December 18, 2006

The only word I can think of is: YUCK!

posted by yay-yo at 12:00 PM on December 18, 2006

No one would choose to be a woman in India, would they? Sex-selective abortions and all that continues today. Gender testing needs to be dropped for all international sports. I seriously doubt she is a fake, more like she is being punished for a different genetic make up.

posted by bperk at 12:22 PM on December 18, 2006

But cleared a gender test last year...

posted by Fence at 02:16 PM on December 18, 2006

With curves like hers, how could they say that?

posted by BamaClass at 04:41 PM on December 18, 2006

The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, and an internal medicine specialist. There seems to be a large amount of people involved in issuing the gender test.

posted by Ying Yang Mafia at 05:20 PM on December 18, 2006

That's a man, baby!

posted by wfrazerjr at 06:33 PM on December 18, 2006

The great part is that the first post is actually pretty amusing until it's excessively explained and discussed. That's a lot of effort to go to just to ruin a joke.

posted by BullpenPro at 11:05 PM on December 18, 2006

All that for a silver medal, huh? Lame.

posted by psmealey at 07:00 AM on December 19, 2006

psmealey I am not sure what you mean by "all that" but this is almost certainly not a black-and-white case of a man pretending to be a woman to win a sporting event. Soudarajan simply falls somewhere in between. As uncomfortable as that idea is for some people, it is not something we should be outraged or disgusted about (not that you expressed those sentiments, I know). I don't know all the facts in this case, but it appears that she was identified as a girl when she was born. Since puberty obviously things have become rather less clearly defined. It is not something we encounter every day, to be sure, but it does happen . That doesn't make her a cheater.

posted by Amateur at 07:54 AM on December 19, 2006

anyone else have a problem with the title of this post? I should think it would be: (s)he failed ?

posted by coryphaeus at 02:03 PM on December 19, 2006

Cory, I've been thinking about that since I posted it. It should be (s)he.

posted by garfield at 03:04 PM on December 19, 2006

Maybe they've been going to mitchell's English class in Korea? That would be suspicious.

posted by owlhouse at 03:35 PM on December 19, 2006

It appears that genetics were not The Good Dr.'s reason. Speaking of non sequiturs. What's your point, mjk?

posted by lil_brown_bat at 05:56 PM on December 19, 2006

The Richards case (and the more current Dumaresq case I linked to earlier) leave open at least the possibility that somebody might someday "choose" to be a transsexual just to gain an "advantage" as an athlete. The case we started out discussing is really not about that in any way, though. But once you acknowledge -- and you have, mjk -- that there are more than two categories for gender, then what? "Transsexual, born male, testes surgically removed, receiving female replacement hormones" is certainly not identical to "man." Nor is it identical to "woman," but those are the only two possibilities we have when it comes to sport.

posted by Amateur at 09:23 PM on December 19, 2006

Lets just speak in terms we can all relate to- a Hermaphrodite. How about we speak in terms that are accurate, instead? I suggest you take a read of the "intersexualism" link that mjk provided above. it is very unfair to compete against women that have not just "chosen" to compete as females Says you. If you are referring again to sex reassigned transsexuals -- not Soudarajan -- the doctors on the ad hoc committee of the IOC medical commission disagree. As for Soudarajan, why is it so difficult to accept that there is a grey area instead of a "bright line," as lbb put it? And if there isn't a clean division into two categories, then somebody has to make a judgement call. Maybe Soudarajan falls just to the "male" side of that judgement call, but to call that "extremely unfair" is to ignore reality. Would it surprise you to find out that 8 female competitors at the 1996 Olympic games (out of 3387 tested) "failed" the gender test that was in place at the time? They tested positive for Y chromosomal material. After further investigation of their cases, all eight of them were allowed to compete as women. Mandatory gender testing is now no longer required at the Olympics.

