-chromosome tests, to now random blood panels for hormone levels. (Heggie, 2010) The issue this article brought up with the latest methods was that testing was now based on suspicion instead of previous attempts at standardized testing. Athletes were now subjected to pariah treatment, having to either pause from competing and wait while their identities were questioned or continue to compete under unprecedented levels of stress under global scrutiny; female athletes of color often dealing with these public crucifixions like Serena Williams, Imane Khelif, and Castor Semenya.
In 1977, American tennis player Renee Richards, a male-to-female transsexual, competed in the US Women’s Open after winning a lawsuit against the US Tennis Association, which had tried to exclude Richards on the basis of her XY chromosomes. A New York State court rejected the USTA’s argument that male-to-female transsexual athletes have a competitive advantage when competing against other women. Medical experts and fellow tennis player Billie Jean King testified for Richards, supporting Richards’s claim that estrogen treatments and surgical removal of her testes made her a woman “for all intents and purposes” with no discernable competitive advantage. The court also rejected the USTA’s claim that a chromosome test was necessary to prevent female imposters from trying to enter women’s sporting events, dismissing the organization’s claim that a male who is not transsexual would elect to go through surgery and hormones to feminize his body just to compete in women’s sports.”(Sartore-Bladwin, 2013) Kudos to my state for dismissing this absurd claim since the 70's, slay.
Many conservatives and right-wingers, in the US and around the world, have now donned the preservation and protection of ‘sanctity of female sports’ as a huge issue and inflate and misconstrue data for their own political purposes. They attack athletes, both on the high school level and global stage, who have either had their identities questioned or are fighting to continue to participate in the sports they are or should be eligible for.
Contemporaneous framings in proposed legislation intentionally misdirect public conversation from the civil rights context of Title IX and toward transphobic discourse. They also elevate a hierarchical order that privileges cisgender athletes while also protecting an increasingly outdated status quo. Ultimately, they call into question the future of gender non-discrimination policy, and its thorny entanglements with the struggle for full equality, in an increasingly complex but durably heteropatriarchal world.(Sharrow, 2021)
The revelations of athletes' medical records and private information have been repeatedly blasted on social media and they are either scapegoated by conservatives or embarrassed by cisgendered colleagues who felt upset at their occasional losses. In order to provide a more ethical and science based approach to sex determination, regarding sports, regular blood tests for circulating testosterone levels should be put in place as a universal way to not only allow qualifying athletes regardless of how they identify to be able to compete with their peers.
In summary, trans athletes have always existed, as have intersex athletes and cisgendered athletes with androgenic conditions. As long as they meet event standard, they should be able to safely participate in the events of their gender identity as long as they pass standard testing for approval. There's already standards for drug testing, there needs to be a set standard for sports divided by the sexual characteristics of their athletes. It serves no one to constantly change testing to fit political climates rather than for the best of the world of sport.
Works cited
Evans, S. R. (2015, May). Governing Bodies: Caster Semenya and the rhetorical management of sex and gender ambiguity in professional athletics. ODU Digital Commons. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_etds/54/
Giulianotti, R., & Heggie, V. (2014). Subjective sex: Science, medicine and sex tests in sports. In Routledge Handbook of the sociology of sport (pp. 339–347). essay, Routledge.
Giulianotti, R., Cunningham , G. B., Pickett, A. C., Melton, E. N., Lee, W., & Miner, K. (2014). Psychological safety and the expression of sexual orientation and personal identity. In Routledge Handbook of the sociology of sport (pp. 406–415). essay, Routledge.
Group, S. (2020, September 13). Sociology of sport: Meaning, theories and Overview. Sociology Group: Sociology and Other Social Sciences Blog. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.sociologygroup.com/sociology-of-sport/
Handelsman, D. J., Hirschberg, A. L., & Bermon, S. (2018). Circulating testosterone as the hormonal basis of sex differences in athletic performance. Endocrine Reviews, 39(5), 803–829. https://doi.org/10.1210/er.2018-00020
Heggie, V. (2010). Testing sex and gender in sports; reinventing, reimagining and reconstructing histories. Endeavour, 34(4), 157–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2010.09.005
Sartore-Bladwin, M. L. (2013). Sexual minorities in sports: Prejudice at play. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Sharrow, E. A. (2021). Sports, transgender rights and the bodily politics of cisgender supremacy. Laws, 10(3), 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10030063
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