There's No Rulebook for Sex Verification

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/sports/22runner.html

by tokenadult • 17 years ago

51 83 17 years ago

nytimes.com

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

In the future, there will be illegal clone racing.

mrtron• 17 years ago

Is it tragic that it will be illegal?

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

It will be in the movie version...to be honest the above just popped into my head while I was brushing my teeth earlier and I typed it in without really thinking. Didn't mean to abuse HN as my personal notebook :-/

danw• 17 years ago

I believe that in addition to the Olympics and paralympics there should be an 'enhanced' Olympics. Any artificial limbs, performance enhancing drugs, etc would be allowed. A celebration of human technological progress.

joshu• 17 years ago

I've always wanted an "all modifications allowed" olympics. Athletes on three kinds of steroids, runners with /wheels/, whatever. I'd pay to see that.

boredguy82• 17 years ago

So good. Binary conceptions of gender really need to go the way of the dodo.

hughprime4• 17 years ago

Given that 99-point-something percent of people fall into one biological category or the other, it's a pretty reasonable approximation.

josefresco• 17 years ago

There are more cross-gender people in America than there are Jews.

boredguy82• 17 years ago

The whole point of that article is that there isn't one biological category or the other. It's nice to see blatant discrimination so highly rewarded, though. Maligning people as 'other' and making artificial constructions of stability that simply don't exist is really sad.

shrikant• 17 years ago

So, uh, here's a weird suggestion - have THREE categories:

1. Verifiably male 2. Verifiably female 3. None of the above

This would probably spur more transgenders into track and field, and sports in general..

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

I think you're going in the wrong direction with this, why not simply have one category and rank them all as 'people', the ultimate in emancipation.

modoc2• 17 years ago

Works out poorly for most women who then wouldn't get a chance at the podium in the majority of sports. I mean it's fine with me, I'm a male who's not too into sports, but...:)

kirse• 17 years ago

This sounds so intellectually deep and all, but did you even take roughly 30 seconds to think about what happens when you combine men and women in athletic competition?

Hint: Men will dominate (just about) everything.

Goladus9• 17 years ago

That's nice except that it would wind up defeating the whole purpose of gender categories to begin with, which is to give opportunity to a gender with biological disadvantages in that particular sport. For most traditional sports men have the advantages. In other words, one category would be discrimination.

Splitting it into two categories allows a statistically significant number of people to compete in a fair yet meaningful context.

Goladus9• 17 years ago

That will only work if there is a sufficient number of competitors. I'm sure "none of the aboves" are overrepresented in women's olympic sports but I am still skeptical they constitute a large enough population to create a whole new category.

hughprime4• 17 years ago

Also, you'll create a new problem: second-rate male athletes will try to get into the "none of the above" category, where they'll presumably be more competitive due to the low number of genuine contestants. How do you prove yourself "not verifiably male"?

zngtk4• 17 years ago

How do you determine "verifiably female?"

What if you have a "female" with high levels of androgens? Do you just say if you are 2 standard deviations within the mean of females you are verifiably female? Which is the cutoff?

gloob• 17 years ago

Which is the cutoff?

Pick one arbitrarily. It's inelegant, sure, but we use it for all sorts of other things. Significant example: are you an adult? All sorts of perfectly intelligent, rational arguments could be raised saying "It depends on the person, now doesn't it?" The law, however, says: If you have been alive for X number of years, you are an adult. Otherwise, you are not. It seems to work halfway adequately for that.

hughprime4• 17 years ago

Why not just ban those who aren't either verifiably male or female from competing?

What's that you say? It's unfair that these people, through a genetic quirk and no fault of their own, can no longer compete in international athletics? Well boo hoo, neither can I, so go get a real job like the rest of us.

JimmyL• 17 years ago

This kind of misses the point of the article - what is the definition of "verifiably male", for instance?

Goladus9• 17 years ago

When the point of a contest is to discover the best at some particular skill, fairness is an essential component of the rules.

While individuals may try to subvert the system for their own advancement, the spirit of competition is to win and win fairly. Winning because a challenger gets disqualified for silly reasons is less desirable than winning, as the saying goes, "fair and square."

kevinpet• 17 years ago

There's no need to ban them. Because of what the goals are and how every sport works out, the relevant categories are "female" and "not female". The point of the article is that the sporting bodies need to come up with clear well defined rules that don't leave the athletes sitting there not knowing whether they qualify.

clintboxe• 17 years ago

Poor Matthew!

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

Middlesex is one of the best novels of the decade, and covers the gender question in vivid and scientifically sound detail.

SapphireSun3• 17 years ago

Does anyone know why she was called to have her sex verified?

I'm not a sports fan, so maybe I'm missing something, but it is not in any article I've read in passing.

astine• 17 years ago

I caught in on the news earlier today. It's because she is a. significantly faster than her peers and b. looks , walks, and sounds like a man.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

This is why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRTdsxjYbJA - from 1:30s halfway through the second lap, she pulls ahead as if she was ... well, a man running in the womens race.

lacker• 17 years ago

Dang, I was hoping this article would be about the difficulty of passing the Turing test.

There's No Rulebook for Sex Verification

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