Olympic gender testing

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Spotted this today.

Current ideas about testing athletes

Discuss!

Penny

Gisele stayed up all night...

...studying for her gender test...

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Extremely good!

:-) Very nice idea worthy of place in stories archive!

Extremely good!

:-) Very nice idea worthy of place in stories archive!

Having actual fully active male gonads

... should still be denied imho. I assume the article takes that for granted. The area of PAIS makes it hazier and there I can see where testosterone might also help.

For M->F TS folks, yes, a certain amount of time post surgery is a reasonable rule as by then the benefits of male hormones should have dissipated by then.

For F->M, how much testosterone level is valid as beyond which that would be 'doping' levels for normal athletes.

Kim

It depends on the sport - whether testosterone would be considered beneficial or harmful... In sports where bone size/distribution/alignment are concerned there may NEVER be a time where a M2F isn't operating at an advantage - or disadvantage. Where skeletal structure doesn't come into play then, yes. There is a point where a post op M2F operates at a disadvantage over "genetic" females, as their bodies actually DO produce SOME testosterone...

Just look at the BUILDS of those who compete in various sports. Some are tall/slim. Some are average height and flexible. Some average and muscular, some both... The list goes on.

Okay - pick one sport... There's an inherent "advantage" of LONG limbs with a slim body in swimming. Look at either the guys OR the girls - they're all taller than average (but not basket ball players), and the best have long arms and legs. They do their best to streamline their bodies (no big boobs and even those with breasts - wear suits that minimize them - swimming with that basket hanging from the chest really slows one down!).

Look at gymnsatics... Look at the age of the gymnasts. MOST are quite young, most are VERY flexible. There are exceptions on the age, but hte average female gymnast is significantly YOUNGER than the average male. A lot happens in our bodies in those years.

There are sports where skill can mean more than strength/etc. but, it's still not easy. At the levels these people compete any little advantage can be BIG.

So, to be honest I think it will be really hard to work things out to be truly fair. Assuming they really want things to work out, I suspect they'll end up coming up with a long list of parameters that you need to meet to qualify to compete in a specific event Mens 400 IM; Women's Fencing; etc. They'll likely include max/min bone lengths; body densities; muscle mass determinations; etc. as well as genetic parameters as well as hormonal parameters. And, no matter what they come up with, I'm sure SOME will try to game the system and find some way to "boost" their individual performance beyond the plan.

Annette

Testimacles

Did the athlete mature with active ones? If so then for the purposes of sports they are not female.

Interestingly according to the VA, normal testosterone levels for a man is 10 to 52 nanomoles per liter, not the 7 to 30 listed in the article. Interestingly under the criteria listed there, I am very close to qualifying as female, my testosterone levels are 7.5 nanomoles per liter. (And based upon what LittleKatie posted a while ago she is female assuming that the 75 is ng/dL which would be 2.6 nanomoles per liter.) Somehow I think that if LittleKatie got back into her wrestling weight and shape, she would have a bit of an advantage over the women wrestling in the Olympics.

Any way based upon what has been going on in the Olympics this year, I have pretty much given up on any sort of value to what is going on there or without big changes ever again.

WOW I was mentioned

Funny thing about when I wrestled, though it wasn't funny at the time.

Being a heavyweight, I guess no one really questioned that I had DD breast. Problem with that, is they kept popping out of the singlet. In High School, the singlet was cut way high and wasn't a problem. In college, however, they popped out ever time I moved and in videos you see me putting the material back to keep my modesty. It really effected my wrestling. The solution, I wore a high cut singlet under the low cut singlet... no one figured out essentially I was using the under singlet as a bra.

When I wrestled for the country overseas it was worst, the singlet was low cut (you could see undies) and it looked like I was wearing a thong for my tits...

Like I said, funny now, devastating then.

The other issue I had, not really, was that it would've disqualified me if I took testosterone to get my hormone levels to male (there is a way around it through the rules but it is a real pain in the ass, takes multiple doctors and then the spanish inquistion)

Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)

Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life

Complicated

The AIS group makes it all very complicated. They can have enough T running though them that would make a herd of Bulls jealous, but fails to have any effect on them. Just how would you measure something like that?

My own opinion is that when you operate at that world class level, you can throw normal out the window. Phelps for instance has several physical characteristics that helps him swim that most of humanity lacks. Does this gives him an unfair advantage?

If you're talking about that upper percentage of humans that can reach that performance level, they're all abnormal. No matter how hard the vast majority of the human race tries they just can't compete.

I'm sure there's some sport that don't require for you to be a mutant, but many of the more athletic ones does require you have the right genes first. Hard work and dedication are necessary to temper that talent, but you've got to have the right genes first.

If you're built like a runner, weight lifting probably won't work for you!

My point is at the level they're at, what is normal anyways?
Sorry for the ramble!
hugs
Grover
Who is a world class couch potato!

I'm sorry ...

... I know this is a sensitive subject for many here but as long as sports continue to have separate male and female competitions then testing has to be part of the agenda. The only way of ending testing is to have gender blind competition (eg just a 100 metre race or 400 metre swim) and I suspect few female competitors would be in favour of that as, with very few exceptions, the best males will always be stronger than the best females. It would have the unintended consequence of denying sport to most women which would be tragic.

I'm old enough to remember the East European female athletes (the so-called Press brothers for example) who many women refused to share changing facilities with. That was before rigorous drug or gender testing. It would be tragic to return to those days.

After all no-one objects to age-related competitions and they can be very unfair too as people mature at different rates. I recall being terrified playing rugby against boys of the same age who were over 6' when I was 6" shorter.

Robi

The way I see this, is just another form of bias and

discrimination. This is the 21st century and we need to get away from the jealousies, the nit-picking, the pointing the finger at, bigotry, hatred, war, fighting, killings, crime, etc., etc.

The only reason the Olympic Committee wants these tests, they say, is for fairness. IMHO it is not fair to discriminate and judge others for the purpose of keeping them out of competing in, or playing professional sports.

I personally know of several females, who are stronger than non tg males. Would this strength prevent these women from competing as women?

If there needs to be a test, it should be endurance. Is the athlete able to physically take part in the sport for which that athlete is registered?

"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."

Love & hugs,
Barbara

"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."

The way I see it...

The gender division of sports was probably at least partly instituted because it was perceived that the performance ranges of most male athletes is slightly higher than the performance ranges of female athletes.

So... instead of having "Male" and "Female" events, why not "Category A" and "Category B" - if your performance in your chosen event (pre-games) is in line with Category A, compete in that category, whatever the "Sex" marker on your documentation states. Likewise, if it's in line with Category B, compete in that category. Note I said pre-games performance - that would be your performance in various events beforehand, rather than in qualifying. If the decision was left to the qualifying stages, we'd end up with a repeat of the Badminton debacle where people would deliberately play badly in the hope of getting easier opponents...

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Olympics

I noticed that relays are either 4 males or 4 females. Why is there no 2+2? There are also other sports that could allow "mixed" events.