http://www.straightdope.com/columns/080822.html
Dear Cecil:
If a man has a *** change, can he compete in the Olympics as a woman?
=97 Stephanie Ketchum
Cecil replies:
In our enlightened age, when science has made it possible to be the
*** you feel like rather than the one nature stuck you with, some
think it stuffy to insist on doing things the old-fa****oned way. Why
not let trans***uals compete as the *** they change to? Obvious
rejoinder: Because it's no fair letting a hulking genetic male go up
against smaller genetic females just because he now calls herself
Kathy. But as always it's not that simple.
There's a history of men sneaking into women's s****ts, typically
ordinary guys trying to take advantage. One was German high jumper
Hermann Ratjen, who competed in the 1936 Olympics under the name Dora
Ratjen, placing fourth. (In a confession two decades later he claimed
the Nazis made him do it.) Soviet gold medal-winning sisters Tamara
and Irina Press, sometimes called "the Press brothers," were widely
suspected of being males in disguise, as were several other 1960s
athletes.
The last straw was North Korea's Sin Kim Dan, who was riding high in
1964 after breaking the world records for the 400- and 800-meter runs
=97 until her father came forward, recognizing his long-lost son.
Determined not to be embarrassed again, the International Association
of Athletics Federations (IAAF) required women athletes to submit to a
physical exam to prove their femaleness for the 1966 European track
and field champion****ps. The exam was a ludicrous procedure that
involved parading en masse past three female gynecologists.
Nonetheless, Time noted snarkily at the time, the Press sisters and
several other female athletes decided to drop out of the competition.
The visual exam gave way to mandatory lab testing in time for the 1968
Olympics; DNA testing was introduced for the 1992 Winter Games.
Blanket gender testing for the Olympics was abolished in 1999,
although testing can still be done in questionable cases. As far as
anyone knows, no men have snuck by recently.
But cheaters aren't our concern here. You were asking about
genetically male athletes who believe they are, or ought to be,
female.
Genetically anomalous athletes are rare but not unknown. Testing for
the 1996 Olympics revealed that 8 of 3,387 female athletes had genetic
makeups that by some definitions made them male. Some women athletes
have an XY chromosome pair that makes them genetically male but suffer
from androgen insensitivity syndrome, meaning their external ***
characteristics are for the most part female. Example: champion
Spanish hurdler Maria Martinez Patino, who was disqualified from a
1985 competition by genetic tests but eventually reinstated when she
protested. One nominally female athletic star apparently was a
hermaphrodite. Polish Olympic champion Stanislawa Walasiewicz (known
as Stella Walsh in the U.S., where she spent most of her life) won the
women's 100-meter run in the 1932 games and picked up the silver in
that event in 1936. On autopsy following her death in 1980 =97 she was
killed by stray gunfire during an attempted robbery =97 she was found to
have ***ually ambiguous genitalia resulting from a chromosomal
abnormality known as mosaicism. (A few writers claim Hermann Ratjen
was also a hermaphrodite, but I can find no contem****ary sources
confirming this account.)
That brings us to trans***ual athletes. Most often they're normal
genetic males who identify as female and want to compete as women.
Tennis pro Renee Richards is perhaps the best-known case because of
the fuss she made after being barred from the 1976 U.S. Open,
eventually resulting in a court decision in her favor.
In 1990 the IAAF became the first major international s****ts body to
recommend allowing trans***uals to compete against their new peers.
The International Olympic Committee followed this advice starting with
the 2004 Athens games, with some restrictions. Most of these are
common sense: Athletes who have *** reassignment surgery before
puberty are automatically accepted as their new ***, while those who
wait until after puberty must have all surgical changes completed, be
legally recognized as their new *** in the country they represent, and
have had hormone therapy for an extended period of time. For male-to-
female trans***uals, this generally means a minimum of two years after
their gonads are removed, presumably long enough to allow any androgen-
driven physical advantage to abate.
We haven't heard the last of the argument. Some wonder how the IOC can
crack down on performance-enhancing drugs while allowing
"transathletes" to take hormones. The objection is specious, in my
opinion; most banned drugs are intended to give you an unfair
advantage, while female hormones are meant to make a possible unfair
advantage go away. Still, medical advances have given s****ts officials
some tough calls, and not just where gender is concerned. Who can
forget South Africa's Oscar Pistorius, an outstanding runner and a
double amputee? The IAAF banned him from competition in 2007 (the
ruling was later overturned) because his artificial feet allegedly
gave him too much spring.
=97CECIL ADAMS
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