posted by Amateur at 07:56 AM on December 20, 2006

Would it surprise you to find out that 8 female competitors at the 1996 Olympic games (out of 3387 tested) "failed" the gender test No shit? I didn't realize that gender bending, or whatever it is gender testing is trying to prevent, was so prevalent. What could be responsible for the presence of Y chromosomal material in a woman? (I'm working from the base model of male = X Y, female = X X)

posted by garfield at 10:05 AM on December 20, 2006

No shit? I didn't realize that gender bending, or whatever it is gender testing is trying to prevent, was so prevalent. What could be responsible for the presence of Y chromosomal material in a woman? (I'm working from the base model of male = X Y, female = X X) Sometimes it just happens, garfield. Your assumption that these individuals are the result of "gender bending" may be off base.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 10:13 AM on December 20, 2006

What could be responsible for the presence of Y chromosomal material in a woman? The most common cause of a "failed" gender test is a condition known as androgen insensitivity syndrome or AIS. These are XY individuals with a genetic defect which makes them completely insensitive to androgen. As a result they develop all the external signs of being girls, and may not have any idea that they are XY until puberty or later: "Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS; testicular feminization; Tfm). Individuals with CAIS have normal female external genitalia. They typically present either before puberty with masses in the inguinal canal that are subsequently identified as testes or at puberty with primary amenorrhea and sparse to absent pubic or axillary hair. Breasts and female adiposity develop normally. Sexual identity and orientation are unaffected." Such individuals have, for the past couple of decades at least, been eligible to compete in women's events at the Olympics. Gender tests conducted under IOC jurisdiction no longer rely on a simple Y-chromosome detection. Reading between the lines, the Indian runner might have Partial AIS, which results in "overmasculinized" female genetalia and various other abnormalities. Or it might be something rarer. If, as Fence pointed out above, she "passed" a gender test a few months ago, it is probably not a case of deliberate deception.

posted by Amateur at 12:14 PM on December 20, 2006

What if a journeyman PGA Tour pro had "sex reassignment surgery" and completely dominated the LPGA Tour? Well, while we're tossing out hypotheticals, what if a herd of circus ponies breaks into your home tonight and tramples you to death? What are you gonna do then? What's that you say? Where did I get the herd of circus ponies? The same place you got your hypothetical journeyman PGA Tour pro who wants sex reassignment surgery, that's where. As long as we're making it up, we can make up any "what if" we want. Meanwhile, back in the real world, there are people who are neither unambiguously male nor unambiguously female who want to participate in sports, even in sports competition. Why is the kneejerk response to that reality a wish to make rules that draw lines defining who gets excluded, rather than to find ways to include people? Hypothetical "this could happens" that never have happened do not seem to me to be an adequate justification for exclusion, is all I'm saying.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 12:35 PM on December 20, 2006

As long as we're making it up, we can make up any "what if" we want. Well, sure we can. It's just that mjk's hypothetical has bearing on this discussion, while yours doesn't. In fact, it's really not a hypothetical at all, at least not the first part of it. Mianne Bagger has been barred from playing in LPGA events because she is not, in the terms of the tour, a "natural-born woman." The LPGA is, however, apparently researching the issue further. The point of hypotheticals, in my mind, is to raise the possibility of some event and then discuss what steps can or should be taken in advance of that event. I'm not sure how you could plan for anything without using them, and the alternative would see to be allowing everything and facing the possibiilty of sorting out the mess afterward, i.e. MLB not banning steroids outright as soon as it knew about their use. Also -- I won't be putting up fences around my home to ward off advancing hordes of ponies.

posted by wfrazerjr at 01:06 PM on December 20, 2006

Unless Bagger was a pro golfer as a male, she doesn't satisfy mjk's hypothetical at all. His "what-if" has very nearly zero probability of ever being realized, and we all know it. Furthermore, the argument is based on a statement of conjecture (male journeyman pro + SRS = world's dominant female player) which cannot be supported by an actual example, and is contrary to the opinions of many medical experts. Like you, fraze, I don't have a pony protection fence around my house. Similarly, I don't think we should make a rule that excludes a small number of actual humans to protect us from one that will probably never exist outside our imaginations. If there's a case for having that rule, this isn't it.

posted by Amateur at 02:08 PM on December 20, 2006

Believe me, I have no problem with excluding men from the LPGA (I realize that some people do, or rather that this straw man argument is raised as a justification for excluding women from the PGA etc.). Yes, the rules can exclude certain groups of people. I just think you should have a better reason than "what if Ian Leggatt decides to have SRS and then dominates women's golf?" I also think that a hard and fast scientific exclusion (the Y-Chromosome Free Professional Golfers Association) excludes a number of people who are in all other respects female, for little apparent benefit. Or maybe somebody can convince me of the benefits.

