The Tricky Science of Olympic Gender Testing

Is that a man or a woman? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:05 · Score: 5, Funny

Answer: yes.

Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:16 · Score: 5, Funny

Trouble is, sometimes the answer is no.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by drinkydoh · 2012-08-01 19:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

That's true. Theravada Buddhism agrees that there are more than two genders. SEA is area with prominently open approach to ladyboys (transponders) and people who do not want to be the gender they were born with.

However, you must also understand that some (most? I'm not that clear on the subject) don't believe to be women. They don't believe to be men either. They believe they're 'third' gender.

And they should have the right to be.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-08-01 19:39 · Score: 1

Really tho, it's only funny due to a plethora of mislabeled porn.

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"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by ArsenneLupin · 2012-08-01 19:52 · Score: 4, Informative

Trouble is, sometimes the answer is no.
... and sometimes, the answer is "both"...
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by drkim · 2012-08-01 20:12 · Score: 5, Funny

SEA is area with prominently open approach to ladyboys (transponders)
My ladyboy usually squawks 7000.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by thoughtspace · 2012-08-01 20:13 · Score: 1

Trouble is, sometimes the answer is no.
... and sometimes, the answer is "both"...
Yep, that was an inclusive-or.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by drinkydoh · 2012-08-01 20:46 · Score: 1

Heh, that happens every time with OS X's spellchecker. Wonder why it doesn't know the word transgenders.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by somersault · 2012-08-01 21:49 · Score: 1

Probably because transgender is an adjective, not a noun. The s wasn't really necessary in that context anyway. Most of us just use language like that naturally of course, like saying "the reds" rather than "red balls" in snooker..

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which is totally what she said
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Rei · 2012-08-01 21:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

However, you must also understand that some (most? I'm not that clear on the subject) don't believe to be women. They don't believe to be men either. They believe they're 'third' gender.
Those who don't consider themselves to be either would be lumped into a category like "genderqueer" rather than "transsexual". It's interesting how culture plays into gender identity and sexuality, too. Each society has different "bins", categories people can fall into, and you only get a sort of revolution, a breaking of the norms, when the limits of said categories are too confining for enough of the people in the society. The standard of course, at a minimum, is straight male and straight female. But many societies have had more. Two examples among thousands:
1) Historic (and to a very tiny degree, modern) Albania had the "sworn virgins". These were people born as woman who would swear an oath to never sleep with a man. They then would live in men's clothing, could marry women, had men's property rights, and so forth; they were legally treated as men. There was no reverse situation. The concept was created to deal with families who only had female heirs, and the person would often swear at a young age, but some people would swear later in life, so there's some mix between "obligation" and "wanting" in the concept.
2) The Samoan Fa'afafine is people who are anatomically male but live as women and are fully treated as women by society. It's so accepted that it's rare for parents to try to discourage an anatomically male child from living as a Fa'afafine. It is a much more informal concept.
When you look at societies like that, you find that a lot of people living as the third gender identify specifically as the third gender. Some, however, do not, but said "third gender" is the closest that's accepted in their society to how they feel - for example, a person who is simply gay, or simply transsexual but not attracted to members of the same anatomic sex, is put in a bind. In some cases, being seen specifically as a member of the opposite anatomic sex, rather than a third gender, is very important to the person. And of course, rarely in societies do you see matching pairs of concepts - there may be an accepted third gender for anatomic males or anatomic females without an equivalent for the other.
A really extreme example of people being forced into specific categories from modern society can be found in modern Iran. Transsexuality is accepted in Iran - not to a great degree (although to a surprising degree) among the populace, but fully accepted within law (actually, it's handled better in Iranian law than in most western nations). Homosexuality, however, is punishable by death. So there can be significant pressure for gay individuals to physically alter their sex.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by metrix007 · 2012-08-01 23:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Gender is generally considered a separate thing from sex. This article about determining an athletes sex, in which a ladyboy would be considered male, whether they like it or not.

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If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-08-02 00:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Try Lydia Fairchild she gave birth to three children that were hers biologically, but blood tests showed she was unrelated to ... she is a Human Chimera and has two sets of DNA and chromosomes
It is therefore possible that the two sets could be different genders... and the answer could really be both ...

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Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by walshy007 · 2012-08-02 00:46 · Score: 1

But sex is all that matters, I don't understand ttthis business about "gender identity" etc, men and women have different likes/dislikes preferences etc. While what you are physically can increase the likelihood of certain behaviours it is far from certain, therefore 'gender identity' means nothing when there are no defined ways men and women should act.
It's all a social construct, and has no basis in reality, whether you are male, female or genetically odd is a thing of biology, what behaviours that individual has is entirely up to the individual so it makes little sense to say they 'self identify' as one thing or the other.
Trans-gender people are odd, on the one hand they hate social stereotypes of the sexes, on the other they enforce it by their choice of wording.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by h4rr4r · 2012-08-02 01:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

So define that? It will not be easy.
Do you base it on sex organs? Genetic tests, which may not match sex organs? Levels of certain hormones in the blood?
All of these methods have edge cases.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2012-08-02 01:18 · Score: 1

Well I'd like to see even more data mining.
Androgen insensitivity syndrom is very rare -- so therefore athletes with it should be extremely rare.
If the percent of female athletes with it (xy with it) are significantly greater than the general population, then it would not be the complete female parallel people think it is.

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-08-02 01:28 · Score: 1

Buddhism has nothing to do with biology or sport. What a person believes about her or his gender has nothing to do with atheletic ability. Let's leave those issues out of this. The question is whether there is a way for women to excel in sports if they can't have a category that excludes men. In some some sports the answer is no. So either you enforce a biological distinction or you accept that women wont get to compete in some events.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by billybob2001 · 2012-08-02 01:46 · Score: 4, Funny

The London 2012 Olympics has already definitvely tested all of the athletes, during the opening ceremony.
Near the end of Paul McCartney's performance of Let It Be, in the singalong "Na-na-na-nah" part, he made some subliminal audience participation requests:
"Just the men", followed by "Now just the women" - and a host of cameras trained on the athletes recorded who sang along to which section.
Foolproof!
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Chris+Mattern · 2012-08-02 01:47 · Score: 1

While exceptions to just about anything can be found, like chimerism or double-Y syndrome, the fact is that 99.9% (at least) of humans have a well defined genetic gender based on having a 23rd chromosome pair that is either XX or XY. Transgendered people are still biologically the gender of their DNA, although that, to my mind, doesn't deny them the right to live their lives the way they choose. Olympic (and other gender-divided) sports are a little trickier. Idealistically, you could say that we should simply leave behind such divisions, but I don't think these sports are quite ready for that yet.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Chris+Mattern · 2012-08-02 01:50 · Score: 2

Try Lydia Fairchild she gave birth to three children that were hers biologically, but blood tests showed she was unrelated to
Not quite right. The blood tests said she was not the mother, but they were related. The genome they attempted to match was in fact the aunt of the children (and the results showed that degree of relatedness) because her two chimeric genomes were fraternal twins (which is generally how this rare condition works).
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Chris+Mattern · 2012-08-02 01:53 · Score: 1

Do you base it on sex organs? Genetic tests, which may not match sex organs? Levels of certain hormones in the blood?
Genetic tests, because it comes the closest to always providing an unambiguous answer. As others have mentioned, there are cases were even such tests might not work, but they would be exceedingly rare; I wouldn't be surprised if the Olympic testing committee never encountered one.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by queBurro · 2012-08-02 01:54 · Score: 1

but what about my comboboxes?

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sag
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Bengie · 2012-08-02 01:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why bring science into this?
The whole reason we have the distinction between male and female competition is because the male body gives an "unfair" advantage mostly by providing heightened levels of testosterone.

If you want to make things simple, just have everyone compete together instead of splitting men and women. If you want to split up men and women, then we need a way to determine the difference between men and women and categorize people correctly.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by David+Chappell · 2012-08-02 02:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Not sure what distinction you are trying to draw between sex and gender. It can be confusing because "gender" now means what we used to call "sex". You have likely read books written before 1950 in which characters use expressions such as "a member of my sex", "the battle of the sexes". The statement "I want to talk about sex." would likely have been understood to mean "I want to talk about the social implications of being male and female."
I have here a dictionary written in 1955 which under "sex" gives the meaning of maleness or femaleness and "the attraction of one sex to the other". It doesn't even meantion that it could mean the sex act. This meaning appears to have become popular in the 1960's. With sex now being a word that made small boys titter, those who wanted to talk about the social implications of sex (maleness or famaleness) borrowed the term from grammar. It would be too embarrasing to say that one was taking "Sex Studies" in college, so they called it "Gender Studies".
Having thought about the above, you think you are saying that the problem is deciding who is female biologically as opposed to who can function as a female in society. The problem is that a small but significant part of the population displays testable physical characterisics of both sexes. For example, there are persons who are genetically male, but have female bodies. The IOC is thrashing around trying to find a definition of a female body.
I think the reason they have dropped testing of all athelets who claim to be female is that once you select women with strong, athletic bodies, you increase the likelihood that some measure of their bodies will be closer to that of male bodies. If you then disqualify them as "technically male", you create a scandal and humiliate them. If, when her picture appears in news stories, the public perceives her as being a member of the female sex, you then look ridiculous as well.
On the other hand, if you test no one, soon the women's division of sports requiring strength will be filled with men without beards and underdeveloped genitals.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by dbIII · 2012-08-02 02:18 · Score: 1

Should that be enough to disqualify an athlete from competition even if they have it?
It's just like excluding extremely tall basketball players, who will be just as rare once you go over a specific height.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Whiteox · 2012-08-02 02:18 · Score: 1

It would be an interesting thought exercise to include a 3rd 'human' gender in our species. I couldn't work out the fine details though....

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Re:Is that a man or a woman? by David+Chappell · 2012-08-02 02:26 · Score: 1

I have a stupid question: Can't you just strip them down? If they got family jewels, they;re a guy.
The fear is that the women's category of sports requiring strength would soon be dominated by men whose genitals did not develope properly in the womb. Of course, this would only be a problem if they also displayed male muscular development. I don't know how many persons fit in this category, but the Olympics is a word-wide competition to which are sent the best atheletes.Under these conditions, they could be found.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by mcvos · 2012-08-02 02:28 · Score: 2

Didn't they decide recently that it's about your testosterone levels? Testosterone is the entire reason that men tend to be stronger than women. Is your testosterone higher than a certain level, you compete with the men; is it lower, you compete with the women, no matter what's between your legs.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Ironhandx · 2012-08-02 02:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

There really isn't a way to have men and women compete together in most sports.
One of my pet peeves about feminists is that they want to claim that this is possible, but it simply isn't. Men are much more adapted to hunting, fighting, and running than women, women have evolved in a more sedentary role and as such are built for that role.
Certain sports that involve much more raw intellect women could compete on, but if it significantly involves a physical challenge, forget about it.
There are a lot of female soldiers in the US and Canadian military that have spoken out about this as well. Significantly in the Canadian military back when they were talking about lowering the physical requirements bar for more women to get in the women already in the military were among the loudest protesters. The fact of the matter is a 5'4"(Average height) 110lb(average fit weight) soaking wet woman has near-zero chance of being able to carry her 5'9" (average male height) 180lb(average fit male weight) off the battlefield or help him in a significant way beyond providing fire support and basic emergency triage.
Beyond that because men get more out of adrenaline plus get a boatload more testosterone and muscle mass we shoot straighter, faster, and more often than female counterparts. You have to get into the top 20% of women to begin competing with the barely-average man, purely because of biological differences. Wanting it to be different doesn't make it different.
None of this changed the decision for the Canadian military of course. Men have to pass a physical that is over twice as difficult just to get in now, and have to pass more stringent regulations in Boot Camp. A lot of the women who go through the program complain about this afterwards significantly. If they're not good enough, they shouldn't be there, period. Regardless of gender.
I personally know a set of Native-Descent sisters who are currently both high-ranking officers purely because of minority quotas within the Canadian military. One of them can't even fucking pass the sight qualifications and the military paid for eye surgery for her to TRY to get her to pass it and she still failed then gave her a pass anyways.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Rei · 2012-08-02 02:53 · Score: 2

Really, you don't know how to use Google?
Albanian Sworn Virgins
Samoan Fa'afafine
Transsexualism in Iran
As mentioned, these are just a couple examples among thousands.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Rei · 2012-08-02 03:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm guessing you haven't met many transsexuals if you think they tend to live to gender stereotypes any more than other members of the target sex. The standard joke about how to tell the difference between a MTF-crossdresser and a trans woman is that when the crossdresser gets home from work, he takes off his pants and put on a dress. When the transsexual gets home from work, she takes off her dress and puts on a pair of pants.
It's easy to say that something is just a societal construct, but everyone in this world interacts with societal constructs and has elements of their identity impacted by them and has it change how they interact with others. Try going into a party and saying that you work as a pizza deliveryman when they ask what you do for a living, then go into a different party and say you're an investment banker, and judge the reactions in how you're treated. There's whole social constructs built even around concepts like "pizza deliveryman" and "investment banker", let alone something as fundamental as gender.
Beyond that, there's very good evidence that transsexualism is not simply a "social construct", nor is gendered behavior in general. There are both structural and functional differences in male and female brains, and in some very specific regards, transsexual brains tend to more closely match those of the target sex (both in functional and structural exams) than the anatomic sex.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Cederic · 2012-08-02 03:37 · Score: 1

So XXY people compete in which category?

they would be exceedingly rare; I wouldn't be surprised if the Olympic testing committee never encountered one.
Between 1 in 500 and 1 in a 1000 means there's almost certainly one at the Olympics right now.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by jonadab · 2012-08-02 03:43 · Score: 1

> don't believe to be women. They don't believe to be men either.

If they don't claim to be women, telling them they that they therefore can't compete in the women's athletic categories at the Olympics shouldn't be a real big problem. This is a category for women only. Are you a woman? No? Well, then, there's your answer.

The problem is finding a sufficiently precise rule to eliminate a few bozos who say they are women but clearly are not, phenotypically speaking. Some kind of hard-and-fast rule is necessary, if you're going to tell people which category they can't be in.

The only other option would be to get rid of the gender-specific categories and let women compete against the men, but a lot of people would scream bloody murder, partly out of a sense that this isn't "fair" to the women, many of whom would not be able to compete at an international level against men, particularly in certain events, and partly because there are some sports that people -- men in particular -- would much prefer to watch women compete in rather than men.

Neither of these objections is really important in the grand scheme of things. Fairness is a red herring: nothing in life is ever fair, and if life ever were truly fair it would either be so boring or so horrific beyond imagination that either way we'd all beg for death. Certainly for most Olympic sports there are going to be a great many people who are physically incapable of competing in any case. As for the other objection, that's not really what the Olympics is about anyhow.

Nonetheless, a lot of people *do* seem to feel that there is real value in women's only competitions, including at the Olympics. In order to have them, it's going to be necessary to tell some people "Sorry, you can't compete in this division." Given that, I don't see what's wrong with telling people that they've got to have neither a Y chromosome nor any external genitalia in order to compete in the women's sports. Sure, it will rule out some people. Wasn't that rather the point?

Of course, you then have to let them compete in the men's division, but I doubt anybody in the developed world is going to seriously object to that at this point. Sixty years ago, yeah, but not now. That's assuming, of course, that they *can* compete in the men's division. There's more of a divide in some sports than others, but it's the very existence of this divide that leads to the popular "it's not fair" argument for maintaining a separate women's division in the first place.

(Perhaps we could also establish a division for people whose IQ is higher than the number of pounds they can lift. Nerd Olympics. Yes, I'm joking about that one. Mostly.)

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Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Cederic · 2012-08-02 03:44 · Score: 1, Interesting

There really isn't a way to have men and women compete together in most sports.
One of my pet peeves about feminists is that they want to claim that this is possible, but it simply isn't.

Of course it's possible. The feminists might be a bit pissed off that the women keep losing, because they aren't as strong or as fast, but that doesn't stop them from competing.
Separate competitions for different genders is simple sexism. Gender testing wouldn't be necessary if they just held one race for all-comers and let the fastest person win, irrespective of gender.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Cederic · 2012-08-02 03:46 · Score: 1

What about hermaphrodites?
Gender is not binary.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by HornWumpus · 2012-08-02 03:53 · Score: 1

XXY people are not athletic at all. Even with testosterone they will never make the Olympics.
There is certainly one AT the Olympics. Not IN the Olympics though.

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John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by KhabaLox · 2012-08-02 03:54 · Score: 1

Is that in baht or rupiah?

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Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by h4rr4r · 2012-08-02 04:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why not let the non XX or XY folks compete in one or the other category?
Why exclude people at all?
This is not PC bullshit this is basic biology. These people are already genetic freaks for being able to what they do, why exclude those that also have other genetic anomalies?
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by PRMan · 2012-08-02 04:27 · Score: 1, Insightful

The article says it's far more common in female Olympic athletes, but they don't know why. I don't know, maybe it's BECAUSE THEY'RE MEN!

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Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-08-02 06:20 · Score: 1

It's even simpler than that - you just copy-paste those things into Wikipedia, and it has fairly lengthy articles covering each topic.
Thanks for mentioning all those, by the way. It was certainly a new and interesting find for me.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by bolthole · 2012-08-02 06:28 · Score: 1

The fear is that the women's category of sports requiring strength would soon be dominated by men whose genitals did not develope properly in the womb.
Actually, the more prevelant and likely fear, is of the messed up guys who "self identify as female", and go have their genitals chopped off, and then go want to prove their worth against "other females". It's happened before. (eg: "Renee" richards) It should not be allowed to happen again.
It's unfair to REAL women.
(Note to the caped crusaders out there: if I "self-identify" as an oranutang, and sugically have a tail grafted onto my butt, that does not make me an oranutang. Similarly, if I "self-identify" as a girl, and go make those surgical pretenses... that does not make me a girl, either.)
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by drkim · 2012-08-02 06:37 · Score: 1

Baht, of course!
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Tuidjy · 2012-08-02 06:52 · Score: 3, Informative

At the risk of feeding the troll, I'll try to explain and give you just one example where your approach is inadequate.
Quite a few people get born with genitalia that are halfway in between. In such cases, in most Western countries, a surgeon works to push the newborn's genitalia into one of the two common configurations. Now a day the doctors have more tools that they used to - they can check the chromosomes and assign the children to the gender they most closely match.
And they still make mistakes, or sometimes just have no good option. Note that in some case (XXY, XXYY) the kid is screwed anyway. It will look male, but will not be able to compete with XY males physically - weak muscles, useless fat accumulation, etc...
And then you have kids which were assigned 'female' at birth, but because of one reason or another, are more or less male on the inside. Worst case scenario, the surgeon totally fucked up. So the genitalia is female, or a scary simulacra thereof, but everything else - muscles, hormones, etc... is male. Such a person will not only destroy his/her competitors, but do so by such a large margin that it's humiliating. And usually they do not look too female on the outside either. So the other women complain. And the issue gets raised, and a decision has to be taken.
And not matter which way it goes, people get upset. As an enigineer, I can see that there are three solutions:
1. Let all genders compete together. In too many sports, it will deny women any chance to even qualify.
2. XXs compete with XXs, XYs with XYs, and anyone else is out, period. Harsh on a lot of athletes, and unnecessary, because of...
3. XXs compete with XXs, everyone else competes with everyone else.
I cannot even comprehend why anyone rational has a problem with #3. But most progressive foo-rights organizations are in arms against it, and there is no way for sports officials to impose it without committing political suicide.
So we have #4 - Tests are conducted, and most of the people tested are EVENTUALLY allowed to compete with the women.
The test results kept secret, and the competitors of the 'woman' are left unhappy.

