Slashdot Mirror
The Tricky Science of Olympic Gender Testing
First time accepted submitter erdos-bacon sandwich writes "Gender tests may be the most controversial obstacle the athletes face. The London Games tries a new approach based on testosterone. Of all the obstacles athletes have had to overcome to compete in the Olympics, perhaps the most controversial has been the gender test. Originally designed to prevent men from competing in women's events, it is based on the premise that competitors can be sorted into two categories via established scientific rules. But the biological boundaries of gender aren't always clear."
This is they key point. "Freaks of nature" are over-represented in the elite athlete community already. That's part of what makes them elite. Why should abnormalities related to sex chromosomes or hormones be any different?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Except categories in sports are defined by sex not gender so what they believe to be does not matter when it comes to decide in which category they can compete.
Oh yes, how hard can it be...
Check one:
[ XX ] Woman
[ XY ] Man
What if I'm XXY (Klinefelter Syndrome) ? What if I'm just X (Turner Syndrome) ? What if I'm XX but SR-Y positive due to gene translocation ? What if I'm XY but Completely Androgen Insensitive (CAIS) ?
What if some of my cells are XY, but the others are X, or XX, or XXY (mosaicism and chimerism, sometimes combiend with the syndromes above, see the famous case of Lydia Fairchild for a primer) ? Do we decide sex on the cells' majority+1 ? Or should part of my body compete in the Mens' races, and the other part in Womens' ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
So if a person's body develops as a woman, they're still a man, even though by all objective standards beyond the chromosomes, they're a woman? That's a really strange conception.
And hey, lets just blur your chromosome standard. What about a person who has a Y-chromosome but a broken SRY (the gene region that triggers the initial male-development cascade)? What if they have a Y with *no* SRY? What if they're XX but contain a migrated SRY and developed into a male as a consequence? What if they're a chimera and gained their male-developmental trigger from a minority of their body's cells? What if the cascade began without SRY due to another genetic defect? What if it failed despite SRY due to another genetic defect?
And think about the practical aspects of your standard. Should a man who's XX but has fully male traits, from genitalia to musculature, get to compete in womens' events? Really? You're going to have a *lot* of ticked off women if you do that, let me tell you...
The chloride owes the sodium money.
She beat her own best time by five seconds, which is unheard of in swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second.
Actually a few top British swimmers made gains of a few seconds during their teenage years. There was another claim about her going faster than the fastest man in the last 50m of the race, but actually so did another British female swimmer in her event. The man in question was so far ahead he didn't need to go top speed to win, so presumably saved some energy for the next race.
As training and technique developers this sort of thing does happen. Look at Bolt, the guy beat the 100m world record without even trying (he was slowing down at the end when we realized he had an unbeatable lead). He is also quite tall, which used to be considered a hindrance in the 100m, but it turned out our understanding of the sport was wrong.
She won, she tested clean for all known doping agents, she has been tested at least four times over the previous year and several times at the Olympics. No need for sour grapes and innuendo.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
the only difference from every other woman is that they could not have children since they had no ovaries
That's Nature trying to tell you something. Weird edge cases like that should not exist.
On the contrary, it's "Nature" that produced the described intermediate case, and Nature is never trying to tell us anything. Nature isn't an intelligent creature, and is incapable of having thoughts or purposes, much less communicating them.
There are plenty of species that produce non-reproducing individuals as a normal part of the population. In bees and ants, the overwhelming majority are such sterile, non-reproducing "females". In such species, this is not just normal; it's the basis of their evolutionary success. And note that there's at least one species (the domestic honeybee) that's quite important to us humans. All those little worker bees busy pollinating our crops are non-reproducing somatic females. If you think they're a weird edge case that shouldn't exist, you're asking for a major agricultural disaster. ;-)
Granted, in humans it really is an edge case. But it's really nothing more than a biochemical accident. There's no intelligence or "life force" or whatever trying to tell us anything.
Telling "Nature" that something shouldn't exist is utterly futile. The universe produces what it produces, and doesn't care what you or I think. Punishing such "weird" individuals amounts to punishing innocent victims of random biochemical accidents. Do you really want a society in which such punishment is allowed or encouraged?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.