posted by Amateur at 02:40 PM on December 20, 2006

Finally answering the eternal question: "What if my mother had balls and joined the LPGA?" She always chickened out.

posted by yerfatma at 03:11 PM on December 20, 2006

Unless Bagger was a pro golfer as a male, she doesn't satisfy mjk's hypothetical at all. Bagger may not have been a professional golfer, but I highly doubt she picked up the game after crossing over. She herself said she noticed she didn't have the distance and backspin she had had as a male, which makes me think she was playing at a high level before. lbb, I understand your argument about exclusion, but I think the LPGA's choice here is one of caution and prudence. While it doesn't appear she had the SRS to further her career, so what? Will the LPGA have to delve into the background of SRSers to make a judgement call as to whether the surgery was done for psychological reasons or to enhance a career? Why should they? Even Renee Richards says in the article I linked earlier that maybe transgenders shouldn't have the same rights in terms of sports. As for women carrying Y chromosomes, that's a more difficult situation. IANAD, and so I have no idea whether or not those folks have some inherit genetic advantage or disadvantage in any activity. In fact, I have no idea whether that's even a legitimate question about the subject. I am pretty sure, however, that the LPGA is not the body which should be conducting that research, and if there's enough of a question out there that women (and men) are alternately passing and failing gender tests, I'd stand pat until it is answered.

posted by wfrazerjr at 04:54 PM on December 20, 2006

lbb, I'm with you on the desire to include as many athletes as possible, but I'm not sure that it leads me to the same conclusions. If, as it appears, Soudarajan is partly male, and if those male characteristics result in any advantage against women, then the only answer would be for her to compete against males. Otherwise, it cheats all those competing against her. She probably couldn't compete successfully against men because her genetic make up would be a disadvantage there, but my genetic make up won't allow me to play in the NBA or NFL either. I don't have the combination of size, speed and strength to be successful in any position at that level and no amount of training would be sufficient to overcome that. It's unfortunate for her, but it would be much more fair for her to compete against men (again, assuming that she has male characteristics that would be an advantage over women), than it would for her to compete against women. Her genetics could keep her from competing at a world class level, but that's true of 99% of the people on the planet. Also Amateur, I'm not sure why you think that the fact that Bagger wasn't a pro as a man invalidates mjk's point. If anything, it supports him. Bagger wasn't good enough to be a pro as a man, but as a woman, well...who knows how good she could be? Granted, it's not the "male journeyman pro + SRS = world's dominant female player" formula. It's worse. The actual formula is as follows: decent male amateur + SRS = competitive female pro. That is a valid point as far as I can see.

posted by ctal1999 at 06:00 PM on December 20, 2006

But what about the many sports and competitions where there is no "unrestricted" field? Seems to me this is the rule rather than the exception. I'm not following you, sorry. Maybe we mean different things by "unrestricted". Could you give me an example?

posted by qbert72 at 07:55 PM on December 20, 2006

How does the IOC manage things if it no longer uses gender tests? Good faith? More or less, qbert. The basic sentiment was that: - the genetic tests were really only useful for flagging 'interesting' cases for further, um, investigation. Almost all of them turned out to be women, from a physiological point of view. - in this age of pervasive dope testing -- it is not possible to hide your genitalia during a WADA-sanctioned urine collection, believe me -- and skin-tight uniforms, it is very unlikely that a man could 'pass' as a woman for long. So participants at the Olympic Games are no longer subjected to mandatory gender testing of any kind. 1996 was the last time everybody had to go for a buccal swab. There is still gender testing, if requested (as was apparently done in this case). I do not know the details on who can request it, and when.

posted by Amateur at 09:36 PM on December 20, 2006

So why not use an actual person as an example? To quote myself in a comment made earlier, "Dr. Richards was 40 years old, a career amateur, and still was competetive to a certain extent against women pros half her age, quite a feat in tennis."