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No good deed goes unpunished...
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by David+Chappell · 2012-08-02 06:56 · Score: 1

It is quote obvious that you did not pay attention in college.
Sex is what a person is biologically capable of.
Gender is what a person identifies as.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender, this way of using the terms is common in certain fields, but gender is also a euphamism for sex (in its original meaning).
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by David+Chappell · 2012-08-02 07:13 · Score: 1

I'm not the one trying to make that distinction, gender theorists do. I personally don't agree with much of what they say but they clearly distinguish gender and sex.
True, they do make that distinction. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender, the terminological distinction has been made in certain fields starting in 1955.

Since gender theory is quite recent, it cannot be asserted "gender" now means "sex".
Again, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender, it is becoming fairly common to use the work gender to refer to biological sex. I suspect this is because some people are embarassed to say sex.

Having thought about the above, you think you are saying that the problem is deciding who is female biologically as opposed to who can function as a female in society.
I don't think I am saying! It is extremely rude and dishonest to tell me I don't know what I am saying. I am saying that when it comes to decide which individuals can compete in the "women section", only their physiological sex matters. How they feel does not matter at all.
I never said you didn't know what you were saying. I said that I wasn't sure what you meant because the words "gender" and "sex" mean different things to people from different backgrounds and of different generations. How is that rude and dishonest?
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Ironhandx · 2012-08-02 07:32 · Score: 1

They tried this for a few sports already. They've tried it on a local level where I am now. 99% of the women interested quit because they can't compete. With the advent of women's leagues, they can.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Dr.+Gamera · 2012-08-02 08:28 · Score: 1

In modern parlance in at least some branches of academia, "gender" refers to the male/female identity that a person has, whereas "sex" refers to the male/female biology that a person has. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Dr.+Gamera · 2012-08-02 08:35 · Score: 1

There really isn't a way to have men and women compete together in most sports.
One of my pet peeves about feminists is that they want to claim that this is possible, but it simply isn't. Men are much more adapted to hunting, fighting, and running than women, women have evolved in a more sedentary role and as such are built for that role.
Certain sports that involve much more raw intellect women could compete on, but if it significantly involves a physical challenge, forget about it.
Beyond that because men get more out of adrenaline plus get a boatload more testosterone and muscle mass we shoot straighter, faster, and more often than female counterparts.
Zhang Shan would like to show you her Olympic gold medal in Skeet Shooting! Oh yeah, she won it in 1992, back when men and women competed together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by bws111 · 2012-08-02 08:36 · Score: 1

I think the AC is taking offense at what appears to be a typo. You wrote "you think you are saying" (emphasis mine), when I guess you wanted to write "I think you are saying". If you actually meant "you think you are saying", then that is pretty rude.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by turtledawn · 2012-08-02 08:51 · Score: 1

There are a few Olympic sports which are skill based rather than physical prowess, and a person with Kleinfelter Syndrome could easily be an Olympic-calibre archer or rifle marksman.

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Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by David+Chappell · 2012-08-02 08:56 · Score: 1

I think the AC is taking offense at what appears to be a typo. You wrote "you think you are saying" (emphasis mine), when I guess you wanted to write "I think you are saying". If you actually meant "you think you are saying", then that is pretty rude.
Oh. Yes, I see it now. It is a typo. Sorry, AC.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Golddess · 2012-08-02 09:01 · Score: 1

Changing species != changing gender, and your analogy is flawed as GRS will bring you a lot closer to the gender of your choice than a "tail graft" would to the species of your choice. But I will agree with you in so far as I know someone for whom the current level of medical science is insufficient to deliver the level of change that they desire.

But that is beside the real point I want to make, which is what is a "real" woman anyway? For the obligatory car analogy, if I take a Ford Mustang, strip off the outer body, and put it on a Toyota Celica, has the Celica now become a Mustang? I suspect that if you asked that of anyone, anywhere, they would say "no".

But what if I take the Mustang and I replace all the insides with souped-up aftermarket parts. Is that still a Mustang? I suspect most people would say "of course", even though it's basically the same thing as the above.

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Re:Is that a man or a woman? by turtledawn · 2012-08-02 09:04 · Score: 1, Insightful

As a "real" woman, I ask that you not speak for me. Rather, I demand it. Any woman who has committed herself to the years of rigorous effort required to pass as female, much less actually opted for surgery, is going to be taking so much estrogen and so many androgen blockers that we 'real' women will mop the freakin' floor with her unless she was already a gifted athlete in her prior life. And if she was, she deserves the right to compete and demonstrate that against her peers.

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Re:Is that a man or a woman? by guises · 2012-08-02 09:17 · Score: 1

Certain sports that involve much more raw intellect women could compete on, but if it significantly involves a physical challenge, forget about it.
There used to be Olympic poetry, singing, painting, city planning, etching, croquet... most of these were phased out in order to maintain the amateur status of the events - an Olympic poet would likely be a professional poet at home and this was felt to be contrary to the point of the Olympics. I don't know why they got rid of croquet though.

Tug-of-War used to be a track and field event.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by mattack2 · 2012-08-02 09:26 · Score: 1

Is it testosterone what they tested the female Chinese swimmer for? The one that was faster than the fastest men on one of the legs of her race. (Phelps, at least, has defended her, and apparently Phelps made a similar 5 second improvement in race time over a short period.)
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Solandri · 2012-08-02 09:30 · Score: 2

You're touching on the unspoken assumption underlying all this. They're all people. We could just set up an Olympics where all the competitors are people rather than men or women.

It's our desire for gender equality which creates this arbitrary (with respect to the capabilities of the human body) distinction between men's and women's events. From what I understand, if you took a developing genetically female fetus, and artificially injected it with appropriate amounts of male hormones through her development and lifetime, her athletic potential would be the same as if she had male chromosomes. It's just that she lost the genetic XY lottery for getting those hormones naturally. Why should we stop at male/female? Shouldn't we have a category for people genetically predisposed for obesity? Or superior musculature? (There are human examples of the latter, but the mother is trying to keep her kid out of the spotlight so I won't link to it. Google for myostatin deficiency.)

Since the distinction is arbitrary, there's no need to fret over how we categorize hermaphrodites and similar people for these events. Just set a rule and that's it. This isn't a matter of right or wrong.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-08-02 09:38 · Score: 2

Because the accessibility of women to sports would shrink to the size of a pebble. There aren't a lot of sports where women can go toe-to-toe w/ men.

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Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Cederic · 2012-08-02 10:39 · Score: 1

The thing is, I could train hard for 360 days a year and I'd also never make it to the finals in any track'n'field event.
Where's the Olympics for me?
It is sexism. It just happens to be deemed acceptable to society at large, including me. I don't have an issue with it; I just acknowledge it for what it is, and also use it to highlight that we don't have gender equality in this country (and women don't want it).
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Ironhandx · 2012-08-02 11:23 · Score: 1

Thats an exception that proves the rule. The world record for her womens team is currently 214. The world record for mens team is 366. That's a huge fucking difference.
I'm not saying she isn't good, but obviously she's an extreme outlier or there was more than a little luck involved in her winning a medal.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Jesrad · 2012-08-03 00:36 · Score: 1

Well, AIS is 1 /20 000 in the general population... and 1 /400 in athletes. It IS overrepresented in sport competitions, even though it causes the body to be partially or totally unresponsive to testosterone and other androgens. So, testosterone won't cut it.

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Re:Is that a man or a woman? by samoanbiscuit · 2012-08-03 00:46 · Score: 1

Caster Semenya doesn't ring any bells?
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by peawormsworth · 2012-08-03 04:36 · Score: 1

I actually agree with you on this. Maybe u are kidding, but I think gender should be removed from all competitions. Also, I think all "art" should be removed from the games. If you can't clearly measure the winner, then it is not a real game. In summer games, this means that most gymnastics is out. And in winter games, figure skating is out.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by NerdyLove · 2012-08-03 05:07 · Score: 1

Perhaps because transgender is an adjective, not a noun? Transgendered persons is much less offensive.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by walshy007 · 2012-08-03 15:14 · Score: 1

Semantically there is very much a difference between someone saying "I am a man" and saying " I exhibit behaviours typically associated culturally with males". The latter people I have no issue with, the former is just a plain lie if they are biologically female.
As for brain structure, if someone can be biologically female and have the brain structure associated with males, that does not stop them from being female, it just breaks the rule of "men have x feature non-related to sexual organs, women have y feature non-related to sexual organs" Which put plainly means you shouldn't adhere to those rules as they are broken.
Every individual is different, you have to take into consideration these differences and not make blanket statements in general unless specifically saying it is in the general case. Gender identity only makes sense if you attribute behaviours/aspects not related to sexual reproduction to that gender, which obviously doesn't work otherwise we wouldn't have these outlier cases. The outlier cases break it.
Do we still insist on the simplistic models of newtons theory of universall gravitation being right, or do we take into consideration more detail as with the general theory of relativity because there are edge cases that break newtons theory.
The fact that these cases break what people consider 'male' and 'female' behaviour/brain structure/'insert feature x here' simply means people shouldn't look at it like that.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by walshy007 · 2012-08-03 17:41 · Score: 1

it is a fact of nature that there is a mental component to gender.
While in the general cases males and females have different brain structures, the fact that males can have ones asociated with females and likewise means it is not _always_ the case, if it is not always the case why should it be "men are x properties" "women are y properties" when it is shown to be false?.
While true for the majority of the population that being male/female predisposes to certain behaviours, the outliers that we are talking about break them. When rules are broken in reality you tend to reject the rule. When newtons theory of universal gravitation was shown to be false under certain circumstances, they did not keep sticking to it like the associations of behaviour to sex have been, they went with a more detailed conjecture (general relativity) that more adequately described the phenomena.
Quite simply, it is worng to blanketly say "men have x property mentally" when in fact, some of them don't.
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Chrontius · 2012-08-04 18:05 · Score: 1

Because your method would exclude even more freaks.

Kleinfelter's, Turners, and 47,XYY syndrome folks would all be disqualified. Women with ovaries - and an XY genotype - who lack functional testosterone receptors, and developed as XY females.

And then there's people of normal genotypes who grow breasts and a willie. So do we run a division of hermaphrodites in each sport, or something?
Re:Is that a man or a woman? by Gamer_2k4 · 2012-08-06 05:49 · Score: 1

You separate them because otherwise women would become insignificant. This isn't PC garbage either; it's also basic biology. Will a woman every be as good at rings as a man? How about basketball, or weightlifting? Or running? No, to all of those. Men are naturally more athletic, so they're going to do the best. That's why we separate genders.

If you disagree, feel free to name a few athletic records that AREN'T held by men.

Re:Overcomplicating things? by Gwala · 2012-08-01 19:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, intersexed persons make a bit of a mess of that. Since you can have both sets physical features in various strengths in some people. That's been where the biggest controversies have come up in recent history.

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Re:How hard can it be? by oiron · 2012-08-01 19:14 · Score: 5, Informative

RTFA!

Consider the Spanish hurdler Maria Jose Martinez-Patiño. A gender test revealed that she had a Y chromosome, which normally makes a person male. She also had complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, or CAIS, which prevented her body from responding properly to testosterone and caused her to develop as a woman.

It's not as simple as you'd think...

Confusing terminology by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

TFA makes a bit of a mess of it by consistently using the term "gender" where they are really talking about "sex". Gender is what your head feels you are, sex is what the body makes you. There is absolutely no rule against a physically female athlete participating in a women's race if she phychologically identifies herself as male. The latter is gender, the former sex.

Re:Confusing terminology by spazdor · 2012-08-01 20:26 · Score: 4, Informative

There is absolutely no rule against a physically female athlete participating in a women's race if he phychologically identifies himself as male.
ftfy: perhaps olympic races are sexed, but English pronouns are gendered. :)

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Re:Confusing terminology by metacell · 2012-08-01 23:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Gender is not just a linguistic term, it's also a sociological term. If society treats you as a (man|woman), then your gender is (male|female).
Re:Confusing terminology by spazdor · 2012-08-02 05:00 · Score: 1

You're so right, English farce comedy from the '70s is definitely authoritative on this topic.
Go on, quote a bible verse next.
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/85/5/2034.full - Do you have any brain anatomy which is more characteristic of an aardvark than of a human?
Actually, from your demonstrated logic skills, it sounds as though you just might. Cerebus it is, my otherkin friend.

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Re:Confusing terminology by spazdor · 2012-08-02 07:16 · Score: 1

So, like, on what grounds do you assert that someone identifying himself as a man isn't a man, other than your own wish for it to be so?

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Re:How hard can it be? by cstacy · 2012-08-01 19:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

XX = Woman XY = Man

Gender is not what they want to test for, it is a PROXY for what they want to test for.
This is not a technology problem, and it's not even about genitalia.
It's about a definition of fairness, and that's harder to elaborate.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Getting out the swimming pool is much like getting out a bath. She's clean.

Re:How hard can it be? by AmiMoJo · 2012-08-01 19:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

Some sports are all about genetic abnormalities. Bolt's genetic material must be quite unusual for him to go that fast.

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Chimaeras must be tough by G3ckoG33k · 2012-08-01 19:32 · Score: 2

Chimaeras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29) must be tough.

First as athletes

Second for the gender test

Having every other cell mixed at random shouldn't be all that fun in the long run

Re:Chimaeras must be tough by ArsenneLupin · 2012-08-01 20:06 · Score: 1

But they do have the advantage of having a good excuse to explain away a positive doping test.

Re:Simple, surely by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:33 · Score: 1

You're not old fashioned, just uninformed.

Re:Simple, surely by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:35 · Score: 1

I suspect that's only one of many things we could call you...

But seriously, read the article! Physical genital characteristics do not determine gender or some of the other physical advantages of male characteristics (which can be present even without male genitalia)

It's not a rhetorical question. Though most people fall neatly into "male" and "female" categories, some do not. The fact that there are people with physical or genetic traits of both sexes prompted the IOC to rethink its gender test.

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-01 19:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

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?

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Re:Simple, surely by phagstrom · 2012-08-01 19:39 · Score: 1

And those who have neither or both will just have to join a circus instead, I guess.

Re:How hard can it be? by hawguy · 2012-08-01 19:51 · Score: 1

XX = Woman
XY = Man

You missed a few:

XYY
XXY
XXYY

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by aevan · 2012-08-01 19:51 · Score: 2

I thought it was what Heracles yelled at the end of each cartoon.

Re:Overcomplicating things? by sjames · 2012-08-01 19:53 · Score: 1

Re-read TFA. If you have a vagina and too much testosterone, the most common reason (other than doping) is androgen insensitivity. That makes the eliminates all effect of the testosterone such that it might as well not be there.

Re:Simple, surely by jaymemaurice · 2012-08-01 19:54 · Score: 1

But I think the point is that it shouldn't matter anyway.

Even if you have someone who is an XY female dominating the other females in her class, how is that any different then a runner who is 2' taller and thereby faster then his shorter competitors. Should the olympics be about fairness or the best amature atheletes competing?! Are they going to sort them all by size weight and muscel?!

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Eskarel · 2012-08-01 19:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

The reason is that, at least in theory, the Olympic games are about the effort and discipline it takes to get to the elite level than about genetics. Throwing out the hard work of women because they are biologically different(most specifically this relates to the structure of their hips, though other factors certainly play a part) doesn't fit that spirit.

Now you can argue that the Olympics are won largely by genetic freaks, and there's no Olympics for the "normals", but that's really rather beside the point, because the genetics won't give you the whole puzzle. It's true that if you or I spent as many hours training as Bolt we likely still wouldn't even be able to qualify for the Olympics, but simultaneously if all Bolt did was sit on his couch and eat chips, he wouldn't either.

More importantly the original revival of the Olympics was just part of the whole Eugenics craze of that era in history and you can't really breed a super race without super women as well as super men. The fact that an entire army of genetically superior super people could probably be defeated by a cripple with a brain and a chemistry lab doesn't fit into the world view of the kind of people who started this crap.

Re:How hard can it be? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:55 · Score: 1

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?

They need to talk about it now, before science advances and technology exists to mainipulate genetic material to create such freaks.. I guess for the olympics to continue into the future, they will have to declare a norm that is allowed to compete and if you are outside of that, then sorry but you will be excluded. I think that it is unfortunate for them, but those athletes of dubious genetics (Caster Semenya) or those who can only compete with mechanical aids (Oscar Pistorius) should definitely be excluded. I'm not sure about those borderline cases like Usain Bolt who supposedly has a higher leg/body length ratio which may help; perhaps that should be regulated too.

You keep using that word... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:04 · Score: 1

Gender is psychology and culture
Sex is biology

You can be biologically male (ie. have a penis, XY chromosones, etc) and be gendered female (ie. living your life as a woman).

If we're talking about a physical test rather than a psychological one, it's a sex test, not a gender test.

Re:You keep using that word... by bolthole · 2012-08-02 09:02 · Score: 1

Gender is psychology and culture Sex is biology
Sez who? The dictionary sure doesnt. It in fact declares gender == sex. dictionary.com: 1 == grammatical 2. == "sex" (#3 is a bit odd, I cant make a trivial summary, but it's not what you are claiming)

You can be biologically male (ie. have a penis, XY chromosones, etc) and be gendered female (ie. living your life as a woman).
You're using biased language, attempting to frame it as some kind of passive, "it just happens by itself" thing, using language such as "gendered".
More accurate statement might be "You can be biologically male, but still try to pose as a member of the female gender".
To people without a political agenda, the word "gender" is simply a polite synonym for "sex(male or female)"

Re:How hard can it be? by king+neckbeard · 2012-08-01 20:04 · Score: 3, Funny

Don't forget YYZ

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by king+neckbeard · 2012-08-01 20:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

There is a lot of money to be made in people watching the Olympics. More people will watch the Olympics (and more money will be made) if you have women's volleyball. If it's merely fair competition, there will be no women in the Olympic volleyball competition.

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:23 · Score: 1

white runners did not stand a chance

Gosh, somebody better tell Vebjorn Rodal...

Re:How hard can it be? by HungryHobo · 2012-08-01 20:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Still no good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY

You can have a Y chromosome which lacks a gene or 2 and be physically totally female.

or you can have 2 X chromosomes and be physically totally male but with a part of a Y chromosome copied on to one or both of the X's

or you can have a mix within your body with half your cells one way and half the other.

consider the posibility that *you* simply lack understanding before declaring that someone else is overcomplicating things. some things really are more complex than the "childrens first science book" version.

Re:How hard can it be? by AK+Marc · 2012-08-01 20:32 · Score: 1

Still too complex. Events should be "women" and "other" and presence of a Y chromosome define you as non-woman, regardless of what your genitalia are or anything else (XXY, XXYY, etc.). Call the "other" group "mens" for historical reasons. But exclude anyone not clearly and obviously female from the "women's" group.

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The answer... by LandDolphin · 2012-08-01 20:34 · Score: 1, Insightful

is to remove "men's" and "women's" and just have events.

