I could not even imagine living your entire life as a female, and then be lucky enough to participate in the Olympics, only to be humiliated by having someone accuse you of being a man. Not to mention the entire investigation and testing… How horrified I would be! I am not sure if I would be outraged and potentially not comply with the testing, or just simply shy away from the media and allow the tests to be run. Obviously people only think of themselves and not the emotions or national pride of the person it is affecting.
But when does it cross the line from being rude to needing to be tested? I understand the rule of needing to be in the newly assigned gender for two years before they can participate in the Olympics. Women naturally have some testosterone in them as men have some estrogen. It is not uncommon to find trace amounts in each person. So what if a person has almost half of each? I would say that whatever they have identified themselves as, is what they should be allowed to participate in the Olympics as. Requiring reassignment surgery costs too much money and takes too much time. The athletes are ready to be an athlete NOW, not in two years. Requiring someone to have the surgery also takes away from who that person is. It has been a part of their life for that long, it defines who they are. One Olympic race should not make a person completely change who they are.
The only reason I could see someone needed to be tested was if their final time completely blew all the other competitors out of the water such as a female identifying person having an obscure time that most men could only hope to achieve.
What you described in the last paragraph is basically what happened with Caster Semenya, as we discussed in class. The unfortunate thing for her--there were several things actually--is that the Stockholm Consensus still does not address her condition (i.e., intersex). The other thing that was so negative about her experience was that she was only 18 years old when the publicity surrounding her condition was made public! That had to be the worst case scenario.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this can be a very humiliating predicament to be in. But also unfortunately, some of these athletes go to such extremes to get an edge in their sport that there are many illegal drugs that make it difficult for the testing to be a tell all. This all puts the ethics committee in a tough situation and sometimes an athlete is put in embarrassing situations due to what other athletes have done.
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