posted by mjkredliner at 12:07 AM on December 21, 2006

mjk, I acknowledged the validity of that example. What I'm suggesting is that the use of the extreme hypothetical, which you introduced to the debate, adds nothing to the argument -- it's a cheap trick designed to get a knee-jerk response ("well that wouldn't be fair!") without any basis for establishing that it would or could happen.

posted by Amateur at 07:17 AM on December 21, 2006

qbert: I'm not following you, sorry. Maybe we mean different things by "unrestricted". Could you give me an example? We mean the same thing by "unrestricted", but "unrestricted" classes in competitive sport almost always deal with age or weight. While there is competition that is unrestricted by gender, there isn't much of it, and in the world of gender-restricted sports, where does an intersexed person who's lived all her life as a woman go? Amateur has been doing a better job of saying what I've been trying to say: physiological differences exist among human beings that may give individuals an advantage in a competitive sports situation, yet we don't, for the most part, feel that it's appropriate to try and regulate away those differences. Dawn Staley, at 5' 3", had to compete against Margo Dydek at 7' 4", and no one felt the need to exclude the one for being too short or the other for being too tall. If this range of physiological advantage is acceptable, why is a range based on fuzzy gender not? I think it's because we're too stuck on looking at the label rather than on what the actual "advantage" is.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 08:03 AM on December 21, 2006

ctal, as far as Soudarajan is concerned I really don't know how I feel. I think that there are some kinds of intersexualism (e.g. CAIS) where the right answer is fairly obvious. There are other cases where things are not so clear, and given that Soudarajan passed and then failed a gender test she is probably pretty close to the line. The determination should be based on asking how much natural advantage she has over other women, and whether that is large or small compared to the natural differences between women. Since I don't know what Soudarajan's status is I can't say very much about her. These cases should be decided by experts in sports medicine (and I am not one). The more controversial issue deals with transsexuals, who have at least some degree of choice when it comes to their chemical gender (for lack of a better word). However, as post-SRS women, these athletes have no remaining chemical advantage over their competitors. They receive female hormones and have had their testes removed. Any advantage that lingers is due to the male chemistry they had during puberty, and any associated sociological differences (e.g. because they were boys they were encouraged to be more aggressive). Again, the question in my mind is whether these advantages are large or small compared to natural differences between women. A team of experts commissioned by the IOC to study the issue determined the conditions under which a male-to-female SRS athlete should be allowed to compete against women. That's not without controversy, and -- as you pointed out -- lots of female athletes disagree with it (my wife is one of them). Most of them feel that a post-SRS female should not be allowed to compete in women's events. Finally, since you brought up doping, consider this. When an athlete has a first positive test, she is usually suspended for competition for two years. After that time she is reinstated to competition. A male-to-female SRS athlete similarly has to wait two years before she can compete in women's events. This has been a good conversation. As usual I have contributed too many words but I have learned a few new things, so thanks.

posted by Amateur at 08:41 AM on December 21, 2006

Maybe it's because I'm more knowledgeable of professional than amateur sports, but I don't know of that world you speak of. A person of any gender can play in the PGA, NHL or whatnot. I thought we established long ago that so-called "mens" circuits are in fact open circuits. No, we didn't. Each circuit and each league is whatever it is; no one, certainly not "we" on Sportsfilter, ever came up with a blanket rule establishing who may compete in all of them. I'll give you one small limited example from the wide world of sports competition: high school sports in the United States. As educational organizations that receive federal tax dollars, US high schools are required to provide access to programs irrespective of gender. This includes high school sports. However, this does not mean that every team in every sport at every high school in every state is open to any student, regardless of gender. Each school is supposed to provide something that can be construed as equal opportunity, but US federal law grants a lot of leeway in how that can be measured. It can mean providing equal dollars to boys' and girls' programs, although no one ever does that because of (cue dramatic music) football. It can mean fielding boys' and girls' teams in each sport, or an equal number of boys' and girls' teams. Or, it can mean allowing a student to compete on a team that is nominally of the opposite gender. To make matters more complex, each state's interscholastic athletic association creates its own set of regulations indicating which forms of the federally-approved compliance may be used within the state. The end result is that an individual school may well blend several of these forms of compliance: my local high school, for instance, fields a football team that is nominally for boys and a field hockey team that is nominally for girls, but they have had boys compete on their field hockey team -- and their girls' tennis team has competed against teams including boys. If you stopped reading halfway through that paragraph, I don't blame you. The point is that there are plenty of gender restrictions in sports participation. As for the Olympics, they deal with it by having competition for both men and women -- sort of. Women's ski jumping didn't make it into the Vancouver Olympics, which sucks much ass if you ask me. I think it has to do with the fact that gender defines this field of play. It is womens sports, after all. If there is fuzziness about who can play, then there is a door open for abuse. And no matter how much you dislike "what if"'s, they're what making rules is all about. Hang on -- you just got done telling me that you didn't know of the world of gender-restricted sports, and now you're sayng that "gender defines this field of play"? As for the fuzziness, you missed my point: there are already great physiological differences between competitors, much greater than those posed by transsexualism or intersexed status. Given that, isn't it purely arbitrary to say that these differences are permissible, but "fuzziness" in the matter of gender is not? If your answer to this is, "Yes, but you have to draw the line somewhere," we're now going in circles. My whole point has been that if you're going to make rules and draw lines regulating sports competition, then for God's sake, draw them where it makes some sense! Why were you creating the rule in the first place? Um...er...well...I forgot...cuz you gotta have rules? Oh, wait, to ensure fair competition! Well, that's great. But a set of rules that arbitrarily bans intersexed people, while permitting Margo Dydek to play in the same competition as Dawn Staley, has nothing to do with ensuring fair competition.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 11:21 AM on December 21, 2006