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Re:The answer... by jamesh · 2012-08-01 21:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

is to remove "men's" and "women's" and just have events.
I can see your point. Training is one factor in an athlete's ability to perform, but so is genetics. You might have a gene that allows you to build muscle mass faster, or make more efficient use of oxygen, yet someone without those genes still have to compete at the same level as you. Yet if you don't have a Y chromosome you get to compete on a different level without having to compete with people with that particular genetic advantage.
Obviously a Y chromosome isn't the only deciding factor though. I have one, but i wouldn't stand a chance against any decent athlete who doesn't have one, but at the top level you'll find that in most events involving strength the athletes with a Y chromosome outcompete those without.
I vote we keep men's and women's events as is and like the rest of us who lucked out in the high performance genetic lottery, people with indeterminate sex will just have to miss out too (or put up with the category they are assigned to for competition).
Re:The answer... by tinkerton · 2012-08-01 21:49 · Score: 1

Ok. so in the Olympics you'll have almost only men qualifying. Next step is to say ok, like in judo, that's what we call the open category. Now we create a women only category because otherwise they aren't represented. So you have open/women instead of men/women.
The difference with the current situation, that women now are not allowed to participate in men's tournaments while in the new situation they could but very rarely would.Actually I'm not even sure if women aren't allowed.
The main conceptual problem is that we think there should somehow be a perfect solution. Instead we should accept there isn't a perfect solution. We'll always need imperfect ad hoc decisions and there will always be bordercases where you can attribute a win to someone being miscategorized.
Re:The answer... by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 22:00 · Score: 1

Yeah, and then we'll have cut the number of events that fans get to watch in half and regressed several decades to when women couldn't compete in the Olympics. I have a better suggestion: you can pretend that female athletes don't exist by not watching their sports, and the rest of us can keep cheering on the best athletes of both sexes if we're so inclined.

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Re:The answer... by StripedCow · 2012-08-01 22:26 · Score: 1

Next question: is that a "human" or a "robot"?

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Re:The answer... by gdr · 2012-08-01 22:50 · Score: 1

Exactly, and you could introduce suitable categories in to the paralympics for those who are "cromosomally challenged". The guys at the paralympics are experts at defining who does and who doesn't have a disadvantage due to various levels of disability.
Re:The answer... by camperdave · 2012-08-02 01:06 · Score: 1

Next question: is that a "human" or a "robot"?
I'm a cyborg, you insensitive clod!

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Re:The answer... by Hatta · 2012-08-02 01:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now we create a women only category because otherwise they aren't represented
Why do we care if women aren't represented? If they are inferior physically, why should they be represented?

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Re:The answer... by tinkerton · 2012-08-02 01:44 · Score: 1

That is a choice. Because indeed, a lot of people would care. You could also try and spell out what the olympic games would look like if they were implemented according to your ideas. Would judo only have the open category and no weight categories? Would a lot of disciplines be categorized as inferior and be cancelled?
Need I also restate that the men's categories already function as 'open' categories, so we're not talking about changing the race, only about adding parallel races.
Re:The answer... by dbIII · 2012-08-02 02:54 · Score: 1

If you compare anyone commenting on this thread to the women competing in the Olympics you'd find that they are all physically inferior to those women. You can lift how much? Run how fast? Sorry dude, she's left you in the dust and is halfway around the track by now.
Re:The answer... by dbIII · 2012-08-02 02:55 · Score: 1

I'm Kilroy! Kilroy!
Re:The answer... by Hatta · 2012-08-02 03:01 · Score: 1

I absolutely agree. I can't beat Michael Phelps, so I don't deserve a medal. If you can't beat Michael Phelps, you don't deserve a medal either. Fair enough?

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Re:The answer... by LandDolphin · 2012-08-02 04:55 · Score: 1

Then you still have this issue of who qualifies as a women to compete in women's sports. I don't dislike women's competitions. It was merely a suggestion to eliminate the issue of who would play in what division.

Now, all of the people who are adamantly against it leave me with the feeling that women are inferior to men. This is certainly not a concept I had when I made my statement. Sure, I acknowledged that women will not excel against men in some sports (power lifting), but I thought that they would excel in others (Gymnastics). And at the end of the day (well Olympics) that Men would have medals in events better suited to men and women would have medals in events better suited to women.

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Re:The answer... by LandDolphin · 2012-08-02 05:08 · Score: 1

So based of the responses I've received to my comment, it seems that women's events exist as sort of an "Affirmative Action" to increase women's representation at the Olympics. That being acknowledged, it seems the answer would be to only allow people who are genetically women (i.e. XX) to compete in the women's category and push everyone else into the Men's category.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by jampola · 2012-08-01 20:35 · Score: 1

Considering the population of PRC is over 1.3b, you can't always assume that foul play is at hand (excuse the pun)

Re:How hard can it be? by quantaman · 2012-08-01 20:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?

Say you had separate a basketball event for people under 6 feet tall.

Than anyone in that event who seemed to have excess height would need to be carefully tested.

As it is we have separate events for men and women.

So any woman who gets too close to the line defining male needs to be carefully tested.

And make no mistake, you need to draw that line somewhere, and where ever you draw it there are going to be people who straddle it.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Carewolf · 2012-08-01 20:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by anarcobra · 2012-08-01 20:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

More importantly the original revival of the Olympics was just part of the whole Eugenics craze of that era in history and you can't really breed a super race without super women as well as super men.

That certainly explains all the sex in the Olympic village. Although, it doesn't explain why they hand out condoms.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by 1s44c · 2012-08-01 20:44 · Score: 1

I am talking about that 16 year old Chinese girl, Ye Shiwen, who broke a world record in swimming competition, resulting in a respected American swimming coach John Leonard, who also happen to be the US executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, said that Chinese girl must have been using "genetic manipulation" to enhance athletic performance

What is "Genetic manipulation"? Is this guy seriously suggesting the Chinese geneticly engineered Ye Shiwen just to win swimming medals?

Obfix: get rid of gender categories by rve · 2012-08-01 20:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

The only catch all, fool proof and totally fair fix for this is the simplest of all: get rid of men's and women's events, and let both compete in the same event. Maybe add performance based tiers instead, so the very best women will mostly compete with guys (and lose, because, you know, testosterone really does work) and the second tier guys will be mostly competing against the best women (and win, again the testosterone thing). Ok, in most sports, women wouldn't get to compete at the highest level any more, but it would be completely fair towards the non-standard gender community!

Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by catmistake · 2012-08-01 23:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

The only catch all, fool proof and totally fair fix for this is the simplest of all: get rid of men's and women's events, and let both compete
That has serious problems....
better idea... If it's going to be about sex, let's make it about sex.
If you can or once could produce viable sperm (and no other genetic material) that can fertilize an ovum = Olympic Man
If you can or once could produce a viable ovum (and no other genetic material) that can be fertilized = Olympic Woman
Then do not label but still disqualify everyone else. After all, if Olympians can't contribute to the human gene pool (or haven't already) what good are they even if they are the best at what they do? The Olympics is about human excellence, not evolutionary or mutant excellence.

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Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:09 · Score: 2

So women whose bodies naturally pump themselves full of testosterone to the point of deep voice and facial hair, but have at one point in the past produced at least one egg, can compete in womens' divisions, while infertile men and women can't compete at all? Really?

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Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by thesandtiger · 2012-08-02 01:26 · Score: 1

The way to do this at the publicly funded level would be to do it as follows:
Take a list of everyone who wants to participate in sport and measure relevant physical values (mass, height, V02max whatever) and break them into brackets based on whatever kind of cutoff point.
Each bracket is funded based on population in that bracket - if you have 90% of the athletes in one bracket, 90% of the funding goes to that bracket, even if it isn't the "top tier" bracket (which is usually where the most money goes now for fewer people).
At the end of each season, if a player is dominating their bracket (as determined by a statistical analysis of their performance over the season) they are moved up to the next bracket, even if their physical stats aren't at the same level. The reverse happens for a player who is struggling - they get dropped down a bracket even if their stats suggest they should perform better.
This would have the added benefit of helping out athletes of either (any?) sex/gender by not making tiny guys compete against giant dudes in sports just because they're guys, and would also let very competitive women play at a higher level. Additionally, it would also encourage more people to get involved in sport since it absolutely would be more democratic, and would probably lead to much closer/more competitive games since the people would be more closely physically matched.
The only disadvantages I would see would be social - some people are assholes and would mercilessly taunt a guy who was competing in a league mostly comprised of women, while some women may not feel comfortable competing with men in their sport (witness some issues of social anxiety in mixed gender classrooms being suggested for poor female performance in some subjects vs. single gender classrooms).
This should be done at the *publicly* funded level only - at the professional level people can do whatever the hell they want, as far as I'm concerned.

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Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by Evtim · 2012-08-02 01:47 · Score: 1

Oh yhea! So how about those 15 years old female athletes? They should also have birthed a child?
Genius!
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by TuringTest · 2012-08-02 03:32 · Score: 2

better idea... If it's going to be about sex, let's make it about sex.
I'd certainly watch that olympic discipline...

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Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:18 · Score: 1

Change the groups to
Female - Those who have birthed a child
Male - Those who have not
Then you'd have men pulling scams and claiming they've birthed a child, with their governments helping them falsify records.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:20 · Score: 1

So women whose bodies naturally pump themselves full of testosterone to the point of deep voice and facial hair, but have at one point in the past produced at least one egg, can compete in womens' divisions, while infertile men and women can't compete at all? Really?
At one point produced an egg? That's ALL women. Women don't produce any eggs after they're born. Their born with their clutch and that's more than enough for a lifetime.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by Khashishi · 2012-08-02 06:01 · Score: 1

It would make a whole lot of sense, but it would suck. I'd rather have a more interesting games than a more fool proof one.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by c++0xFF · 2012-08-02 06:48 · Score: 1

Ok, in most sports, women wouldn't get to compete at the highest level any more, but it would be completely fair towards the non-standard gender community!
Great idea! Let's screw all the female athletes because of a few outliers. (Not that this would be the first time our society did such a thing...)
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by rve · 2012-08-02 07:19 · Score: 1

Ok, in most sports, women wouldn't get to compete at the highest level any more, but it would be completely fair towards the non-standard gender community!
Great idea! Let's screw all the female athletes because of a few outliers. (Not that this would be the first time our society did such a thing...)
I can't believe anyone thought I was being serious, I thought I was clearly demonstrating how ridiculous the whole discussion is.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by c++0xFF · 2012-08-02 09:15 · Score: 1

Actually, I wasn't sure if you were serious or not ... I've talked with others who have proposed such a thing and been quite serious about it.
Re:Obfix: get rid of gender categories by Rei · 2012-08-02 09:56 · Score: 1

First off, that used to be believed, but is no longer accepted as fact. . Secondly, it can sometimes be hard to define what are ovaries and what are testes. They can have varying degrees of intermediacy. And third, it depends on what is meant by "produce an egg". Is it meant that an undeveloped egg exists, or that an undeveloped egg matures and is ovulated? Lastly, it's kind of a silly boundary, since it's not eggs or sperm that give an athlete an edge.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:Overcomplicating things? by jamesh · 2012-08-01 20:46 · Score: 5, Informative

Checking the chromosome might work until you find someone with a missing piece

AIS throws that out the window... genetically a male but somewhat or completely (depending on the degree) insensitive to the androgen that would give them the male characteristics leaving them in the default female form.

Re:Overcomplicating things? by Jesrad · 2012-08-01 20:48 · Score: 1

No, the most common reason would be congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, which does NOT eliminate the effect of testosterone (quite the opposite).

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Maybe we deserve this world ?

Re:Keep it simple. by jamesh · 2012-08-01 20:49 · Score: 1

If you have a Y chromosome, you are a male.

Simpler would be to check the birth certificate, or simply ask the person. Not definitive though, but neither is your idea.

Re:Keep it simple. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:53 · Score: 1

By that definition, most women are male. Everyone has a mixture of XX, XY and some XXY/XYY/XXX. This really isn't a simple issue, which you would know if you had RTFA.

Re:How hard can it be? by Jesrad · 2012-08-01 20:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

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' ?

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Maybe we deserve this world ?

Re:How hard can it be? by rve · 2012-08-01 20:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

Some sports are all about genetic abnormalities. Bolt's genetic material must be quite unusual for him to go that fast.

This is a rather fatalistic misconception about talent. Bolt is as fast as he is, not because of some lucky draw in the gene pool, but because of proper training and starting at a young age. He wasn't born with his perfect technique, he got that through training. Of course you have to be healthy and have a bit of luck as well, and the right mix of fast and slow twitch muscles for your sport, but for every kind of mix of the two there's a sport to excel in.

Re:How hard can it be? by ynp7 · 2012-08-01 20:58 · Score: 1

It's not his genetic material, it's the McNuggets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Taco+Cowboy · 2012-08-01 21:03 · Score: 1

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/olympics-2012/china-ye-shiwen-shatters-record-waves-suspicion-article-1.1126250

And I quote Mr. Leonard :

"If there is something unusual going on in terms of genetic manipulation or something else, I would suspect over eight years science will move fast enough to catch it ...â

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Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !

Re:Simple, surely by ynp7 · 2012-08-01 21:04 · Score: 2

I could go for an old fashioned right about now.

Re:Simple, surely by ynp7 · 2012-08-01 21:06 · Score: 1

Crawl out from under that rock, the Olympics haven't been about amateur athletes in a long time.

Another American has accused her of cheating by Taco+Cowboy · 2012-08-01 21:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

http://news.discovery.com/adventure/ye-shiwen-doping-scandal-olympic-swimming-120801.html

Jonathan Dugas, adjunct professor of exercise physiology at Loyola University in Chicago, has openly doubt the Chinese girl's achievement being "natural"

And this is what Mr. Dugas has said:

"âoeThe differences in the athletes at that level are very small,â Dugas said. âoeTo suggest she was much slower and then sped up so much at the end, it goes against everything that we know about how athletes pace themselves at that level.â

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Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !

Re:Another American has accused her of cheating by mestar · 2012-08-02 00:43 · Score: 1

How come there is no video of that race?
Re:Another American has accused her of cheating by The+Moof · 2012-08-02 01:48 · Score: 3, Informative

Well that's a copyright issue. Specifically, the IOC being abusive with their copyrights.

Originally, when the story came out, all of the articles linked to the race videos. They were all pulled by the time I got around to reading the story because of copyright claims by the IOC. So there's plenty of footage out there of the race, we're just not permitted to view it by the IOC.
Re:Another American has accused her of cheating by serpentskiss · 2012-08-02 02:06 · Score: 1

To suggest she was much slower and then sped up so much at the end, it goes against everything that we know about how athletes pace themselves at that level.
That is just so much BS. I've lost track of the number of times watching the swimming where the general tactic in races over 100m is to pace yourself, then give it your all in the last 50. That's how World records get broken.
Re:Another American has accused her of cheating by PmanAce · 2012-08-02 03:02 · Score: 1

Her overall time was around iirc 23 seconds slower than what Lochte swam (or whatever his name is).

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Tired of my customary (Score:1)

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by samkass · 2012-08-01 21:13 · Score: 5, Informative

Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?

That's not why people suspect it. 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. She also beat the previous world record by one second which was made with the now-banned super-swimsuit. She could have had a really, really good day, and good for her, but I can see why some other team's coaches might, in their frustration, suspect something else is going on.

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E pluribus unum

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 21:19 · Score: 1

Not so fast:

Do Olympic Swimmers Pee In The Pool? 'Nearly 100 Percent' Do, Says Former U.S. National Team Member

Re:Just make the competition by stud9920 · 2012-08-01 21:22 · Score: 1

Hard to motivate half of humanity into training hard for sports if they have no chance to win. With trickle down to normal people, hard to motivate them if you can't give them heroes

Re:How hard can it be? by narcc · 2012-08-01 21:25 · Score: 4, Funny

Let's not forget XYZZY

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Required reading for internet skeptics

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by eugene+ts+wong · 2012-08-01 21:27 · Score: 1

They didn't ask for equality, so they asked for their own categories, and special treatment? They should have admit that they weren't equals and then just not compete for certain jobs and Olympic opportunities.

Your claim is like saying, "I'm equal physically, so you have to cut me some slack! Ha ha!".

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testing out my trending skills

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by mellyra · 2012-08-01 21:30 · Score: 1

What's "olympia"? The plural of "olympium"?

Olympia is the place where the first olypmics were carried out and what the olympics are called in my languages.

Re:How hard can it be? by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 21:31 · Score: 1

Except that a body that has spent its entire life being female will still have certain "female" physical weaknesses, including being weaker/slower than men at an equivalent athletic level.

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Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-08-01 21:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Female athlete arrested on charges of rape by ami.one · 2012-08-01 21:44 · Score: 1

These grey areas have a potential for a lot of bigger problems than just sports competitions.

See the sad case of Indian female athlete being accused & arrested for rape and actually being manhandled and mistreated by male police officers for 25 days till court granted her bail.

Re:Female athlete arrested on charges of rape by silentcoder · 2012-08-01 23:00 · Score: 1

Considering that women can and do rape both men and other women... I fail to see the relevance ?

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Female athlete arrested on charges of rape by ami.one · 2012-08-01 23:14 · Score: 1

The relevance I was implying is to the police & justice system treating her like a man without realizing that it is actually a really GREY area.
For them it was unimaginable that there could be any significant doubt between the sex/gender as determined/perceived by them. So she was handled by male officers and then put along with male inmates in the jail.
Re:Female athlete arrested on charges of rape by silentcoder · 2012-08-01 23:18 · Score: 1

Okay, now that makes a lot more sense. I misread your post as implying that her rape charge itself was preposterous as she only LOOKED a bit male but was actually female.

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Female athlete arrested on charges of rape by EmagGeek · 2012-08-01 23:45 · Score: 1

Don't forget all the sad cases of Muslim women who are arrested every day for BEING RAPED.

Re:Words have a gender, not people. by serviscope_minor · 2012-08-01 21:45 · Score: 1

People have a sex,

This is slashdot, remember. Oh, a sex. Never mind. Moving on...

People have a sex, not a gender.

Nope. Gender can refer to a person's sex or gender identity, it's ambiguous in that regard. People use it in both ways, and dictionaries record that usage.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 21:48 · Score: 1

There isn't really a parallel between race/ethnicity here -- *unlike* those, the sexes reliably come with certain physical traits thanks to the effect of hormones. Most white guys are faster than some black guys and slower than others, rather than being across-the-board slower -- but men of all races are reliably stronger & faster than women at the same level of fitness.

There's no good reason not to give women a division for the sports where they can't compete against men. Most people enjoy watching sports and cheering on their favorite team regardless of the athlete's sex, and athletic women enjoy the thrill of competing against others that have the same level of skill. I'll never be an athlete, but I see no reason to go back to the days when society automatically excluded half the human race from the pinnacle of international amateur athletic competitions just because I'm not able to join in; it'd take serious sour grapes or issues with women to feel otherwise!

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Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)

Re:How hard can it be? by Hognoxious · 2012-08-01 21:50 · Score: 1

What percentage of oddball cases

I thought zero was even?

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Re:Simple, surely by jaymemaurice · 2012-08-01 21:52 · Score: 1

s/amature/professional/g point still the same

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120 characters ought to be enough for anyone

Re:How hard can it be? by anarcobra · 2012-08-01 21:56 · Score: 1

Maybe we should regulate BMI as well. Only people with average or above average BMI can compete in the Olympics. That way we can disqualify anyone who is actually good at the various sports.

Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-01 21:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

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...

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Hognoxious · 2012-08-01 21:59 · Score: 1

The fact that an entire army of genetically superior super people could probably be defeated by a cripple with a brain and a chemistry lab

Dude, I totally want to see that movie!

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-01 22:00 · Score: 1

So if a person is XX but has an SRY on one of their X's and thus developed into what is by all objective standards a man, from genitalia to musculature, they should get to compete in womens' events? Really?

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:How hard can it be? by JustOK · 2012-08-01 22:04 · Score: 1, Funny

XKCD

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rewriting history since 2109

Re:Simple, surely by Rei · 2012-08-01 22:04 · Score: 5, Informative

Just to pick one of the countless examples of where your test goes wrong: 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD). 5-alpha reductase is the chemical which converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a much more potent form which in particular has effects on hair patterning and genitalia. A person with an extreme form of DHT is born as a pretty normal woman, and is thus typically raised as a girl. However, when they hit puberty, the surge of regular testosterone often proves enough to cause the descention of the gonads and the development of a small penis from the clitoris. It's even possible sometimes, with difficulty, to father children.

