The Tricky Science of Olympic Gender Testing

First time accepted submitter erdos-bacon sandwich writes "Gender tests may be the most controversial obstacle the athletes face. The London Games tries a new approach based on testosterone. Of all the obstacles athletes have had to overcome to compete in the Olympics, perhaps the most controversial has been the gender test. Originally designed to prevent men from competing in women's events, it is based on the premise that competitors can be sorted into two categories via established scientific rules. But the biological boundaries of gender aren't always clear."

Comments

Is that a man or a woman?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: yes.

Re:Is that a man or a woman?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trouble is, sometimes the answer is no.

Re:Is that a man or a woman?

[drkim]

SEA is area with prominently open approach to ladyboys (transponders)

My ladyboy usually squawks 7000.

Re:Is that a man or a woman?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[Rei]

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.

Re:How hard can it be?

[oiron]

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...

Re:How hard can it be?

[cstacy]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:How hard can it be?

[AmiMoJo]

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

Re:How hard can it be?

[Pseudonym]

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?

Re:Why seperate competions by gender anyway?

[Eskarel]

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?

[HungryHobo]

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?

[quantaman]

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.

Re:Overcomplicating things?

[jamesh]

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:How hard can it be?

[Jesrad]

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' ?

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test

[samkass]

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.

Re:How hard can it be?

[Rei]

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...

Re:Simple, surely

[Rei]

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?

Re:Is it true that Chinese girl pass all drug test

[AngryDeuce]

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

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Intersex is not the same as gay or transgender

[jc42]

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?