Gender and transgender in sport

FR Drew

FR Drew

Not a custom title.
Recent events with the Sth African lady with some proportion of male content in her physiological makeup has got me pondering the Michelle Dumaresq incident in Canada a few years ago...

(For the beneft of those who are unaware, Michelle Dumaresq is a trangender DH rider who won the Canadian National championships a couple of years ago. The rider who came second Dannika Schroeter (?) wore a t shirt on the podium which had "100% Canadian Womens Champion" written on it in black felt tip pen. Following abuse of Dumaresq by some of Schroeters fans, Schroeter was handed a 3 month ban by the Canadian governing body for cycling.)

In response to the recent controversy over the Sth African sprinter, all walks of media including Radio National, a range of sports commentators and governing bodies were all openly discussing the fairness of competition with athletes who naturally exhibit greater degrees of male attributes than their purely female (eek that's a horrid sounding term) co-competitors.

It struck me as odd that in the naturally occurring case, a free and open dialogue could be had about the pros, cons, what arrangements ought to be made to ensure fairness, but in the transgender case, as soon as any comment was made about fairness, level playing field, elevated testosterone levels, muscle mass etc, the poo hit the fan well and truly.

How can it be that it's okay to talk about excluding an athlete (or an entire category of athletes) who are born with an advantage, and yet it's not okay to discuss the fairness of competing against someone who chooses to compete with an advantage?

Discuss or lock/delete thread as applicable
 
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FR Drew said:
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(For the beneft of those who are unaware, Michelle Dumaresq is a trangender DH rider who won the Canadian National championships a couple of years ago. The rider who came second Dannika Schroeter (?) wore a t shirt on the podium which had "100% Canadian Womens Champion"
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For those that missed it there's a thread on it here http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60170

It's a tough call and one that would have to be made on a case by case basis on people with access to all the facts
 
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Good topic! Probably worthy of being an Off Topic thread all the same.

I find it such a complex and complicated issue. Given the nature of the it, I think that the only fair and reasonable way sporting bodies can address it is by awarding joint first place to competitors in the instances where, after appeal and further medical analysis, an event has been deemed to be won by a hermaphrodite. After all how is it anything but discriminatory to strip an individual, who has psychologically lived their entire life as a female (or vice versa), of their medal/title/status because they're a hermaphrodite? You can't exactly create a category for bi-gender/intersexual people in the special Olympics or any other sport given they're living with a condition that wouldn't deem them physically or mentally impaired in any reasonable way.

Depending on who's research and statistical data you follow the prevalence of hermaphrodites range between being 0.002% to 0.3% of the human population i.e. indisputable presence of both sexual organs despite a definite psychological disposition of a specific gender.

Caster Semenya (Sth African sprinter) and Michelle Dumaresq(Canadian DH racer) are two completely different kettles of fish.

Caster was born with her condition and has lived her whole life identifying as a female, despite having what many would deem to be quite masculine attributes (penis aside) as a result of the high levels of naturally occurring testosterone. Michelle on the other hand was a post-op trans who was born a male, lived very much as a male (reportedly a gay male until very late teens) and then underwent hormone therapy for 2 years before getting the chop (inverting the penis back inside the body)and continuing with hormone therapy after(she won the title of Can. Nat. DH Champion almost 8 years after undergoing SRS).

My opinion is that while it is unfortunate/a tough break for the person/s who lost to Caster, she is a winner.

Michelle on the other hand is still, in my eyes, a Michael given that the body will continue to produce significantly higher levels of testosterone than that of a true hermaphrodite or female- despite the sporting bodies generally accepting the very dated and hardly conclusive data (1982-83) suggesting that extensive hormone therapy (in the years prior to and up to 2 years after SRS) should have countered any residual discrepancy the body might have to the presence of the hormone testosterone. Post-op trans people will ALWAYS be reliant on hormone therapy in some way, shape or form. Personally 70% of me feels Michelle should not have been awarded the title of Canadian National DH Champion. Sure, let he-she have it written down in the books as winning on the day, but I don't believe the title should have been awarded to her.
 
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I think the IOC at least has some very clear guidelines as to which category transgender ppl fall under. The fact that Semenyan governing athletics body did not pass on the information about their athlete is fruadalous. Like Hitler in the Berlin Olympics placing a man in a womens event. What is at fault is the enforcement of IOC guidelines...
 
I wasn't suggesting that the two cases were the same, it had simply struck me as odd that for some reason public debate about the legitimacy of Semenya was deemed okay whereas any debate about the legitimacy of Dumaresq seemed highly contentious.

On the topic of t shirts protesting outcomes (something I raised in the original Dumaresq related thread) I note that the UCI delivered no ban to Rachel Atherton last year when she wore a "skinsuits suck" shirt on the podium at Mt Stromlo.

So the questions remain:

Is this about fairness?
Is this about discrimination?
Is this about questioning the rulings of the governing body?
 
Regarding the transgender issue, the transgender event (whether it be a medical operation or not) does not alter the physical attributes that have already grown, such as muscles, tendons and so forth. Surely the athlete will be making use of these physical characteristics that grew under the influence of testosterone and "male-ness". These attributes don't go away due to a transgender event.

... So, the transgender athlete cannot help but make use of a body that grew, at least in part (and possibly all the way through puberty) as a male.

Because of this, I think it would never be fair for a transgender athlete who went from male -> female to compete against athletes who were female their whole lives.