So when they're young do they compete in girls' events and when they're older guys' events, and when they're in-between... both?

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Rei · 2012-08-01 22:07 · Score: 1

There are very few black swimmers (I hear it's because the melanin makes them denser and thus slower through the water)

Did the person who told you that also tell you that it's because they eat too much watermelon and instead of training sit on the porch all day committing welfare fraud?

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by DMiax · 2012-08-01 22:07 · Score: 2

I think it is more related to a 16yo female beating an absolute world record. It may well be, but it is pretty damn incredible. Regardless, we will never know the truth. Whether her capabilities are above average because she has a natural predisposition and worked hard or because she was farmed with whatever cocktail or drugs/therapies and worked hard, the end result is the same. She probably does not need any form of enhancement drug now and how she gaind her strength may not even be terribly important.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Hognoxious · 2012-08-01 22:12 · Score: 1

It's a fact that in general Africans tend to be heavier boned than Asians, with Caucasians somewhere in between.

So he's certainly an idiot, but I'm not sure why you think he's racist.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by RivenAleem · 2012-08-01 22:21 · Score: 1

Ignorance and idiocy are two different things. Thankfully I can cure my ignorance with education. Your idiocy on the other hand, that's permanent.

Thanks Hognoxious for clearing my misconception up.

Either way, the point still stands, while certain races dominate some sports, other races have shown to dominate others. That evens out any unfairness you can say by keeping the different races performing together. The same cannot be said about Genders.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by mwvdlee · 2012-08-01 22:26 · Score: 2

Wether it's the only sport measured in thousands I doubt as well, but the fact that it IS measured in thousands is telling enough that such relatively huge diffences would atleast arrouse suspicion.

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Re:How hard can it be? by Beorytis · 2012-08-01 22:26 · Score: 1

Maybe we should just skip human athletes and watch Formula One.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by RivenAleem · 2012-08-01 22:27 · Score: 1

I don't think the person who told me this would like to demean himself by describing himself as eating too much watermelon and sitting on the porch all day.

Re:How hard can it be? by qbast · 2012-08-01 22:29 · Score: 1

How about not worrying about every possible abnormality and just banning everybody except for XX and XY?

Re:How hard can it be? by queazocotal · 2012-08-01 22:38 · Score: 1

I find it amusing that the same debate is ongoing in formula one, though testing is rather easier there.
Regulations limiting the performance of the cars in specified ways have now been in place for decades.

Re:How hard can it be? by rastos1 · 2012-08-01 22:43 · Score: 1, Flamebait

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) ?

Then you are not granted the privilege of taking part in Olympics. There, I said it.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by hairyfish · 2012-08-01 22:50 · Score: 1

swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second.

FINA haven't measured in thousandths-of-a-second since 1972. In the last 40 years, accuracy is only measured to hundredths-of-a-second.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by SuricouRaven · 2012-08-01 22:51 · Score: 1

Not yet, but one day it will happen... and China is likely to be the first to try it. They have the three vital elements: The technology, the willingness to move on to human experiments, and the desire for international respect to motivate them to do all they possibly can to win.

Re:How hard can it be? by AK+Marc · 2012-08-01 22:52 · Score: 1

They have the Y chromosome, but it's hidden on one of the Xs. I'd classify that as "other."

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Learn to love Alaska

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by silentcoder · 2012-08-01 22:54 · Score: 3, Funny

>Women did not fight for equal treatment in a physical arena, they wanted to be treated (rightly so) as equals intellectually.

Most of them.

> That might be because (shock) they are smart enough to admit that there is a physical difference.

Not always. Gloria Steinhem is on record as demanding that the New York fire department change their entrance exam to be less focussed on strength so that they can get 50% woman members. When it was pointed out that a fireman needs to be strong enough to carry an unconscious victim out of a burning building on his/her shoulders - she replied "the weaker woman can just drag victims by their ankles".

You can't make this shit up...

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *

Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-01 22:57 · Score: 1

SRY is not a chromosome. It's a small grouping of genes.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by 0dugo0 · 2012-08-01 23:05 · Score: 1

Not sure how quick the testing gets done. The first gene knockout in a rat was in 2003, I doubt they engineered human Ye in 1995. Maybe he is using the broad definition of `genetic manipulation' as in selecting parents, but there are no rules against that!

Not always by brokeninside · 2012-08-01 23:12 · Score: 2

While somewhat rare, there are XX men, XY women, and XXY persons of both sex. Genetics is but one factor out of many that sets the stage for the hormonal environment during fetal development that is thought to determine sex. The hormonal level of the mother is another big factor.

Re:Not always by tnk1 · 2012-08-02 03:08 · Score: 1

You could make a definite call on what the extra sex chromosome means, it's not like the combinations are immense.
It might be unfair for an androgen insensitive XY who has pretty much completely developed as a woman to be considered a male and disqualified, but honestly, most of the Olympics at this point is people who have both worked hard at their training AND they have some sort of genetic advantage of some form. If I had started working at age 5 towards the Olympics in the sport that is best qualified for my genetics, I'd *still* probably not make the cut because the competition is so close these days, and the population is so large, that you're starting to get to the point where only elite genetics combined with hard training are going to qualify.
In short, I would be effectively disqualified from competition due to my genetics just as much as an XY who developed as a woman was disqualified for hers. That would really suck for someone who grew up not knowing, and then found out once they got to higher levels of sport, but I think the benefits of clarity would overcome the exceptions. Not to mention it's a fairly easy test, so it could easily be done at age 5 or whatever and the student could avoid wasting their time later on. Or they could attempt to compete with the men. If anything, they might even be allowed to take carefully monitored hormones as "therapy" for their condition as long as the amount was cleared and they tested as males.
Re:Not always by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:23 · Score: 1

While somewhat rare, there are XX men...
Nope.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
Nope.
Re:Not always by brokeninside · 2012-08-02 04:43 · Score: 1

It works both ways. Should men with double X syndrome (about 1 in 25,000 males) be allowed to compete in competitions for women? If not, then it seems to be a double standard to disqualify women with a Y chromosome.
Myself, it seems to me to be better to change the classification system. Instead of using the imprecise male/female dichotomy use other metrics.

Balance beam and uneven bars? by brokeninside · 2012-08-01 23:18 · Score: 1

Table tennis? Target shooting?

I think it fair to say that men would dominate most sports but there are some where either female attributes are advantageous or there is no inherent advantage to having the typical attributes of one sex or the other.

Re:Balance beam and uneven bars? by RivenAleem · 2012-08-01 23:26 · Score: 1

Definitely, hence the equestrian comment, where they already compete together.
Re:Balance beam and uneven bars? by RivenAleem · 2012-08-01 23:28 · Score: 1

Sorry forgot to add: There's nothing to stop team games like Mixed Tennis being copied to create to make mixed relay races (swimming and track and field) or Mixed Gymnastics or Mixed Archery etc.
Re:Balance beam and uneven bars? by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-08-02 00:56 · Score: 1

Mixed Tennis is not what you think, It requires one man and one woman per team
Mixed sports would very quickly become Men only unless there was no strength advantage ....which is rare in sport, Equestrian sports being one notable exception

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Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Re:Balance beam and uneven bars? by RivenAleem · 2012-08-02 02:47 · Score: 1

Mixed 4x100m Relay: 2 women, 2 men on each team
Mixed Gymnastics (Men: Rings, Pommel, High Bar, Parallel bars. Women: Uneven bars, Floor, Vault, Balance Beam)
Mixed Archery: Team of 3-4 containing 1-2 women.
Have a look at Tag Rugby, a very fun and successful game that brings the sexes together in the same sport.
Making mixed sports along the same lines as Tennis is perfectly viable.

Re:RTFA: What about XXY by metacell · 2012-08-01 23:21 · Score: 1

So, a human with XX chromosomes should compete against women even if they have male genitalia, muscle mass and look exactly like a man?

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by RivenAleem · 2012-08-01 23:23 · Score: 2

Well clearly she understood that there was a physical difference ("the weaker woman") but just wasn't bright enough to follow that process to its conclusion. It's true that women as just as smart as any man, but yes, there's more than enough stupid men around.

You gotta take the equally good with the equally bad.

What she should have said is that there must be areas of firefighting where an adult with a smaller frame would prove useful, and that this niche is being overlooked due to all entrants requiring to pass a strength test. I think that women firefighters would be much better operating in confined spaces than men, for example.

Passing drug tests != competing clean by sjbe · 2012-08-01 23:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

Is it true that the Chinese girl has passed all the drug testing? Is it true that she is clean?

You can pass all the drug tests and still have doped. Marion Jones is an admitted doper who never tested positive. Drug tests are rather specific in what they test for and what they can find. The dopers are typically a step ahead of the tests to catch them. Saying an athlete is clean and saying they passed all their drug tests are completely different statements. You cannot conclusively prove that an athlete is competing clean - that would be trying to prove a negative. You can say that an athlete has not failed specific drug tests but that tests only a limited number of possible doping methodologies.

Re:How hard can it be? by metacell · 2012-08-01 23:26 · Score: 1

How about not worrying about every possible abnormality and just banning everybody except for XX and XY?

Still won't solve those cases where someone develops into the other sex due to abnormalities in individual genes.

Re:Overcomplicating things? by Jaysyn · 2012-08-01 23:31 · Score: 1, Funny

Checking the chromosome might work until you find someone with a missing piece

AIS throws that out the window... genetically a male but somewhat or completely (depending on the degree) insensitive to the androgen that would give them the male characteristics leaving them in the default female form.

i.e. Anne Coulter.

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There is a war going on for your mind.

Re:Just to simplify matters by Goth+Biker+Babe · 2012-08-01 23:32 · Score: 1

So what sex?

http://keyzero.net/hc2-backup/operator_pictures/ketamine.jpg

Re:How hard can it be? by AK+Marc · 2012-08-01 23:41 · Score: 1

So what? They'd still best be placed in "other."

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Learn to love Alaska

Re:How hard can it be? by Gaygirlie · 2012-08-01 23:45 · Score: 1

XX = Woman
XY = Man

That is exactly the assumption why the old tests do not work, assuming that every single human has chromosomes neatly in logical pairs and no mutations that affect the end-result. The world, however, does not work like that, like e.g. there is a very good example of a person in the TFA who would otherwise be male due to her chromosomes, but her body is altogether incapable of using testosterone at all and as such she is a female instead; even if she injected herself with large doses of testosterone it wouldn't affect her in the least, yet as per your extremely naive comment she'd still have to compete with males.

I also used to date a person who was rather androgynous to the outside world as there were really no clear physical clues about this person's physical sex; facial features were not pronounced as they usually are with men, this person didn't have a large chest as is usually associated with men, there was no bodily hair, and yet this person also didn't have breasts, the hips were not pronounced as they are on females and so on. Also, this person's chromosomes were kind of screwy, indicating neither male nor female. Turns out this person was intersexual ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex ) and was not even born with either kind of genitals, either. Now, how well does your naive assumption work now?

Re:How hard can it be? by anarcobra · 2012-08-01 23:46 · Score: 1

Then regulate percentage of body fat or something. Or maybe limit the number of hours per year that someone is allowed to train. It's just not fair that I can't compete in the Olympics just because I only swim several times per year.

Re:How hard can it be? by sFurbo · 2012-08-01 23:47 · Score: 1

When crossbreeding mammals and Komodo dragons, determining the sex of the product for sporting events is by far the smallest problem.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by 1s44c · 2012-08-01 23:49 · Score: 1

Hell, you are stupid.

People ho can easilly beat olympics can also, perhaps, be greatests, fastests, more agile and pain resistant soldiers?

You are just restating my point with far less clarity.

If China could do such a thing they would not waste it on winning swimming medals if so doing meant tipping off their likely future enemies. Swimming medals are just not that important. Isn't it far more likely that this girl is an exceptionally good swimmer, has trained for years, and the US can't handle losing without making up oddball stories.

Re:How hard can it be? by Overzeetop · 2012-08-01 23:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

but for every kind of mix of the two there's a sport to excel in.

No, actually there isn't. You need only to go to any adolescent training area to see that the very top athletes do not come from the ranks of those who have neither inherent strength, agility, and/or flexibility, and yet train with the masters. It would be like saying that anyone can become a nobel prize winning scientist if they simply studied more, or one of the top two or three musicians on an instrument/voice in the world by just practicing at an early age. It's not that easy or we would all be masters of our craft.

Genetics plays a primary role in selection of the top 1e-8 fraction of athletes in the world. I'll agree that without proper training, that'll get you no more than a spot in your local rec league, but without the proper genetic mix you can probably forget about multiple olympic gold medals no matter how hard you train.

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Re:How hard can it be? by dleewo · 2012-08-01 23:55 · Score: 1

Say you had separate a basketball event for people under 6 feet tall.

Some events already differentiate by weight, for example boxing and Taekwondo

Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by voss · 2012-08-01 23:56 · Score: 1

Someone with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is born physically female and her body does
not respond to testosterone. Until the 20th century these women were born lived and died as women, the only
difference from every other woman is that they could not have children since they had no ovaries. Their bodies produced sufficient estrogen
to develop as a woman in every other way.

transgender is someone who is born of one gender and is mentally another gender and takes steps to rectify that.

Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:01 · Score: 1

That'd be a fine response, except that I was responding to someone who was talking about "ladyboys" (kathoey) and third genders, not intersexed people.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by h4rr4r · 2012-08-02 01:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

Then why did nature create them?
Nature does not tell you anything, you are a fucking edge case that probably should not exist. What with your upright walking.
If it exists it exists, there is no room for should when it comes to biology.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by jc42 · 2012-08-02 01:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

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?

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Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by Bengie · 2012-08-02 01:53 · Score: 1

Life is an "edge case". You can try to rectify your own instance if you truly believe what you stated.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why did nature create them?
Well it turns out in nature families with a gay relative are more successful in times of stress. The non-child bearing additional adult contributes to the success of the family without adding the weight of another child to feed. In colloquial terms, the gay uncle brings food to the family when they are starving, when he wouldn't do that if he had his own kids.
There are studies on this, if you go looking for them.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by Rei · 2012-08-02 03:08 · Score: 1

Do you really think that the biggest challenge humans face as a species right now is "how many children can we bring about as quickly as possible"? Evolution isn't that simple.
Here's a counterintuitive example: the bird-of-paradise tail. The different species of bird-of-paradise have these crazy feather displays for their mating dances. Certainly not necessary - other species get by just fine without them. They impair the birds' survival, sometimes significantly. So why have them at all, let alone sexually select for them? Well, the more disadvantaged of a male that makes it to breeding age, the fitter he has to be to overcome his disadvantage, making it an advantageous sexual selection trait. If the species started undergoing more rapid predation, however, the less flashy birds would be the only ones to make it to adulthood, and the species would start to lose its ostentaciousness.
Not directly analogous to homosexuality, of course, but just an example of the counterintuitive paths evolution can take. Species are not always limited by childbearing and escaping predation alone. Often they're selected for among each other, and not just at the individual level, but a societal level as well. If having a certain percent of a population as homosexual (and, for example, consequently traditionally non-childbearing or as foster-parents) proves to give that society a competitive edge, then it will flourish.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by Archangel+Michael · 2012-08-02 03:09 · Score: 1

In the cases of Ants and Bees, the difference between a Breeding female (queen) and a worker female (drone) is not genetic, it is environmental. The difference is how the egg is separated out for the purposes of spawning a queen and not just another worker. The idea that they "just happen" is fallacious, and equating it to human off types is simply sophistry.

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Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by h4rr4r · 2012-08-02 03:11 · Score: 1

The question was a rhetorical one for the GP.
I used it to refute his claims.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by h4rr4r · 2012-08-02 03:56 · Score: 1

The question was a rhetorical one for the GP.
I used it to refute his claims, there was no need for you to answer the question.
Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender by jc42 · 2012-08-02 04:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

In the cases of Ants and Bees, the difference between a Breeding female (queen) and a worker female (drone) is not genetic, it is environmental.
Nonsense. It's completely genetic. The suppression of the workers' reproductive system is triggered by pheromones produced by the queen, and the queen contains genes that control this production. The workers' reaction to the pheromones is controlled by their genes. Actually, the genes are shared by the queen and worker, whose caste is determined by the activation of other genes. The entire setup is determined by the colony's shared genes, not by anything in the environment.
Treating the queen an workers as independent creatures and treating the reproductive pheromones as "environmental" shows a severe misunderstanding of the concept of "environment". Honeybees were one of the primary species that led biologists to develop the concept of a colonial "super-organism", treating bee and ant colonies as a single "individual" for many purposes. There are a lot of problems and open questions with such concepts, but it's clear that treating interactions between different members of a Hymenoptera colony as "external" is simply wrong. You can only make sense of such social creatures by treating the colony as a third "level" between the individual and the environment. The colony's properties are in many respects more similar to our bodies' internal properties than they are to the colony's environment.

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Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.

Re:How hard can it be? by rollingcalf · 2012-08-02 00:00 · Score: 1

If they separated runners into different divisions based on genetic differences other than sex, you might have a point. But they don't.

The men's division of sport is really an open division where anybody* can compete if they're good enough, regardless of sex or genes. Women have occasionally competed in men's college-level sports and even professional.

*for safety reasons some sports such as boxing will exclude women from competing against men

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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by sFurbo · 2012-08-02 00:03 · Score: 1

Now you can argue that the Olympics are won largely by genetic freaks, and there's no Olympics for the "normals", but that's really rather beside the point, because the genetics won't give you the whole puzzle.

Doesn't this argument work for sex as well? "If we don't have separate competitions for women, you could argue that there's no Olympics for women, but that's beside the point, because the sex won't give you the whole puzzle."?

Re:Simple, surely by Gaygirlie · 2012-08-02 00:10 · Score: 1

Call me old fashioned

I can think of plenty of much more suitable adjectives and terms for people like you, "old-fashioned" being probably the most benign.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by sFurbo · 2012-08-02 00:13 · Score: 1

What she should have said is that there must be areas of firefighting where an adult with a smaller frame would prove useful, and that this niche is being overlooked due to all entrants requiring to pass a strength test. I think that women firefighters would be much better operating in confined spaces than men, for example.

Possibly, but that decision should be made on the basis of who would make a useful addition to the firefighters, not what gender is underrepresented in the fire department. Basing the hiring on any job on anything other than a prediction of how good the person will be at doing the job will lead to sub-optimal performance. I, for one, don't want a sub-optimal fire department. A fire department sex distribution closer to 50-50 is a small consolation if you die in a fire as a result.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AngryDeuce · 2012-08-02 00:14 · Score: 5, Funny

Yeah, but believe me, if a spectator goes to do it everyone gets all bitchy about it. Where's the fairness in that?

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by f3rret · 2012-08-02 00:16 · Score: 1

I am talking about that 16 year old Chinese girl, Ye Shiwen, who broke a world record in swimming competition, resulting in a respected American swimming coach John Leonard, who also happen to be the US executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, said that Chinese girl must have been using "genetic manipulation" to enhance athletic performance

What is "Genetic manipulation"? Is this guy seriously suggesting the Chinese geneticly engineered Ye Shiwen just to win swimming medals?

It's this stuff, apparently.

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Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.

Re:Overcomplicating things? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 00:17 · Score: 1

No, she's just a bitch... hmm... a dick? hmm... An Asshole! There we go!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are very few derogatory terms that are NOT tied into gender somehow.

Strong circumstantial evidence by sjbe · 2012-08-02 00:18 · Score: 4, Informative

Because Chinese athletes beating US ones must be due to China having access to advanced future technology, because there is no way they could beat americans otherwise? No, wait, what?

