18 year old South African runner Caster Semenya, a favorite in the women's 800m and 1500m events at the world track and field championships in Berlin, is having to undergo a 'gender test' by order of IAAF, the sport's world governing body.
Even if you didn't go to med school that test should only take about 5 seconds right? Well, it isn't actually as simple as having the athlete drop his or her pants.
The Androgen Insensitivity Support Group website has a comprehensive explanation of the conditions that could make gender identification less than straight-forward. If allowed to simplify, you could say that sometimes the message from the chromosomes doesn't always get translated into the corresponding gonads (testes or ovaries) and the message from the gonads does not always make it to the external sex organs.
So why not just pick a definition - go by the external sex organs - and use it? Well, as with the rest of life there is quite a bit of gray area between even the mixed message scenarios I presented above - i.e. the genitalia themselves can be incomplete or indeterminate. The ESPN article describes the IAAF gender 'test' as involving "a physical medical evaluation, and includes reports from a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender", reflecting that gender determination can be a complex issue.
So what criteria does the IAAF use to render a final verdict? A vote of these specialists? That isn't clear, but I did find this helpful chapter in the book Women in Sport by Barbara Drinkwater. It describes how the medical community actually uses eight criteria when determining gender: 1) Sex chromosomes 2) Sex hormone pattern 3) Gonadal sex 4) Internal sex organs 5) External sex organs 6) Secondary sex characteristics (breasts, facial hair, etc) 7) Apparent sex (as presumed by others) 8) psychological sex (as person identifies him/herself - this is the one legal courts usually rule in favor of).
The problem, the author goes on to say, is that the initial screening tests used by sport organizations are usually only based on one of these criteria. The IAAF screening method apparently is/has been chromosome testing. She also brings up the fact that the main reason gender determination testing was adopted is to simply keep men from attempting to compete as women, not to make a decision in ambiguous cases. This is why, at least as of 2000, only 5 of the 34 Olympic sport governing bodies bothered testing for gender at their world championships. Female athletes themselves have not been clamoring for this type of testing and it has been shown that the more athletes are educated about the potentially complex nature of gender and testing for it the less likely they are to be in favor of screening.
The Science of Sport blog has a nice post about how most of the global scrutiny of this poor young woman could have been avoided if her country's federation had planned ahead. Such a situation indeed is unfair for both Semenya and her competitors.
The story of Erik Schinegger is probably the most famous case of gender identity in sport. Raised as Erika, Schinegger won the world championships in the women's downhill in 1966 only to have the title taken away when chromosomal tests said she was a he. The fact that he then decided to live as a male after 'medical treatments' goes to show the fluid nature of gender in certain cases and the absurdity of trying to break it down into a black and white issue.
I also recommend reading this excellent article from the Washington Post about 1932 Olympic champion sprinter Stella Walsh and the rumors that swirled upon her death in 1980 that she was really a man. Probably the most logical approach to this complicated issue is captured by this excerpt:
The best way to determine such children's sexual identity, says (William G.) Reiner, who directs the University of Oklahoma's psychosexual development clinic, is simply to ask them.
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