you'll again be the first to denounce this injustice Well, hurray for me. I'd rather be among the first to denounce an injustice than among those hanging to the rear, or acting as apologists. We all have our choices to make, I guess.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 01:19 PM on December 21, 2006

l_b_b, qbert has a point though. Since every person is unique, none of us are ever exactly equal (except in theory) in any situation. There will always be unavoidable inequity in any and every group. If you define it as an injustice every time someone is just a hair outside of the rules, then there are injustices in almost every competitive situation. What's worse, more often than not, if you eliminate one injustice, you'll end up creating others. You may want to rethink the Staley/Dydek argument as well. You're comparing apples and oranges. Soudarajan competes in an individual sport while Staley and Dydek are each part of a team. Their size, skills and style of play are very different even though they're playing the same game, but that's not a problem because the demands of their respective positions are different. They'd never be expected to compete against one another in a head to head sport where the size difference would be overwhelmingly decisive (weightlifting or boxing, for example). In many other individual sports, they'd both be eligible to compete, but not necessarily very capable because their physiology doesn't fit with the demands of that particular competition. I have no doubt that Staley would be a better gymnast or sprinter, while Dydek would most likely be better with strength related activities like the shot put. None of that matters because their game is basketball and they're each well suited to the demands of their given positions. Your comparison implies that the size difference somehow makes it as unfair for them to compete against one another as it would be for a woman who has male characteristics that give her an advantage over the standard woman to compete against a field comprised of just such women. That comparison simply doesn't wash. Remember, there is a qualifier here. If it's demonstrated that Soudarajan has some masculine characteristics, but none that give her an unusual edge (such as high testosterone levels, etc.), then there should be no objection to having her compete against other women. On the other hand, if she does have demonstrable advantages, and your interest is truly fairness, then you cannot expect all the other athletes to compete against her.

posted by ctal1999 at 03:04 PM on December 21, 2006

Sorry about the personal jab. No need to apologize at all. As I said before, I'm perfectly happy with where I am on the action/inaction spectrum when it comes to injustice. What you said is a compliment, not a jab. We will have to agree to disagree on this. You believe that the only way to avoid excluding intersexed people from sports is to eliminate women's sports. I believe you're wrong. Furthermore, while I grant you that slippery-slope and circus-pony arguments may be strong enough to carry the day when some matters are concerned, I'm strongly against them as the sole support for a policy of exclusion. When we're talking about not allowing people to play, I like stronger arguments than vague hypotheticals. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 03:42 PM on December 21, 2006

Hey...did somebody say "pony?" Hardy har har, har hardy.

posted by The_Black_Hand at 07:14 PM on December 21, 2006

Heh. It is, in fact, the case that Staley has gone up against Dydek and scored. That's one reason why I chose that example.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 07:33 AM on December 22, 2006