No because the circumstantial facts indicate there is a very high probability of doping. It's demonstrably possible to evade doping tests. Marion Jones (an American) passed every drug test she took while winning multiple world and olympic medals and yet she is an admitted doper. You can be absolutely certain that there are numerous athletes from all over the world at the Olympics who are doping but will not be caught.

Otherworldly improvements in performance at that level almost never happen. People do not beat their best times in a relatively short event by multiple seconds in relatively short swimming events just coincidentally when they happen to be at the Olympics. Women do not swim a faster last 50 meters than the men in the same event. World records do not fall by wide margins. Add in that the Chinese swimming program has a well recorded history of doping and being caught doing it.

Re:Strong circumstantial evidence by timeOday · 2012-08-02 02:59 · Score: 1

Otherworldly improvements in performance at that level almost never happen. People do not beat their best times in a relatively short event by multiple seconds in relatively short swimming events just coincidentally when they happen to be at the Olympics.

So, how do drugs explain a sudden increase in performance? In other words, if she has a super-drug, why would she wait to start suddenly using it onsite at the Olympic Games when it was too late to see if/how it would work, and if it did everybody would be suspicious? It just didn't occur to her to use the drug during qualifiers?

...the Chinese swimming program has a well recorded history of doping and being caught doing it.
Its just like the Cold War again, when every Games was full of rumors about those cheatin' commies, and their doping and all the supposed unreported fatalities in their 'highly secretive' space program. And it's still the same now, even after Major League Baseball was blown wide open and proven to have been awash with drugs for a decade.
And it's so reminiscent of the reporting on Lance Armstrong in the international press (and especially France) as he won the Tour de France year after year. And as with Armstrong we might never know the truth. But does anybody really believe NBC would be so quick to spread the notion of her cheating if she were American?
Re:Strong circumstantial evidence by mellyra · 2012-08-02 04:25 · Score: 1

Its just like the Cold War again, when every Games was full of rumors about those cheatin' commies, and their doping.
you might want to have a look at all the GDR doping practices (and victims) that became known after the reunification of Germany - today's understanding is that
doping contributed massively to their success at international events and that they were completely willing to sacrifice the long-term health of their athletes (without any informed consent on the athletes' part).
Heidi Krieger
was doped with anabolic steroids to the point where she had to undergo a sex change to live a somewhat normal life.
Re:Strong circumstantial evidence by sjbe · 2012-08-02 04:25 · Score: 1

So, how do drugs explain a sudden increase in performance?
Let's say you start taking epogen doses shortly before the olympics. You will be producing additional red blood cells, be able to carry more oxygen and have better endurance. Suddenly an athlete who's previous results were unremarkable is meeting or beating athletes they previously were unable to match. Now that isn't a smoking gun by itself but only someone who is naive would not raise an eyebrow. You don't have to take my word for it. There are lots of books on the subject written by or about people who have first hand knowledge of the effects.

In other words, if she has a super-drug, why would she wait to start suddenly using it onsite at the Olympic Games when it was too late to see if/how it would work, and if it did everybody would be suspicious?
Drugs don't have to be taken onsite to have an effect. In fact many of them take some time to actually have an effect. You don't need to wait until the big even to find out if it works. Epogen for instance (popular among endurance athletes) takes some time because it stimulates production of red blood cells. If you are using steroids to build muscle the muscle doesn't go away immediately. The drugs let the athlete train harder and recover more quickly and get stronger than they might otherwise. They also can increase oxygen carrying capacity. The effects last - the challenge is in getting sometime that cannot be tested for or using it in such a manner that it cleans out of the system before the test is administered. Both are demonstrably possible. It's sad but you should regard any remarkable performance with some amount of skepticism, especially when the money or prestige is high.

And it's so reminiscent of the reporting on Lance Armstrong in the international press (and especially France) as he won the Tour de France year after year. And as with Armstrong we might never know the truth. But does anybody really believe NBC would be so quick to spread the notion of her cheating if she were American?
Perhaps you didn't follow the reporting on Lance very closely? He has been dogged by doping accusations from both foreign and domestic sources pretty much from the time he won his first Tour. Suddenly we had this guy who was recovering from cancer who never had the ability to compete in grand tours before winning the biggest one of them all. It never made much sense. There has never been a smoking gun such as a failed drug test but there is a LOT of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that he was dirty. Virtually everyone who stood on the podium with him when he was winning his Tours was later busted for doping and we were somehow expected to believe he was competing clean. A large number of his team mates have been busted for doping, he worked with a doctor who is known to aid and abet doping, etc. He is presently the subject of a USADA accusation of doping and is suspended from competing pending its outcome. The odds that he was competing clean are pretty long given the body of evidence against him. Can't say for sure but I very much doubt he was clean.
Re:Strong circumstantial evidence by timeOday · 2012-08-02 05:09 · Score: 1

My comparison with the alleged hidden deaths of "cosmonauts" wasn't a very good example because those never happend, whereas I know doping DID happen and still does. It just seems like we are much quicker to rush to judgement on foreigners, or perhaps I should say, turning a blind eye to our own home-grown cheaters.
Re:Strong circumstantial evidence by timeOday · 2012-08-02 05:13 · Score: 1

I didn't mean to claim Armstrong was innocent; only that, at the time, the foreign press was much quicker to spread the allegations. Now that the tables are turned, we are the same. Maybe I implied Americans are biased, but my real point was how biased all of us human beings are.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by kick6 · 2012-08-02 00:18 · Score: 2

If China could do such a thing they would not waste it on winning swimming medals if so doing meant tipping off their likely future enemies. Swimming medals are just not that important. Isn't it far more likely that this girl is an exceptionally good swimmer, has trained for years, and the US can't handle losing without making up oddball stories.

East Germany thought it was important enough 40 years ago. ..

Re:How hard can it be? by f3rret · 2012-08-02 00:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think we should just create a "freak Olympics" where the rules regarding doping, genetic or mechanical manipulations and other stuff like that is just "go nuts, just don't kill anyone."

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Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AngryDeuce · 2012-08-02 00:20 · Score: 1

Just like their star gymnast in 2008, He Kexin was 16 when she competed?

Sorry, but I didn't buy it then, nor do I buy it now.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by amanaplanacanalpanam · 2012-08-02 00:21 · Score: 2

breed a super race

And I totally want to see this movie! At least if they do it the old-fashioned way.

Re:How hard can it be? by todrules · 2012-08-02 00:21 · Score: 1

They just need to get rid of the line by combining men's and women's sports. Women want equality anyways. It's about time we start that in sports, too.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AngryDeuce · 2012-08-02 00:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, but to ignore the fishy bullshit they've pulled in the past is retarded, too. If you believe they're on the up and up, that's fine, but forgive us for a little incredulity when they've demonstrated that they'll play games like this before.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AngryDeuce · 2012-08-02 00:28 · Score: 1

Are you kidding? The Olympics is a hugely political event. It's not about the medals, it's about beating the U.S. and the West to prove that their way of doing things is better. Just like the U.S.S.R. back in it's day.

They played games in the 2008 Gymnastics competition with their 14^H^H16 year old Gymnasts, so I don't doubt for a second they're playing games now.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by AmiMoJo · 2012-08-02 00:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 00:34 · Score: 1

Speaking for all my fellow Slashdoters I'd like to ask you to clarify this part:

a bath

Re:How hard can it be? by TrekkieGod · 2012-08-02 00:34 · Score: 1

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.

Maybe at some point you just say, "you don't fall into the most common classifications, so you can't belong to either category we have created for the most common classifications?"

I mean, it sucks for the athlete, but at some point you have to ask yourself just how much work is justified to support such a small minority of people whose gender can't easily be distinguished to participate in a competition. We're not talking about denying basic rights here, it's a competition.

There's way too much emphasis on trying to identify the gender, but really the crux of the matter here is that these categories were defined because it was decided it was unfair for people who belong to one category to compete in another. If you're at the border, can you guarantee that this does not give them an unfair advantage at the chosen event? if so, then I don't see what the problem is, let them compete. If not, then either you don't let them compete, or you have them compete at whichever gender category has the stronger athletes for the event.

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X_RAY by scharkalvin · 2012-08-02 00:38 · Score: 1

An X-RAY is all you need. There is a distinct difference between male and female pelvic bone structure and you can't fake that.

Re:X_RAY by Rei · 2012-08-02 05:13 · Score: 1

1) There's a *statistical* difference, but there are always outliers. And athletes in general tend to be genetic freaks to begin with.
2) Said statistical differences are due to hormonal differences during puberty. While that would also correlate with musculature *at the time*, a person whose hormones change after the fact is unaffected. A person can develop an androgen-producing tumor, for example, at any point in their life.
3) Interestingly enough, eunuchs (natural or artificial, XX or XY - using the term eunuch here I mean "a person whose body doesn't produce sex hormones") tend to be taller than normal males or normal females. Testosterone slowly closes the growth plates, while estrogen quickly closes them. A lack of either leads to very slow growth plate closure.
4) Yes, you can fake bone structure.

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The chloride owes the sodium money.

Re:How hard can it be? by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-08-02 00:44 · Score: 1

So what is XXX?
XXY?
XY where the Y is broken and has no effect
X - Ullrich-Turner syndrome
Chimera who has both XX and XY ?

etc ..

In any either/or question there is almost always a third option, in this case the list is extensive ...

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Puteulanus fenestra mortis

Re:How hard can it be? by inasity_rules · 2012-08-02 00:46 · Score: 1

XKCD. Now a sex?!

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Gender and Sex are different! by Vrekais · 2012-08-02 00:48 · Score: 2

Dictionaries also list the word "quite" as meaning "complete"... as in "quite good" meaning "completely good" and not "some what good" as most people use it. Dictionaries also list a meaning of irony that people get wrong every single day. My point is that languages are living, dictionaries are by their very nature out of date as soon as they are published. They are the be all and end all of a language unless you're playing scrabble.

Gender has in the past decade come more and more to describe a psychological state rather than a state based purely on what set of sexual organs you happen to have been born with.

Sex is the biological difference between two animals and even that's a grey line occasionally. You can have XX chromosomes and still appear Male.

Wait a second there ... by GNUALMAFUERTE · 2012-08-02 00:50 · Score: 1, Insightful

Didn't woman tell us they where equal? And didn't they tell us we should hire them in the same proportion as man, for any job, as they are equally good at it? Including jobs where physical strength might be important? If so, why is it that they don't compete with everyone else?

Let's take the 100 meter event:
From Wikipedia:

"The 10-second barrier is a term used in track and field athletics which refers to the physical and psychological barrier of completing the men's 100 metres sprint in under ten seconds. The achievement was traditionally regarded as the hallmark of a world class sprinter, but its significance has become less important since the late 1990s as an increasing number of runners have surpassed the ten seconds mark.[1]"

Ok, great. Man's 10 fastest times ever goes from 9.58 (record) to 9.84. Woman's 10 fastest ever goes from 10.49 (record) to 10.77.

So, essentially we have two categories in the Olympics: Really fast, and somewhat fast. And the gold medal given in both is equal. Hey, I want equality too. I'm a 28 year old man who smokes 2 packs a day, and I want to compete too. We should create another category for people who can finish the race within 20 seconds. So we'll have: the 9 seconds race, the 10 seconds race, and the 20 seconds race. How about that?

Fuck this kind of equality. I'm all for real equality. Real equality means no special imposed barriers for anyone based solely on gender. Open up the olympics, let man and woman compete in any category freely. That's equality. Creating special slow groups so that woman can win too is not equality, it's Bullshit.

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Re:Wait a second there ... by Hatta · 2012-08-02 01:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is exactly right. Having seperate Olympic games for women is like having a separate Fields medal for women. No woman has ever been awarded the Fields medal for her work in mathematics. Does that mean we should create a woman's Field's medal?
I don't understand why women don't consider the women's events condescending. In any other circumstance, if you tell a woman "you're good at X, for a woman", she'll be offended. But if you hand her a gold medal while saying the same thing, somehow it's OK.

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-08-02 00:52 · Score: 1

"Africans" are not a race (since these really do not exist), and genetic tests on the native populations in Africa show that they have more genetic diversity than the rest of the world put together, any generalisations about them make no sense ....

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Puteulanus fenestra mortis

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by camperdave · 2012-08-02 00:53 · Score: 1

The fact that an entire army of genetically superior super people could probably be defeated by a cripple with a brain and a chemistry lab

Dude, I totally want to see that movie!

Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks

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Very hard indeed. Ask Lydia Fairchild. by jamrock · 2012-08-02 00:54 · Score: 1

XX = Woman XY = Man

The reality is that it's not nearly as clear cut as you believe. There are individuals with chimerism, in which their bodies contain cells of more than one genotype, i.e., two distinct sets of DNA. See the case of Lydia Fairchild, who was accused of welfare fraud, and prosecutors recommended that her two children be taken into care because testing determined that they weren't related to her, even though she had given birth to them. As she was pregnant with her third child, the judge ordered a witness be present at birth and blood samples taken from mother and child. DNA testing revealed that the child was not hers. Incredibly, it was a member of the prosecution team who recalled a similar case in Boston, and contacted her defense team with the information.

And that's only chimerism. Then there are the truly strange cases of individuals with more than two sex chromosomes, such as XXY and XXXY genotypes among others. Genetically speaking, gender should be considered to be a spectrum, with XX at one extreme and XY at the other, with shadings in between.

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 00:57 · Score: 1

As it is we have separate events for men and women.

That's the problem here. Just let humans compete against other humans and this question solves itself.

And make no mistake, you need to draw that line somewhere, and where ever you draw it there are going to be people who straddle it.

If we draw the line at humanity, who would straddle that line?

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 01:04 · Score: 1

If that's the case, we're not really talking about gender, sex or anything like that at all. We're talking about physical attractiveness. You don't need a test for that.

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by ignavus · 2012-08-02 01:07 · Score: 2

Only on Slashdot do we need to explain to adults that men and women are different.

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Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's precisely the problem at hand. Unless you want to abolish gender segregation in sports (and thus effectively abolish women from most sports, an option which few would support), you have to draw the line. And there is no clear line to draw. Hence the reasons for complexity and debate.

The problem isn't that "it's work to support a small minority". It's that this small minority has an advantage in womens' competitions. So you need to draw the line where to stop this "small minority" from having an unfair advantage in womens' competitions. You *have* to deal with the issue.

Personally, I'm of the view that since most athletes are to some degree or another genetic freaks, that one should err on the side of inclusiveness. You just need to make sure that the line isn't weak enough that gender-straddling individuals are always winning female competitions, or otherwise the point of a female division is ruined.

To reiterate in conclusion: there is no solid line between male and female, you need a line for competitions, you have to set it somewhere, this takes debate, and in the process one should err on the side of inclusiveness instead of exclusiveness.

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Looking for a problem by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:07 · Score: 1

There is a simple solution to this simple problem; I'm appalled that I have to spell it out.

But the biological boundaries of gender aren't always clear.

One has a dick. One has a pussy.

Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:10 · Score: 1

So if someone is XX but has an SRY on one of their Xs and hence developed into a normal male, they get to compete with women?

Lucky guy.

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Re:Overcomplicating things? by camperdave · 2012-08-02 01:10 · Score: 2

What about a diet rich in prairie oysters?

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Re:How hard can it be? by camperdave · 2012-08-02 01:15 · Score: 1

... the right mix of fast and slow twitch muscles...

Wouldn't that be the result of a lucky draw in the gene pool?

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Thugthrasher · 2012-08-02 01:18 · Score: 1

Granted, once you reach the level of world class events improvements in personal best times do not generally leap forward much but she is only 16. Her body is still growing and developing and she may not have tried pushing it as hard as she needed to until that race. I've done this before, knocked 4 seconds of my personal best for 400 freestyle, then at the next competition another 4. The first race I had done enough to win it, comfortably, so did not push it further but I knew once I'd done it I had that reserve available.

The point isn't that she couldn't have done it. The point is that it is completely understandable that opponents suspect her of doping when something like that happens. If she's clean and the tests show it, then good for her. But you can't blame people for being suspicious when something like that happens. If someone suddenly shows vast improvements, particularly when it happens during a major sporting competition, there is reasonable enough suspicion to call for testing there. If it was because we couldn't stand for the Chinese to beat us at Olympic sports, there would be calls for a LOT more testing, as they've beaten us in quite a few this year.

If someone hears a gunshot and walks into a room and you are there, with a gun, and someone is lying dead from a gunshot wound, then you can't blame them for suspecting that you killed the person. If, later, ballistics shows it wasn't your gun that killed the person, then the charges get dropped. (Yes, I know I'm simplifying that process, but it's just a simple analogy, it doesn't have to be perfect)

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Dynotrick · 2012-08-02 01:18 · Score: 1

Yes, there is past history (distant) in China, but there is nothing to suggest she or any of the other Chinese swimmers are cheating. She passed all her tests so far this year. In fact, she has NEVER failed a drug test and has been tested often in the past several years. People, 16 year old swimmers can do some amazing things. But what did she really do? and was it all that amazing? She dropped from a 4:33.6 to a 4:28.1 in the 400 IM. a 5.5 seconds drop (a 2% improvement). In the 200 IM she dropped from a 2:09 to a 2:07 (a 1.5% gain). People are saying that that is not possible? REALLY? When Michael Phelps was her age, he dropped 7 seconds in the 400 IM (from 4:22 to 2:15 - or 2.6% gain) and 2.5 seconds (from 2:03.4 to 2:00.8 - or 2% in the 200 IM from age 15 to age 16. Basically, the same statistical improvement, or even a little more. No one even suggested his gains were anything other then natural.

Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:19 · Score: 1

Um, unless she had no testes, which I think she would have noticed, she didn't have ovaries. Ovaries and testes are the same organ. I've never come across a paper about a single case of an individual being born with an extra set of gonads (I'm sure there are some, but it's definitely not common!); even altogether missing gonads is a fairly rare condition (rarer than, say, mullerian agenesis). And to have one differentiate into ovaries and the other into testes despite being in the same hormonal environment? Sorry, not going to happen.

Some transsexuals feel the need to try to claim the intersex label to give their transition and their identity more legitimacy. The person you were talking to was one of those. And it's stupid anyway because one doesn't have to have intersexed primary or secondary sex characteristics to have actual intersex signs in the brain, both structural and functional. Some of the studies on transsexual brains are rather fascinating, how strong of correlations they've found, especially in certain parts of the hypothalamus (the link between the cognitive side and the endocrine (hormonal) messaging sides of the brain). The hypothalamus also seems to play strong roles in homosexuality, to the point that they've demonstrated in some animals that artificially inducing lesions in particular regions causes them to try to mate with members of the same sex.

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Re:Overcomplicating things? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2012-08-02 01:20 · Score: 1

And the biggest profits in porn!

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Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:21 · Score: 1

Not by your definition. They're XX. They'd be placed in "women" by your definition. Are you seeking to amend your definition? A word of warning, whatever you amend it to, I can point out a real-world hole in it.

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Redundancy by Revotron · 2012-08-02 01:26 · Score: 1

I'm SO glad there were two sentences in that 5-sentence summary that said the same goddamn thing, because without this glaring redundancy I would have surely been lost.

Gender tests may be the most controversial obstacle the athletes face.

Of all the obstacles athletes have had to overcome to compete in the Olympics, perhaps the most controversial has been the gender test.

Do Slashdot editors just map every key to "Accept Submission" and faceroll? Or are they really that bad at basic English composition?

Correction: by Rei · 2012-08-02 01:27 · Score: 1

That should read "with an extreme form of 5-ARD".