The questions around female athletes who exhibit some male attributes (eg. chromosomes etc) is far more complex though :eek:
 
Great to see someone lifting the tone.
As many others did, I also looked on at the Semenyan issue unfold with sadness and wondered about how this could have been handled better. However unfortunately gender is not as clear cut as we all would like to think and a line must be drawn somewhere.
If you subscribe to the principal that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” then you would have to put the right of all females to have fairness in competition above the potential discrimination against individuals with a gene structure that falls outside the rules.
This may sound a bit insensitive but there are many people that are ruled out of competing in high level sports because of their genetic disposition and gender based reasons in my view would only make up a small proportion.
 
SGT. BILcO said:
Is she(or any athlete for that matter) being given or have an unfair advantage?
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Arguably, in both cases bone density, muscle mass, power, strength etc would give the competitors in question an advantage. Impossible to quantify as there's no possibility of a scientific control that would enable a valid comparison to be made.
 
Born a bloke, but gets the bits cut off and talkes tablets and wants to be called Michelle. There is a simple answer to that one.
What have we become?
 
FR Drew said:
Arguably, in both cases bone density, muscle mass, power, strength etc would give the competitors in question an advantage. Impossible to quantify as there's no possibility of a scientific control that would enable a valid comparison to be made.
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I get what you are saying...but the circumstances are either born with natural advantage or given an advantage...for a man becoming a woman is a choice he(or she?)makes. So therefore ?he? still has the structure of a man with bits of a woman=unfair advantage. Being born transgender or weird genetic make-up, is different. Yes they didn't choose to be like this...but they are still being given an unfair advantage so they should be excluded which is discriminating or let compete: possibly beating the competors, who have had to work hard with their normal body to acheive same results???
 
In both cases it could easily be argued that the competitor under discussion has an advantage over the other female competitors. Be that through dint of being "born that way", or through "having developed that way through the male phase of their life" makes little difference.

One interesting comment that did come up in discussion on the Semenyan case was that many elite female athletes register far higher testosterone counts than the run of the mill female athlete, thereby raising the issue that if there is a sliding scale of male hormones within the female population, where exactly can you / do you draw the line?
 
Just out of interest, where would the line be drawn in relation to testosterone levels as well as other 'genetic' traits. To use a crude example in the world of tennis, the Williams sisters (Venus and Serena) are giants compared to a number of their playing peers, arguably (and I am no tennis expert) giving them an advantage against their opponents who are of slighter build. Does this make this an 'unlevel playing field' in a similar way to the Caster example (but possibly a little less so)? Or is this just a case that the Williams sisters were born with physical attributes that give them an advantage in their chosen sport? Where then does the example in the OP fit? Does the IOC rule that she is technically 'woman' enough to compete in that class and her opponents will just have to wear it?
 
It is my basic assumption about the IOC rules that if a person is XY chromosome then they are a man if they are XX they are a women (I hope I've got that right lol!) For what ever other biological reason a person has for the presence or abscence of genetalia is only complicated by the advantage given by increased testoterone. There would surely be an upper limit for this set down by the IOC which would then mark a clear line between eligibility to compete in male or female events. :cool:
 
On ABC radio the other day during a discussion about this - apparently (very rarely) some top woman athletes have been tested and found to have an X and an X... and a Y. The chromosome definition can be a bit blurred.
 
FR Drew said:
How can it be that it's okay to talk about excluding an athlete (or an entire category of athletes) who are born with an advantage, and yet it's not okay to discuss the fairness of competing against someone who chooses to compete with an advantage?
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The other obvious solution is to not discriminate based on sex at all, one competition only, may the best competitor win.

Discrimination is looked upon with disdain but some discrimination is okay apparently ? Shades of "Animal Farm" ? :) ie we're all equal but some are more equal then others.
 
K3lvinator said:
It is my basic assumption about the IOC rules that if a person is XY chromosome then they are a man if they are XX they are a women (I hope I've got that right lol!) :
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That's all well and good but the issue gets blurry if the athlete has XXY chromosones (Klinefelter's syndrome), XYY (XYY syndrome), XXX (Triple X syndorme) XXYY.. or some other irregularity in the chromosome make up


Take the case of María José Martínez-Patiño who was striped of her medals because of a genetic irregularity, she was 46,XY.

She was stripped of her medals, before being reinstated. Dispite being called a cheating bloke by ignorant folk she went on to give birth to two kids...

It ain't black and white peeps
 
What is a 'fair' and an 'unfair' advantage is a difficult thing to pin down. At one stage being employed as a manual labourer was considered an unfair advantage, and you could be barred from certain sporting events. similarly athletes bodies are changing. The gap between 'you and me' and an athlete is increasing as they get bigger and stronger.

So I don't know, sport has rarely been 'fair', I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
 
Genetic manipulation is the next doping in sport issue and is already the subject of debate. Sports Medicine Australia has developed a position statement on it.

Tests are already available to the public that assess your fast versus slow twitch muscle fibre genetics. Put simply, if you don't have the genetic attributes to be a (for eg) top sprinter, then you can kiss goodbye any scholarships, academy of sport positions etc that you may have been able to access in years gone by.

There is even a case in the States of a small boy who makes Schwarzenegger look like a wimp. At age 4 this kid was pumping big weights and has tested genetically ideal for most power sports. They say he may be the result of deliberate inbreeding for profit (to his family).

This is a very curly area and in the case of the SA runner, my initial feeling was that she should not lose her medal, but that dual golds should be awarded (ie move the silver, bronze and 4th places up the order), but any records must be annulled. However, I have since heard that she was gender tested in South Africa prior to the games and therefore was known not to be a normal XX female. That being the case, she should have her medals removed and the appropriate sporting body in SA should be penalised for failing to remove her from the female team.
 
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