XY Games

I heard a very interesting story on Talk of the Nation this morning about gender testing at the Olympics. For years, all female Olympians were subjected to a pretty degrading physical examination to determine whether or not they were in fact women. Male Olympians were not subjected to testing. I'll infer that the organizers believed that men would disguise themselves as women in order to compete against "lesser athletes" and have a better chance of winning but that women would not disguise themselves as men. This value judgment does not strike me as entirely valid. I imagine there have been women that wanted to compete in events that were not open to women and therefore disguised themselves as men. Moreover, there are many events were men and women can compete on an equal footing, I'm sure. For instance, would women competing in equestrian events be subjected to testing? I think male and female equestrians compete against each other. I digress. The point is, in China, they plan to perform genetic testing on some female athletes if their gender comes into question. The 'genetic test' label gives the results the appearance of scientific authority. However, apparently gender is not always black and white. There are certain syndromes that cause individuals to test positive for some markers of the opposite gender. These people have no knowledge of this condition. They told the story of an Indian marathoner who "tested" male but was a woman. She looked like a woman and had always identified as a woman. Nonetheless, she was stripped of her medal and demonized in the media. This phenomenon whereby some people may appear on a genetic level to not be 100% female or 100% male was fascinating to me. I'd love to learn more about it.

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