To make this not simply a correction post, some more interesting info. AIS (Androgen Insensitivety Syndrome) is another intersex condition that leads to XY women; their bodies produce testosterone and DHT, but don't recognize or respond to it (or do so only weakly). You might think that both AIS and 5-ARD women would have similar statistics in terms of transsexuality and sexuality, but they don't. Because while DHT is critical for proper male genital development, regular testosterone seems to have a significant influence on the brain even without DHT. AIS women have testosterone but don't respond to it, while 5-ARD women have it and do. So AIS women actually have little rates of transsexuality and even lower rates of lesbianism compared to normal women, while 5-ARD "women" more often than not are attracted to women and have a male gender identity present even from before any bodily changes that occur at puberty, and generally end up living as men and seek to further their changes rather than having their changes reversed.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:33 · Score: 1

1) Michael Phelps 2009: 200m butterfly = 1:51.51, Michael Phelps 2006: 200m butterfly = 1:53.80
At fifteen he became the youngest swimmer to hold a world record
same ratio of improvement. Is he doping, or good?

2) http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/08/01/079234/speed-of-sound-is-too-slow-for-the-olympics
Track atheletes wil be mesured to the thound-of-a-second

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by eugene+ts+wong · 2012-08-02 01:40 · Score: 1

Oops.

I meant to type...

Your claim is like saying, "I'm unequal physically, so you have to cut me some slack! Ha ha!".

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by garyebickford · 2012-08-02 01:40 · Score: 1

It's true that if you or I spent as many hours training as Bolt we likely still wouldn't even be able to qualify for the Olympics, but simultaneously if all Bolt did was sit on his couch and eat chips, he wouldn't either.

So obviously what we need is an Olympic chip-eating competition - perhaps two sports, one on the couch, one standing up. I'm sure some /.ers would be serious competitors! :D

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Re:How hard can it be? by misexistentialist · 2012-08-02 01:46 · Score: 1

Don't think anyone with severe genetic abnormalities is going to make it to the Olympics. Maybe the Special Olympics, but who cares about categories there, everyone's a winner.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by jwdb · 2012-08-02 01:51 · Score: 2

Post the facts here. Which "top" British swimmers made gains of a few seconds during their teenage years?

Check podcasts from the last few days from the BBC, specifically Newshour I believe. They did a piece on her, and interviewed an Australian swim coach. He said he was not at all surprised by this, that he'd seen it happen with his own students, and that a female swimmer's capabilities are very flexible, much more so than a man. He claimed it's why the age range of top female swimmers is much broader than that of male swimmers.

What does Bolt have to do with a 16 year old beating the best of the best by seconds? Bolt can't do that - and never did.

Nor did she. She beat her own time by seconds. Haven't found how much she beat the best by.

And Bolt did precisely what gp suspected the male swimmer did: slowed down in a race he was sure of winning, specifically in the 2008 Olympics. It happens.

Re:How hard can it be? by PPalmgren · 2012-08-02 01:57 · Score: 1

The physiological differences of the sexes are so extreme that that would be more detrimental to women than you can possibly imagine. For a point of comparison, the men's world records are 10% to 30% faster in almost every sport, with top speeds / hit speeds sharing the same disparity. As a point of comparison, the world record for men's 100m freestyle 46.91 to the women's 52.07, 5 seconds faster than the womens, and 5 seconds is an eternity in swimming. Its like that across every single event. Even in more precision sports like Golf, the driving distance is substantially different.

As wonderful a thing it would be if it were practical, it would only serve to remove women from top level competitions in sports.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by poity · 2012-08-02 02:02 · Score: 3, Funny

wow, if you can train yourself to pee in controlled pulses, that's a couple extra grams of propulsion per stroke. if lapt times are thousandths of a second apart, then that could mean the difference between gold and no medal at all.

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False choice by V-similitude · 2012-08-02 02:02 · Score: 1

We don't need to separate everyone into male or female. We just need to have one top tier that *anyone* can enter: male, female, xxy, androgen-whatever, etc. And and any other tier can be very specific (eg. xx-females with no abnormalities). No one's left out, you can still see women compete, and if every once in a while, some woman competes successfully in the "men's" (really "top tier") events, that's okay!

Re:False choice by Reziac · 2012-08-03 05:22 · Score: 1

That's what I was getting at above... why not simply have classes based on your proportion of muscle to body mass?

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Re:sex test? by phlinn · 2012-08-02 02:09 · Score: 1

I'm shocked. I rarely see anyone who remembers that Male and Female are sexes rather than genders. Masculine and Feminine are genders.

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Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by T.E.D. · 2012-08-02 02:09 · Score: 1

You seem to be neglecting the inclinations of half the human race here...

...in my experience, the half that is already most interested in watching the Olympics too. Perhaps they'd actually do better by ditching female athletes entirely, and insisting the remaining competitors all wear speedos.

Re:How hard can it be? by LurkingSince1999 · 2012-08-02 02:10 · Score: 1

Not flamebait. If the IOC are going to all the trouble of trying to determine if you are male or female then that implies you MUST be one or the other in order to compete in {Male/Female] Olympics. If that cannot be accurately determined then you cannot play. Go start your own mutant Olympics, which I would very much pay to see.

Re:How hard can it be? by phlinn · 2012-08-02 02:11 · Score: 1

The classification into man or woman predates the identification of X and Y chromosomes. If they have a functional penis, they are a male... which will usually correspond to XY, but we shouldn't change criteria just because something has been shown to highly correlate.

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True, and there's very extreme mistakes by dbIII · 2012-08-02 02:14 · Score: 1

It's been done so badly in the past that one athlete that failed to test as female, and was disqualified, later in life gave birth to two children. That was back before IVF so they were definitely from her own eggs.
Any test seems to be able to be twisted for bad losers to inflict on winners, paticularly detailed genital inspection by several doctors from several countries such as the South African runner had to put up with a couple of years ago (at least I think that's what happened in the end after a lot of blood tests).

Re:True, and there's very extreme mistakes by Cramer · 2012-08-02 07:50 · Score: 1

Several years after s/he stopped juicing, you mean. Simple hormones can present the illusion of a gender change, but once you stop the "suppliments", you'll go back to the way you were born. (mostly.)

Re:How hard can it be? by realityimpaired · 2012-08-02 02:19 · Score: 1

Sadly, I think you're going to fall on a lot of deaf ears, and on bigots who see the world in black & white. (cue the racist troll).

If they're going to differentiate, they need to do it based on hormones, not genetics. There's a lot of variation on a hormonal level as well, but the general result is that testosterone levels are directly related to body development, because testosterone is a metabolism booster and stimulates the growth of muscle mass. (this is why men can usually lose weight more easily than women).

In that respect, somebody who's CAIS or transsexual is actually at a disadvantage competing against other women... the CAIS because their body is unable to react to the testosterone, and the MtF transsexual because testosterone is being artificially suppressed.

Re:How hard can it be? by kcitren · 2012-08-02 02:20 · Score: 1

If we draw the line at humanity, who would straddle that line?

Chimera.

Re:How hard can it be? by phlinn · 2012-08-02 02:27 · Score: 1

Put me among the group that would eliminate sex segregation in sports all together. As it is, we had an issue a couple years ago where female tennis players fought for equal prizes, despite playing 2 fewer sets per match than the males. If we are going to level the playing field, it would be better to do so across the board.

OTOH, I don't care about sports anyways, so my opinion on this matter is pretty much moot.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by dbIII · 2012-08-02 02:30 · Score: 1

There's no other way to read it without pretending he meant something other than what he said. Those nasty Chinese with their cloning, eugenics and why not sharks with lasers!
It's a ridiculous accusation right out of science fiction.

Genetics and training both required by sjbe · 2012-08-02 02:37 · Score: 1

Bolt is as fast as he is, not because of some lucky draw in the gene pool, but because of proper training and starting at a young age.

Genetics are a pre-requisite. Granted, exceptional genetics alone are not sufficient, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to compete at that level. To be able to compete at the elite level, it doesn't matter what age you start at or how hard or properly you train if you haven't won the genetic lottery as well. Bolt is as fast as he is primarily because he is a genetic freak. The hard training lets him maximize the ability he has but even without training at all he would be faster than the vast majority of the people in the world based thanks to his genetics.

Full disclosure: I have competed at the division one college level and competed directly with and been coached by Olympic and world champions. I know what it is like to compete against those who are genetically gifted in a sport first hand. I'm relatively talented at my chosen sport and I worked hard at it when I competed but I also know that I simply didn't have the genetic gifts to go to the next level no matter how hard I worked. I'm ok with that now though - most of us weren't born with the genetics to make it to the Olympic games and there is no shame in that.

Re:How hard can it be? by dbIII · 2012-08-02 02:41 · Score: 1

It's cultural as well as genetics. For example Australia utterly kick the arse of Great Britain in the swimming pool, cricket ground etc despite the populations being geneticly almost identical on average. Similarly a lot of people in East Africa run a lot.

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 02:46 · Score: 1

The physiological differences of the sexes are so extreme that that would be more detrimental to women than you can possibly imagine.

No, I can imagine them quite well. e.g. No woman has ever been awarded the Field's medal. We don't go out and create a Woman's Field's medal to make women feel better about their lack of mathematics ability. Should we? If so, why?

As wonderful a thing it would be if it were practical, it would only serve to remove women from top level competitions in sports.

Why is that a bad thing if women are in reality unable to compete at the level of top atheletes? Why aren't women offended at being condescended to with special medals for effort and not achievement? Why is "you're good at math, for a girl" an insult, but "you're good at the 100m dash, for a girl" a great accomplishment?

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Re:Overcomplicating things? by David+Chappell · 2012-08-02 02:47 · Score: 1

Are there really that many people in the world with 'both sets physical features in various strengths'? And- more importantly- are there really that many Olympic athletes like that, that we need special rules??

Penis- male
Vagina- female
Anything else- disqualified.

The number of persons born with noticably ambiguous genitals is between 0.1% and 0.2% of the population. The 10,970 atheletes competing in the London games in 2012 are 0.00015% of the population. So there is approximately 1000 such persons in the world for every Olympic athelete.

Re:How hard can it be? by hawguy · 2012-08-02 02:49 · Score: 1

Um, unless she had no testes, which I think she would have noticed, she didn't have ovaries. Ovaries and testes are the same organ. I've never come across a paper about a single case of an individual being born with an extra set of gonads (I'm sure there are some, but it's definitely not common!); even

It is possible to have one testicle and one ovary, which could be what this person was referring to.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001669.htm
http://www.gendercentre.org.au/ambiguous_genitalia.htm
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90782/7108711.html

There have been a number of cases of people born with duplicates of other organs (extra kidney, liver, pancreas, etc) so it seems within the realm of possibility (although rare) to be born with duplicate ovaries and/or testicles.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by tnk1 · 2012-08-02 02:50 · Score: 1

They'd be much more likely to use it on an Olympic swimmer than a "supersoldier". China is changing their military doctrine, but they still rely on the unique quality of quantity for their forces. They will not spend millions to turn some conscripts into supermen, but they might well do so for an Olympic athlete as there would be a much higher return on investment for them given the exposure and PR benefits.

I am not saying they did this, but even athletes from the US and the West have done this in other competitions, I don't see why China would or could not.

Re:How hard can it be? by Derek+Pomery · 2012-08-02 02:51 · Score: 1

So, part bird? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system

Maybe that explains big bird.

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about 1 in 200 are "inter-sex" by peter303 · 2012-08-02 02:58 · Score: 1

Several dozen different conditions cause ambiguity from dual.missing genes, gene over or under expression, and so on. The default starting gender is female. There may be male genes, but not fully expressed. And a lot do not know it until they seek infertility treatment or become an Olympic contender.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Inda · 2012-08-02 02:58 · Score: 1

Thorpedo (Ian James Thorpe) said he did the same as a teenager. He said this last night on the BBC.

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This was so much easier... by tompaulco · 2012-08-02 03:00 · Score: 1

This was so much easier when they competed nude. Well, of course, and the ancient Olympics was male only. That also helps solve the gender issue, for right or wrong.

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Incorrect by MaizeMan · 2012-08-02 03:04 · Score: 1

Actually XY individuals who develop into females as a result of a broken copy of a gene which encodes a testosterone receptor protein are overrepresented among the top female athletes of the world. A mixture of the developmental effects of zero testosterone signal during development (regular XX women have less than men but a lot more than zero) and the effect of the non-sex determining genes unique to the Y chromosome.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by ceoyoyo · 2012-08-02 03:08 · Score: 1

And they'll keep her blood on ice for the next eight years and test it again and again and again.

If she's cheating she'll get caught, just like lots of other athletes from lots of other countries have been. In the meantime, speculative accusations have no point.

Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 03:10 · Score: 1

Yes, but if we need to draw a line somewhere then the only real solid line in science is XX or XY. So we might as well just go with that.

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Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 03:16 · Score: 1

In sports it is impossible to compete. From what I understand women just can not hit a golf ball as far as a man, and I assume this is repeated in most other sports.

You could have them compete, but in many situation you would need to give the women a head start.
I believe, in golf for example, women start closer to the hole. But then, what do you do with the people that straddle the gender lines?

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Re:How hard can it be? by tnk1 · 2012-08-02 03:17 · Score: 1

XX = Woman
XY = Man

You missed a few:

XYY
XXY
XXYY

Male
Male
Male

Next?

It would not take the Olympic committee very long to commission a panel, make a decision and vote on what was what. There are more than two combinations, but there are not a million, and even the most probable of the abnormal combinations are very improbable.

Not to mention that some, although not all, of those who display those chromosome combinations frequently show some issues with learning or other disabilities, it means that only a fraction of the already small number of people with these conditions is likely to be able to succeed at that level of sport.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by ceoyoyo · 2012-08-02 03:17 · Score: 3, Informative

Ye's time was 4:28.43. The silver was Beisel, at 4:31.27. That's a bit less than a three second difference, or 1.06%.

Usain Bolt ran a 9.69 in 2008. The silver was Richard Tompson, with a 9.89. That's a 2.06% difference.

So Bolt won his race by a greater margin than did Ye.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by NeutronCowboy · 2012-08-02 03:20 · Score: 1

Yes, over THREE years he shaved a bit under 2 seconds off of his best time. She lopped over 5 seconds off of her best time in about a year. And Phelps was swimming at a world record level before he broke it.

Sheesh, pay attention people. If you want to discuss what is and what isn't possible in sports, make sure you know what you're talking about.

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Not tricky at all by SilverJets · 2012-08-02 03:26 · Score: 1

Combine them all together. Men, women, transgender all compete together in the events.

Women want equality, so here is equality. They can compete against men in the events.

Oh, right. Women only want equality when it benefits them.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by NeutronCowboy · 2012-08-02 03:28 · Score: 1

and there's no Olympics for the "normals",

More importantly the original revival of the Olympics was just part of the whole Eugenics craze of that era in history

Actually, the modern Olympics were revived as the supra-national competition specifically for the "normals". Check out what the jobs of the first winners were. The fact that professional athletes now compete in the Olympics is an outgrowth of nationalism, where some countries couldn't bear losing in sports they considered "theirs" (Hi, US basketball team).

So go shove your revisionist history.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by gorzek · 2012-08-02 03:29 · Score: 1

Based on your username, I think the problem is that you aren't peeing in the pool...

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Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 03:30 · Score: 1

Umm, there are women only maths awards. Actually there are loads and loads of women only academic awards, probably more than generic unisex ones.

Like the "Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics" or the "Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education", to name a few Maths only awards for women.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by asavage · 2012-08-02 03:31 · Score: 1

Swimming is not measured to thousandths of a second. Because of tolerances in pool measurements etc. it is only measured within one hundredth of a second. It is also not uncommon for someone to take off several seconds between the age of 15 and 16, especially in a longer race like the 400m IM. Unless any evidence appears that she was cheating I won't accuse her of anything. Performance can't be the only indication that someone is cheating. She had the best stroke technique in the pool for the backstroke and freestyle.

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 03:32 · Score: 1

Fair enough. I'm still not sure why that's not seen as condescending.

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Re:How hard can it be? by PPalmgren · 2012-08-02 03:40 · Score: 1

I usually don't resort to being this blunt, but that's stupid and rediculous. We create groups of competitors based off generally level playing fields. It would simply be a cheauvanist pig method to belittle someone who has a major genetic handicap in such competition. Sports are an entertainment avenue, and are such because close competitions are fun to watch. Sex-segregated sports are just as much for the athletes as they are for the fans. As for the brain argument, we don't have a complete understanding of how the brain works and grows, so a comment like that is as much an iinsult of the parents, culture, and society as it is directly to the person. All I can say is thank goodness people are different, because I can't imagine how much this world would suck if someone with your abysmal people skills had to handle diplomacy or mental health jobs.

For the record, I'm a guy. I find not treating half the world's population as subhuman makes for a much more enjoyable life.

Re:How hard can it be? by u64 · 2012-08-02 03:41 · Score: 1

I think they test for anorexia in Ski Jumpers. I think they should take a look at the long-distance runners next. And high-jumpers.

They test the horses health carefully during the games. I think it's time to start testing the humans. The humans are also being pushed beyond what's healthy.

a hell of a lot easier than you think by slashmydots · 2012-08-02 03:42 · Score: 1

To change from a male to female, you have to take a whole list of synthetic drugs that are not allowed by any athlete in the olympics so they already broke the general rules. So that's pretty much the end of that (for purposefully altered genders). For mutations/natural accidental unclear genders, don't allow them to compete based solely on the potential to be unfair combined with the inability to test unfairness of any advantage it may give them. It's simple, logical, and solves the problem. That affects probably 0.001% of people on Earth so no big problem there.

By the way, am I the only one who knows that DNA testing would solve this instantly? All the hormones in the world won't change whether or not you have a Y chromosome. Use that as a starter and disqualify from there, obviously.

Re:a hell of a lot easier than you think by Rei · 2012-08-02 05:17 · Score: 1

You clearly aren't paying attention to the problem. This isn't about transsexuals, and there is no clear line on what constitutes an "unclear gender". The whole problem and the whole controversy is where to set that line. And while relatively few people are intersexed, a woman who is masculinized to a relevant degree will stand a good chance of rising through the ranks of womens' sports.
As for your "DNA testing" line, you're wrong there too. There are XX men and XY women. Witness the awesome diversity of nature.

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Two Spirit by mallyn · 2012-08-02 03:49 · Score: 1

You all forgot one thing. There are those of us who are two spirit. Two spirit means we have both the feminine and the masculine. Native Americans had recognized that eons ago.

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Re:How hard can it be? by Cederic · 2012-08-02 03:52 · Score: 1

You could have them compete, but in many situation you would need to give the women a head start.

Why?

Genetically women in general can't hit a ball as far as men in general, but take specific cases and many women can hit a ball further than me. Why do they get a head start and not me?

Either demand that people compete on the basis of their birth capabilities or stop using gender as an arbitrary distinction and focus on the specific factors you're trying to balance.

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 03:53 · Score: 1

I usually don't resort to being this blunt, but that's stupid and rediculous.

Please be as blunt as you need to be, I appreciate it.

We create groups of competitors based off generally level playing fields.

So should we have different basketball matches for tall people and short people? Should we segregate swimming matches by lung capacity? etc, etc.

For the record, I'm a guy. I find not treating half the world's population as subhuman makes for a much more enjoyable life.

I do too. That's why I advocate treating everyone equally.

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Re:RTFA: What about XXY by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-08-02 04:02 · Score: 1

i think it would be easiest to have a mens a womens an a other section. if you have xx and no penis your a woman, you have a xy and a penis your a man, else you compete in other.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Kozar_The_Malignant · 2012-08-02 04:02 · Score: 2

More importantly, whats with USA womens volleyball team wearing long stretch pants ffs?

If you're talking about the beach volleyball team, it was cold and rainy, and the rules were changed this year to no longer require that women compete in bikinis.

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I hear ya... by DarthVain · 2012-08-02 04:05 · Score: 1

Goes both ways also. Saw on the news the other day about a disabled man who wants to compete in the normal Olympics. Apparently the complaints haven't been about his speed, but about his aperatus. He has no legs, or well legs past his knees anyway. Uses those bouncy running things. His answer to "augmented" running not being fair, was that if it is about the aperatus, and not the man, then why is he the first to be able to do it.

The one arguement I do have, and it is a strong one, is I would never have seen a video of Michelle Jenneke warming up for hurdles... It is a spectator sport the Olympic are, and there is interest in seeing the fairer sex compete, so it exists I suppose.

People take it far too seriously anyway. As much as it is supposed to show the strengths of nations, it really is just a show of wealth really when it all comes down to it.

Re:I hear ya... by GNUALMAFUERTE · 2012-08-02 11:27 · Score: 1

Agreed.

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They make this way to complicated by Lawrence_Bird · 2012-08-02 04:06 · Score: 1

The only criteria should be physical inspection and I think gender changes would be sufficiently evident to be obvious to a doctor. As to the freaks of nature, say women who have elevated testosterone levels.. well gee.. aren't all olympic level athletes genetic freaks? What would the world have said of Phelps in the 1930s? or even earlier? Check em for dope and if they have the correct naughtybits leave it at that.

Re:How hard can it be? by Kozar_The_Malignant · 2012-08-02 04:08 · Score: 1

>It's not as simple as you'd think...

Right. The default in embryonic development in humans is female. You can be XYY, and if you do not react to the various androgens, you are a fully functioning female. Remember that in normal XX females. one or the two X chromosomes in each cell is deactivated (the Barr body.) Only one functioning X chromosome is required to be female.

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Re:How hard can it be? by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:11 · Score: 1

If we draw the line at humanity, who would straddle that line?

You're just asking for the trolls here, buddy.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by mellyra · 2012-08-02 04:16 · Score: 1

When Michael Phelps was her age, he dropped 7 seconds in the 400 IM (from 4:22 to 2:15 - or 2.6% gain) and 2.5 seconds (from 2:03.4 to 2:00.8 - or 2% in the 200 IM from age 15 to age 16. Basically, the same statistical improvement, or even a little more. No one even suggested his gains were anything other then natural.

What could possibly be different between expected performance changes for an adolescent man and woman?

here's a revolutionary thought - the male might have a strongly rising testosterone level during that time (rises very fast during puberty, peaks in the mid twenties) which we would expect to increase his performance - whereas we would expect a female athlete to have a much smaller rise in testosterone level and some adverse effects from increasing estrogen levels as well-

Re:How hard can it be? by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:17 · Score: 1

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?

Yes. What's the problem with that? That a few athletes won't make the cutoff because they can compete with women but not with men? So what? Plenty of male and female athletes fail to make the cut every day. Having a disorder doesn't earn you a free pass to violate the rules. Being an odd case doesn't give you a right to make the team. I have a genetic disorder that makes me a lazy, floppy meatbag. Do I get to complain and demand to get a spot on the olympic team?
If you really want to solve this then just eliminate sex separation in competition.

Re:How hard can it be? by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:24 · Score: 1

XX = Woman
XY = Man

YY = Superman

YY = super miscarriage.

Re:How hard can it be? by todrules · 2012-08-02 04:26 · Score: 1

Exactly. There are sports that I have no idea why we have them separated today, like Marksmanship, Archery, Diving, Badminton, Gymnastics, Snowboarding, Downhill Skiing. The list goes on and on. There's no reason why a woman couldn't compete and win in those sports against men. In fact, I think it would be kind of cool to see a mixed Gymnastics Overall competition where in some events like the rings, would probably see more men, but in others like the uneven bars, would see more women.

Re:How hard can it be? by sexconker · 2012-08-02 04:29 · Score: 1

Let's not forget XYZZY

At least we know MXYZPTLK is a Mr.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Dynotrick · 2012-08-02 04:30 · Score: 1

You're ignoring that regardless of gender at that age you are growing and increasing strength. The comment I made above was a partial copy / paste from my former coach who is an extremely experienced and had at least one athlete in the Olympic trials this year. He has also been participating in exchange programs with Chinese coaches over the past year. Pretty sure he knows exactly what he's talking about vs commentators and pundits who know near nothing about the sport. It's all sour grapes at being beat by a Chinese girl.

I see that you are not well read on the topic by brokeninside · 2012-08-02 04:36 · Score: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

About 1 in 25,000 men have no Y chromosome.

Re:I see that you are not well read on the topic by sexconker · 2012-08-02 06:04 · Score: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
About 1 in 25,000 men have no Y chromosome.
Wrong. In those cases the Y is copied onto the X in whole or in part.
You absolutely cannot be a male without those bits of the Y chromosome. You may as well call a clean-shaven homoerectus a homosapien.
Re:I see that you are not well read on the topic by brokeninside · 2012-08-02 07:38 · Score: 1

(a) You're conflating a gene (sry) with a chromosome (Y). As Wiki puts it, `` Females typically have two X chromosomes. XX males have two X chromosomes, with one of them containing genetic material from the Y chromosome, making them phenotypically male; they are genetically female but otherwise appear to be male.'' In other words, _they do not have a Y chromosome_.
(b) Even if this were not the case, you'd still be wrong. Those gene sequences _influence_ the sex of a fetus in combination with several other factors.It is not the case that all males have sry. See N. Abusheikha1, A. Lass and P. Brinsden, XX males without SRY gene and with infertility: Case report in Human Reproduction (2001) 16 (4): 717-718.
Re:I see that you are not well read on the topic by sexconker · 2012-08-02 08:07 · Score: 1

What you posted supports what I said, idiot,
"XX" males have the necessary bits of the Y chromosome to make them male. They do not have the entire chromosome as a standalone unit, but they do in fact have the genetic information from it. You're being a semantic little shit with regards to what constitutes "having the Y chromosome". Having it bundled with the X means you still have it, and without it you would not be male.
A human absolutely cannot be male without information from the Y chromosome. It is the defining difference that results in the sexualization of our species. You absolutely cannot "influence" someone to be male without the information from the Y chromosome. A manly female who is infertile is not a male.
Re:I see that you are not well read on the topic by brokeninside · 2012-08-02 09:51 · Score: 1

You're just trolling now. If you can't understand the difference between a gene and a chromosome, I can't help you. Moreover, if you don't know how to look at the literature, there isn't anything more that I can say.

Re:How hard can it be? by Squiddie · 2012-08-02 04:49 · Score: 1

It's about competing with your peers. Women want to best women, and men want to best men. As a man, I wouldn't be satisfied with beating a bunch of women at weight lifting, because I'm obviously better than a majority of them, and they wouldn't be happy, because they simply don't care. Their bodies are not like mine, no matter how much they try, so they'll compete with each other. As for mathematics, I'm not sure that men really do have better mathematical ability, though that is certainly a possibility. It might be that male culture is just more obsessive about such things, or that men just have more natural drive.

Re:How hard can it be? by Rei · 2012-08-02 05:00 · Score: 1

"The problem with that" is the very reason gender segregation in sports exists in the first place - that women wouldn't be able to compete with men and would thus be effectively removed from higher-level sports competitions. By making that you're standard, you're letting men into women's sports. All of the top results would go to men who lucked into being XX.

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Re:How hard can it be? by PPalmgren · 2012-08-02 05:01 · Score: 1

So should we have different basketball matches for tall people and short people? Should we segregate swimming matches by lung capacity? etc, etc..

We already have this in theory. The less capable athletes play in minor leagues, and the handicapped athletes play in their own leagues. In some sports, we also have weight classes. Your progress in a sport's competition hierarchy is a product of your skills and your genetics.

I do too. That's why I advocate treating everyone equally.

Treating people equally also includes respecting their differences. If you don't factor in that people are inherently different, a one-stop-solution approach is actually more unequal since its discriminatory towards anyone who doesn't fit the norm. While it would be convenient if one-stop solutions and ideologies worked, they typically fall short and only serve as a cop-out for critical thinking on a subject.

Why have only TWO sex categories in Olympics? by Theovon · 2012-08-02 05:01 · Score: 1

People go on and on about how sex determination, with respect to competition, is a complex issue because sex is not well-defined. (Nor are gender identity or sexual orientation for that matter, but that's not important here.) I can think of a few ways to deal with this.

If we insist on sex being a category, then create a third catetory for those people who are ambiguous. That may not be very interesting, however, because of the relative rarity of intersex conditions. "And now we move on to the intersex event, with competitors from three countries"

An alternative is to not use sex but rather other physical characteristics, like weight categories in martial arts. Men vs. women in tai quon do would be just fine becuase it's not just brute strength but speed, agility, mental quickness, etc.

Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 05:10 · Score: 1

Well at least in the area of sports, where it is obvious that they simply cannot compete, you are left with two alternatives: Be somewhat condescending or allow women to compete in their own way.

Women are given "head starts" in pretty much every area and profession. From golfing to programming and business owning. Whether they need it because of inferiorities, bias against them, or simply do not need it. In most situations if is hard or impossible to tell; But they seem to have gotten accustomed to this, never seen a woman complain about it myself, rather the exact opposite.

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Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 05:25 · Score: 1

I believe statistically men are not just superior in strength but also marksmanship, it is supposedly linked to our hunting past.
And most of the rest of those sports requires a lot of strength.

I suggest looking at the world records and the average score for all those events in both women and men and it should become obvious why they are kept separate or that they should be joined.

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Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 05:29 · Score: 1

Yes, but that is a specific case where yo are comparing a woman who has trained on average more then you or is more genetically suited to it.
If we separated everything into capability levels then not only would women not even ever make it into the top often but they would have a good chance of getting beaten in their own levels. And how do you measure skill? Why would everyone not try to get categorized in one riding lower then what they technically should be in? And if we could measure skill that closely we would not even need completions, we would already know the best person.

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can't please everybody by Khashishi · 2012-08-02 05:35 · Score: 1

At the end of the day, there will have to be an arbitrary demarcation delineating who counts as a woman. No matter where this imaginary line is placed, there will be some cases where it seems unfair or wrong. Some athletes will push for the line to be moved this way or that way, but this just shifts who is on the line. We just have to come to some agreement that for the purposes of this game some people will compete in this category and some in this other category, and that's just how it is.

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 05:36 · Score: 1

Treating people equally also includes respecting their differences.

No, that's treating people differently. Justice is blind, and referees should be too.

If you don't factor in that people are inherently different, a one-stop-solution approach is actually more unequal since its discriminatory towards anyone who doesn't fit the norm.

It's not discriminatory, it's reality. If you actually have less ability, you should actually not get a medal. Giving those with less ability an advantage is discriminatory against those with more ability. If you give a woman a gold medal for a 10s 100m, you're discriminating against the guy who got a 9.9s 100m but didn't win a gold.

You might as well claim that your bathroom scale is discriminatory because it tells fat people that they're fat.

While it would be convenient if one-stop solutions and ideologies worked, they typically fall short and only serve as a cop-out for critical thinking on a subject.

You haven't actually made an argument here. You've just declared that treating people differently is treating people equally, which is nonsense on its face, and claimed that I'm wrong by way of ad hominem. Do you have an actual argument?

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Missing the point? by argStyopa · 2012-08-02 05:47 · Score: 2

Many of the posts I read here are missing the point.
Many seem to argue histrionically that it's not 'fair' to force people into false binary categories, it's not "just", it's archaic, etc.

The point is this: do you ever want women to win or not?
Women's athletics were created because of the simple (oh-so-politically-incorrect!) fact that men outperform women in MOST athletics. They are stronger, faster, can throw further, jump higher, etc. It's just physiology.
So womens athletics was created as a category so they could compete against their peers.

Now we have edge-cases in determining who is what gender, and we're forced to defend the arbitrary segregation of women into a lower-performing category of their own.

The simple fact is this:
- have everyone compete together, and women will pretty much never win most athletic events.
- let people declare their own gender (a creation of the politically-correct modern age in which 'everybody's choice is valid'), and again, women will pretty much never win most athletic events. The obvious exploitabilty of this system, coupled with the fact that cheating where possible is endemic to modern top-level competitions like the Olympics, should be self-evident.
- set a test that declares who is female (and thus can compete in the 'easier' category), everyone else is male: the result is that there will ALWAYS be some boundary-cases that indeterminate or go around the test (through biological variation, or deliberate cheating). Some "women" will through their biology get declared "Men" and be unable to compete successfully. Some "men" will likewise get certified as "women" and dominate their field for a while.

Those are your choices. Personally, I love that reality doesn't bow to political correctness, there's no 'legislating away' this conundrum.

FWIW I *don't* see the point in gender-split categories like mens and womens table-tennis or chess. There doesn't seem to be any reason for the division except inertia.

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Re:How hard can it be? by mellyra · 2012-08-02 05:49 · Score: 1

How about not worrying about every possible abnormality and just banning everybody except for XX and XY?

practical problem is that the abnomalies are very strongly represented among today's top athletes and while introducing such a rule from the ground up may be possible (but extremely controversial) sending existing top athletes into early retirement because of it would be impossible to communicate.

Re:How hard can it be? by TemporalBeing · 2012-08-02 05:54 · Score: 1

"The problem with that" is the very reason gender segregation in sports exists in the first place - that women wouldn't be able to compete with men and would thus be effectively removed from higher-level sports competitions. By making that you're standard, you're letting men into women's sports. All of the top results would go to men who lucked into being XX.

That's only an issue if you eliminate gender segregation; not if you do what several of the GPs proposed.

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Re:How hard can it be? by TemporalBeing · 2012-08-02 05:58 · Score: 1

>It's not as simple as you'd think...

Right. The default in embryonic development in humans is female. You can be XYY, and if you do not react to the various androgens, you are a fully functioning female. Remember that in normal XX females. one or the two X chromosomes in each cell is deactivated (the Barr body.) Only one functioning X chromosome is required to be female.

They may look fully functional female; but they won't be as they are typically unable to conceive children for various reasons - that is, they're infertile. Fully functional in most other respects yes.

That said, many with androgen insensitivity can still build muscle like normal males do. So they still would have an advantage over a normal female.

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Re:RTFA: What about XXY by acid_andy · 2012-08-02 06:12 · Score: 1

i think it would be easiest to have a mens a womens an a other section. if you have xx and no penis your a woman, you have a xy and a penis your a man, else you compete in other.

Or vagina.

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/06/11/1141253/raunchy-dance-routine-a-pr-nightmare-for-microsoft

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Re:How hard can it be? by nevermore94 · 2012-08-02 06:15 · Score: 1

Saturday Night Live did a skit like this many years ago called the All Drug Olympics. It was not a pretty site watching the weightlifters pull their own arms off and spurt blood around the stage. I believe that you can still find it on nbc.com ironically or Hulu or Youtube.

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Re:How hard can it be? by c++0xFF · 2012-08-02 06:21 · Score: 1

I somewhat disagree on Gymnastics. Men's and women's gymnastics are actually quite different sports. The floor exercise is a great example of why: the elements required for men and women are completely different and highlight the anatomic differences between men and women, with strength and agility being two key examples. How in the world would you combine the two while still being fair to both genders?

About the other sports, I would be very careful before combining them. Downhill skiing, for example... comparing the results from the last winter Olympics shows that the women's gold medalist would have been in 40th place had she competed with the men.

It might be possible to have some co-ed Olympic sports (curling comes to mind), but it's easier just to make a separate category and call it good, rather than deal with issues of fairness.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Cro+Magnon · 2012-08-02 06:32 · Score: 1

It's not the watermelon. It's all that fried chicken that weighs them down.

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Re:How hard can it be? by PPalmgren · 2012-08-02 06:39 · Score: 1

No, that's treating people differently. Justice is blind, and referees should be too.

An extension of your logic would mean we should just go and off all the handicapped people since they aren't as capable, or not bother teaching women math at all since they are statistically less capable at it in than men. After all, if a sex or person is inferior at something by default, they shouldn't be allowed the opportunity to even try, eh? That's how sports would devolve if what you suggest were to happen, since it becomes less about effort and more about how you were born.

It's not discriminatory, it's reality. If you actually have less ability, you should actually not get a medal. Giving those with less ability an advantage is discriminatory against those with more ability. If you give a woman a gold medal for a 10s 100m, you're discriminating against the guy who got a 9.9s 100m but didn't win a gold.

The guy not winning the women's gold medal is not discriminatory. He got his butt beat by his peers. The woman who won it beat all of her peers. The difference between men and women sport split vs. the bathroom scale is that the fat person has a means to lose weight, the woman or man does not have a reasonable method to change their sex without significant ramifications, and that her sex puts her at an obvious disadvantage against those of us with a third leg.

You haven't actually made an argument here. You've just declared that treating people differently is treating people equally, which is nonsense on its face, and claimed that I'm wrong by way of ad hominem. Do you have an actual argument?

You are arguing for a black and white world ruled by natural selection and evolution and calling it equal. Sorry, but society doesn't work like that. We treat people equally inside their sensibly defined sub-groupings and then try to treat those sub-groupings as equally as possible with respect to their accomplishments in their bubbles, because while they may not be the best in the world overall, they are best among their peers of whom they have a sensibly balanced playing field, which is a very strong accomplishment. We do this because men and women are by nature unequal, but deserve the same recognition for their accomplishments within their half of the population. One result of this 20th century women's rights change is that women are much more talented in sports than they were 100 years ago, because its not looked at as "unladylike." I'd hate it if I was born and told I couldn't amount to anything in something I loved b/c I'm not a man, and told to go clean the kitchen. That's what you sound like, and quite frankly, it sounds sociopathic and disgusting.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Yakasha · 2012-08-02 06:41 · Score: 1

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.

So did Lance Armstrong. He is still banned from racing for doping.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-08-02 06:44 · Score: 1

China is changing their military doctrine, but they still rely on the unique quality of quantity for their forces. They will not spend millions to turn some conscripts into supermen

Chinese armed forces are all-professional these days, they don't have conscripts. They technically do have conscription still in force, but in practice there are more than enough volunteers to fully staff their peace time army.

Re:How hard can it be? by c++0xFF · 2012-08-02 06:44 · Score: 1

one should err on the side of inclusiveness instead of exclusiveness.

I'm not so sure. The whole point of the female-only category is to be exclusive. The male category (being more difficult, generally), should be inclusive. Of course, that doesn't mean that anybody that doesn't conform to a strict, traditional definition of female should be automatically lumped in with the men, but it's certainly a fair way of looking at it.

Just to confuse the matter further, what about sports like gymnastics, where the male and the female competitions are dramatically different? My opinion there is ... compete where you want. I don't think a man would stand a chance in women's gymnastics anyway (but I could be wrong).

Re:How hard can it be? by JTsyo · 2012-08-02 07:13 · Score: 1

Apes. "Hey I'm 99.9% human."

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 07:24 · Score: 1

An extension of your logic would mean we should just go and off all the handicapped people since they aren't as capable, or not bother teaching women math at all since they are statistically less capable at it in than men

You have to be kidding me. Advocating that we treat people equally is the same as advocating eugenics in your mind? WTF?

After all, if a sex or person is inferior at something by default, they shouldn't be allowed the opportunity to even try, eh?

Absolutely they should be allowed to try. They should just be judged by the same standards as everyone else.

The difference between men and women sport split vs. the bathroom scale is that the fat person has a means to lose weight, the woman or man does not have a reasonable method to change their sex

I'll restate the example with a metric that can't be modified so easily then: You might as well claim that your meter stick is discriminatory because it tells short people they are short. Should we declare that everyone is 2 meters tall and issue them "meter" sticks exactly 1/2 their height?

We do this because men and women are by nature unequal, but deserve the same recognition for their accomplishments within their half of the population.

This is what I don't understand. Why do they deserve recognition for achieving less?

You are arguing for a black and white world ruled by natural selection and evolution and calling it equal.

No, I'm not. I'm very much a socialist. From each according to ability, to each according to need. Key to making that work is accurately determining one's ability. Falsifying ones ability in the name of political correctness doesn't help anyone.

I'd hate it if I was born and told I couldn't amount to anything in something I loved b/c I'm not a man, and told to go clean the kitchen.

I don't see how anything I said could honestly be construed to mean this. If anything you're being sexist by suggesting that women aren't good for anything other than cleaning unless they are given special help by men. That sounds sociopathic and disgusting to me.

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Simple (?) solution: by davidwr · 2012-08-02 07:49 · Score: 1

Before allowing anyone to even be considered for an Olympic or similar-level international sporting competition where gender is important, they are given a preliminary test:

1) Are their genetics clearly male or female and do the external reproductive organs and gonads match the genetic gender?
2) If yes, does this match their legal gender, the gender they have identified themselves as for a significant period of time, the gender in which they currently identify themselves as, the gender they plan on identifying themselves during their athletic career, and the gender in which they will compete in?

If so - and this will be the case for 90+ percent of athletes - that's it. Unless they change their mind about gender-self-identity, they don't need to be re-tested. If they happen to be genetically female, self-identify as female, be legally female, but have naturally high testosterone and want to compete as a female in events where high testosterone is an advantage, good for them. That's part of what sports is: Using the body Mother Nature gave you to your best advantage.

For those with indeterminate gender, those whose legal or self-identity doesn't match their biological gender, or those who anticipate a change in gender during their athletic career, the athlete would by default compete in the gender which is considered more competitive but would otherwise be allowed to choose his own gender label. For example, a 17-year-old female planning f-to-m hormone and surgery as soon as she is legally allowed to do so would by default compete in men's events but would be referred to as a female and would use women's restrooms and shower facilities. In events where gender is not an issue she could compete as a female.

However, there would be an appellate process in which any athlete could change to the less-competative gender by demonstrating that:
1) No past or present surgery or drug are currently creating a gender-related athletic advantage and it is almost certain they won't create one in the future, AND
2a) The person has a genetic gender that is generally considered, say, female (e.g. XXX, X, or perhaps certain other combinations of X and Y other than Y or XY), OR
2b) The person has had permanent surgery or another procedure which permanently removes any genetic advantage, AND
3) But for legal prohibitions or a demonstratively high social cost, the person would have already been self-identifying as the gender he or she wants to compete in and would have already changed his or her legal gender, AND
4) the country under whose flag the athlete is competing under does not object to the reclassification.

Basically, if aren't a "no brainer/obvious" female and you do or want to self-identify as female and compete in a sport where males have a natural advantage, you have to get your country's okay AND you have to undo any genetic advantage you do have (e.g. castration, if applicable) and show you don't have any current or future gender-related advantage due to past surgeries (e.g. organ or gland removal, even if medically necessary and not related to gender-identity issues) or past or present medications (e.g. past use of steroids, even if medically necessary at the time). So if as a kid you had to take steroids for a medical condition, you will have to demonstrate that this didn't affect your body's growth in a way that gives you an advantage over other women today.

OK, this isn't a simple solution after all, but it is a reasonable and I think fair one.

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Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.

Princess Anne of Great Britain by debest · 2012-08-02 08:12 · Score: 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Summer_Olympics#Highlights

Princess Anne of Great Britain competed in the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal (equestrian). Unsurprisingly, she happens to be the *only* female competitor to not have to submit to a "sex test" at that games.

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Re:Princess Anne of Great Britain by kaliann · 2012-08-02 17:18 · Score: 1

There is no gender division in equestrian events, and therefore no point in testing any of the competitors. Men, women, intersex, it doesn't matter: equestrian events are the only current Olympic sports where men and women compete against each other directly.
By the way, the reference in Wikipedia that you refer to has this in the citation: "This has often been reported as fact as early as 1977, but never verified by the Olympics authorities."
I'm going to consider it dubious at best.

Re:How hard can it be? by PPalmgren · 2012-08-02 08:21 · Score: 1

In your opinion, treating people equally means only rewarding results. In my opinion, equality also includes treating people equally in regards to effort. No amount of effort overcomes the genetic advantage men have in sports over women, so sports are segregated along the sex line and their champions are crowned within the two subdivisions. Both champions have pushed their bodies to its physical limits and been crowned best in the world among their peers. Its that fucking simple. Your ideological ramblings would mean women can't participate in sports in your system, because as you stated, "From each according to ability," and they can never overcome the cieling their body places on them with respect to men.

Like I said earlier in different wording, you try to force the people into a black-and-white ideology, completely leaving out the human elements, as evidenced above. As a little side story, my Dad was an olympic swimmer and I was nationally ranked by the age of 12, but I hated it. My ability points to me following that path, but I hated it and quit. That doesn't work in your system because my disdain for the sport overrode my ability to perform it. Are you saying I shouldn't have a choice and have to live a miserable life doing something solely because I'm good at it? If so, fuck you and your ideology.

The funny thing is this doesn't even account for the byproducts of segregated sports. Just because one sex may be faster or stronger doesn't mean that the other isn't as competitive or enjoyable to watch. Sports are about how closely matched the competitors are, not whose the perfect specimen. This is why junior sports are enjoyable despite the amatuer play. Hey, since we're throwing out sex, why not throw out age too, another defining physiological segregator, and never reward kids who do the best among their peers because they can't keep up with olympians. Talk about killing motivation.

I'm done discussing this with you, so don't expect another reply. I think the only thing I learned from this discussion is that you've probably never competed successfully in something in your life and for some reason have a deep disdain for women's sports. Oh, and that I probably got trolled. I'm not interested in discussing ideologies, since as history shows us, they never work as you predict them to. As I stated earlier, ideologies are a cop-out to answering hard questions. All this discussion boiled down to "but my socialist definition of perfection says this." Discussing things with people of your mindset is unbearable, and I can only hope that you'll grow into a more well-rounded person in the future.

Until then.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by just+another+AC · 2012-08-02 08:32 · Score: 1

swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second.

umm... short memory. I recall a long debate on slashdot 48 hours ago, about the timing accuracy of the starting gun in running events and detecting false starts down to the accuracy of 10,000th's and finer.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/08/01/079234/speed-of-sound-is-too-slow-for-the-olympics

Re:How hard can it be? by Hatta · 2012-08-02 09:25 · Score: 2

In my opinion, equality also includes treating people equally in regards to effort.

So you'd rather be treated by a doctor with an IQ of 80 who barely passed medical school through extraordinary effort than an ordinary doctor who exerted ordinary effort and graduated at the middle of his class?

No amount of effort overcomes the genetic advantage men have in sports over women

No amount of effort overcomes the genetic advantage West African men have over European men in sprinting. Should we have separate medals for individuals with the rs1815739 mutation in ACTN3?

Your ideological ramblings would mean women can't participate in sports in your system

Not at all, they just wouldn't get the highest honors in sports where they didn't earn them. Are you claiming that there's no point in participating in sports if you aren't good enough to be the world's best?

Even if that were the case, women could participate in competitions where they have a natural advantage. That is, unless you're going to assert that men are superior to women in every measurable way. But I'd find that hard to believe. There has to be some competition where broad hips or a richly interconnected corpus callosum provide an advantage.

Hey, since we're throwing out sex, why not throw out age too, another defining physiological segregator

Great example. They don't award gold medals for the fastest time by a 40 year old. Why is sex any different?

for some reason have a deep disdain for women's sports.

No, just sexism and other forms of prejudice.

I'm not interested in discussing ideologies

You were the one who brought ideology into it, when you accused me of being a social darwinist.

Discussing things with people of your mindset is unbearable, and I can only hope that you'll grow into a more well-rounded person in the future.

I can't change my opinions unless they are demonstrated to be incorrect. I love it when that happens, because it means I have grown as a person. But it won't happen except for discussions like this.

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Ancient Olympics Were Nude by Tokolosh · 2012-08-02 09:29 · Score: 2

Maybe the ancient Greeks were on to something?

On the plus side:
Gender assignment by audience applause
No silly controversies over beach volleyball bikinis
Beach volleyball
Gymnastics

On the negative side:
Weightlifting
Wrestling
Shot put
Dangerous hurdles for men

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Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-08-02 09:49 · Score: 1

I heard a comment like this from a female general about women in combat. Her solution was, just use more women. That's great if you have more, but who wants to go on a two-"man" sniper team with Buffy knowing she doesn't have chance carrying you to safety if you get hit? Ironic, but that was what made me think that some sexual discrimination is a good thing.

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I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!

Why call them sex categories? by Pfhorrest · 2012-08-02 09:55 · Score: 1

I understand the need to have different classes of competition otherwise whole demographics (like women) will almost always be excluded. But why does this have to be drawn along explicitly sexual lines? Why not something like boxing's weight categories? Determine whatever attribute it is which typical women typically lack compared to men which justifies the separate women's category, and just categorize people by that attribute, without calling it "women's" or "men's".

Sure, demographically you will end up with even mixes of the best women and the 10th-best men competing against each other in the lower category, and mostly men and the rare superwoman competing against each other in the upper category, but if that's what the demographics are then so be it.

Better still, why not let everybody compete in one category, and then besides the main award, give out separate awards for "best in [whatever] demographic", e.g. strongest female weightlifter or fastest white runner. Let the official olympic committee determine only the total ranking of all players, and let whatever subcomittees want to form determine the criteria by which they select members of their set -- pre-sorted from the total set -- for their special awards.

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-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."

Re:How hard can it be? by Carnildo · 2012-08-02 10:18 · Score: 1

I would say keep it safe: plain XX is women, everything else is men/open.

That's got its own problems. Consider 46, XX/XY mosaicism: which division the person is eligible to compete in depends on where you get your chromosome sample from. Or what about trisomy X? Is an extra inch or two of height really such a big advantage that they need to compete in the open division? XX male syndrome is extremely rare, but if someone happens to wind up with both that and the typical genetic advantages of an elite athlete, it could add up to an unfair advantage in the womens' division.

Testosterone levels may form a continuum, but they have two advantages: 1) the vast majority of people (including elite athletes) have levels that fall into either the "male" bucket or the "female" bucket, and 2) testosterone levels have a better correlation with athletic performance than "XX/not XX".

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"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.

Um, no... by tjstork · 2012-08-02 10:51 · Score: 1

Ok, let's get to some reality checks. One of the unofficial world records for a non-steroid'd woman bench pressing, on the entire planet earth, is in the neighborhood of about 400lbs. I can do that, and I'm a 45 year old programmer, and there's plenty of guys out there that can hit that pretty easy. In fact, the world record's lift for a guy I think is well over 1000lbs. So now let's see, at the top of the curve, the strongest guys are -twice- as strong as the strongest women.

So sure, let's have a competition... let's follow your suggestion and have men and women compete together in the same exact thing. You know what would happen? Women wouldn't even qualify for half of the events. They wouldn't be in any weight lifting, any distance throwing events, any weight carrying. What about wrestling? Are women going to do that? Hmmm, don't think so. Maybe play football? Are you saying women should just try out to be on the same football team as guys?

How can you say separate divisions for men and women are sexist, when without them, women wouldn't even get a chance to play?

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This is my sig.

Re:Um, no... by Cederic · 2012-08-02 10:59 · Score: 1

If the competition is to lift weights, the fact that women wouldn't win doesn't mean they can't compete. It means that none of them are strong enough to win.
I don't know if you noticed, but approximately 3 billion men also aren't going to win. Just what's the problem here?
Re:Um, no... by Reziac · 2012-08-03 05:12 · Score: 1

So how about a different class setup, based on muscle mass proportional to body weight?
Wimpy geek guys could find themselves competing with the dames... well, at least that way they'd meet girls ;)

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Paul+Jakma · 2012-08-02 11:01 · Score: 1

She didn't beat her previous best time by 5 seconds. Her personal best has improved by 5s over the last *two years* - you can easily check that. It is far from unknown for swimmers to make great leaps in their performance between the ages of 14 and 16. Indeed, it would be unusual if they *didn't*. Ian Thorpe, the Australian Olympic gold medallist, stated on BBC that he improved by 5s in just *one* year at around that age.

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Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Paul+Jakma · 2012-08-02 11:11 · Score: 1

Oh, and Rebecca Soni, of the USA, improved the world record for the 200m breast-stroke from 2:20.12 to 2:19.59 over 2 races on 2 back-to-back days, an improvement of 0.53s - which is an improvement of 0.3782% over the previous time. Ye Shi Wen improved the WR in the *400m* medley from 4:29.45 to 4:28.43, 1.02s - which is a 0.3785% improvement.

If you think Ye Shi Wen's improvement of 0.3785% is so impossible that it must have been because of doping, I hope you'll also similarly be accusing Rebecca Soni. If you don't, you're a hypocrite.

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I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-02 13:05 · Score: 1

The problem is that we have two classes of competitions, [...]

More than two, if you include the Paralympics.

By the way, it's probably for the best that you posted this as an AC, because you damn well should be ashamed of what you wrote. No true nerd would ever refer to someone with a lesser capacity for engaging in athletic activities as "genetically inferior".

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-02 13:10 · Score: 1

You could have them compete, but in many situation you would need to give the women a head start.

Just like the example of weight classes, it wouldn't be the first time. Many sports have a handicapping system, including horse racing, golf, croquet, sailing and basketball.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-02 13:11 · Score: 1

One more thing while I think of it.

From what I understand women just can not hit a golf ball as far as a man, and I assume this is repeated in most other sports.

It's the opposite in gymnastics.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-02 13:15 · Score: 1

If we draw the line at humanity, who would straddle that line?

Oscar Pistorius, to pick but one.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-02 13:42 · Score: 1

It's not discriminatory, it's reality. If you actually have less ability, you should actually not get a medal.

Where I live, the police force has a huge gender imbalance on the dog squad. The reason for this is that to be on the dog squad, you are required to be able to lift a fully-grown alsatian over a six-foot-high wall. Needless to say, there is a larger pool of men who can do this than women.

This is, I think most of us would agree, perfectly reasonable, even if we also think it's unfortunate. There is tremendous social value in having a police dog squad; dogs are, for example, a far less dangerous way of chasing and subduing people who present a danger to the public. Losing a dog is nowhere near as bad as losing a human. Crucially, lowering the requirements (or using smaller dogs, as one hack suggested) would decrease the operational effectiveness of the squad, and thus the public would be at greater risk.

You, on the other hand, are talking about sport. Winning a gold medal might be great for the person who won it, but for the rest of us, that act has no utility by itself. The social value of elite sport is twofold: entertainment, and encouraging people to get fitter and healthier.

What you've failed to show is that the nett social value of elite sport is decreased by having separate contests for men and women, able-bodied and disabled, adults and children, professional and amateur, major and minor leagues, and so on. Indeed, the opposite is actually true. Having different classes of contest increases nett social value on both metrics: it broadens the audience for the entertainment, and encourages a wider variety of people to engage in fitness activities.

So you'd have a point if the question of who got a gold medal actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. But we're all nerds here, and I think we all know that's not true.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

Re:How hard can it be? by wisnoskij · 2012-08-02 13:45 · Score: 1

They do not seem to have any kind of objective scoring system to judge fairly.

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Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.

Re:How hard can it be? by Pseudonym · 2012-08-02 13:55 · Score: 1

That's true of many sports.

I once worked on a system to try to improve the situation for boxing, which currently has one of the most non-objective systems in existence. (In case you're curious why they still use the old system, it turns out to be fiendishly difficult to build circuitry designed to be repeatedly hit.)

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});

Mod parent up by Asmor · 2012-08-02 14:02 · Score: 1

This is what I came here to say.

Let men and women, and anyone who doesn't fall neatly into one of those categories compete together, in the same events, against each other. We're all humans. Is one sex being marginally better at a particular category of events any different from, say, people native to high-altitude countries being better runners?

Not allowing everyone to compete together is discrimination, plain and simple.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by gullevek · 2012-08-02 14:45 · Score: 1

Bobsled racing is also measured in 1000th seconds. But that is the only other I know where they official print out the 1000th seconds. I don't know if they print that out in swimming.

Perhaps everything is measured in 1000th seconds, it is just not shown.

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"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Eskarel · 2012-08-02 19:19 · Score: 1

There's an awful lot of writing by the folks who founded them that's got a hell of a Eugenics slant.

Now there's a bit of a difficulty in that what the "super man" that the Olympic founders envisioned and the "super man" that actual wins modern Olympics are not the same beast(as a specific example, a lot of the people who win modern Olympics would have been considered as being sub human, not super human by the people who founded the thing, but there's definitely a lot of that same flavor going on, even if white accountants from Bristol might have been what they considered genetically superior.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Eskarel · 2012-08-02 19:57 · Score: 1

Except that women are built differently than men. You can pretend otherwise, but in many sports, the Olympic winner would always be a man, not because they put in more effort, not because they were even genetically superior, but simply because they have a different physical structure. Doesn't matter how much testosterone you pump into them, they're still different. The Olympics recognize that different is not inferior so they have separate competitions.

Epic fail by dbIII · 2012-08-02 22:02 · Score: 1

It was many years ago (late 1960s or early 1970s), hormone treatment wasn't available back then and it turns out she's had three children now (someone else mentioned her).
My point is it's hard to work out where to draw the line and it's been drawn very badly in the past, which is why the entire IMHO silly issue was dropped until relatively recently when a South African runner was given a ridiculously hard time over her genetics.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Jesrad · 2012-08-03 00:49 · Score: 1

You might want to rethink that: hypospadias is very common.

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Maybe we deserve this world ?

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-08-03 01:07 · Score: 1

Asian is not a race : they are the second most diverse "race" Indians and Japanese have very little in common ...

The nearest we have is Caucasian (which I am) but this covers both Arnold Schwarzenegger and DJ Qualls so even that is relatively diverse

Having said that, genetically we are all very very similar ....

--
Puteulanus fenestra mortis

Re:How hard can it be? by Reziac · 2012-08-03 05:37 · Score: 1

Friend's mother was born with two complete sets of reproductive organs, including ovaries. Whether she was a "failed twin" or something else, I don't know. Had two kids then a hysterectomy, since having two sets firing all the time was wearing her out.

Oddly, her daughter has only one ovary... I guess making up for mom having four!

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Re:Overcomplicating things? by Reziac · 2012-08-03 05:42 · Score: 1

That's an interesting question... consider that consuming too much phytoestrogen can cause feminizing birth defects in male infants.

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by NeutronCowboy · 2012-08-03 17:21 · Score: 1

There's an awful lot of writing by the folks who founded them that's got a hell of a Eugenics slant.

[Citation Needed], twit. Seriously, what's up with people just making shit up? Not only making shit up, but also blatantly ignoring everything that runs counter their made up shit, including some very basic world history?

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Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway? by Eskarel · 2012-08-03 18:40 · Score: 1

FFS I'm not implying that the Olympic founders were out there trying to wipe out undesirables or create concentration camps. I'm saying that their idea of Olympic this and Olympic that and how it would create almost a new nation of Olympians has roots in the ideas of Eugenics which were immensely popular amongst all kinds of people at the time.

The Olympics are about finding the very best physical specimens of humanity, at least partially in the hopes that these people would find some way to prevent war and misunderstanding. It was in many ways a noble goal, but they still wanted to accomplish it through super people, stop seeing the word "eugenics" and thinking creepy Nazi in a lab. Sure the idea of the encouragement of genetic superiority seems to inevitably lead to horrors unimaginable, but that doesn't mean that everyone who was touting those ideas was ill intentioned.

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test by Troed · 2012-08-04 05:34 · Score: 1

the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second

That would be Formula 1.

(and I'm not sure about "only")

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it's in my head

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