Sex Testing in Women's Sport: A Historical Overview - Research Paper

Introduction

Since the 1930s, women's sport has undergone different versions of an evolving practice of 'sex testing' by athletic administrations (Kilvington 2017). It started with athletes having to present affidavits sworn by their team and personal physicians that they, indeed, were women. The practice evolved in the early 1960s to chromosomal analyses, gynecological examinations, and visual inspections. The 1990s saw the introduction of genetic testing but by the beginning of the 21st Century, a vast majority of the systematic tests had been withdrawn unless in the event of a 'challenge' from someone (Pieper, 2016). In 2009 at the Track and Field World Championships, another athlete challenged Caster Semenya's sex which led to a 'gender verification' procedure as confirmed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) (Kilvington 2017).

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Harper (2019) adds thatIAAF thereafter issued new policies for female athletes with high testosterone or hyperandrogenism, arguing that women with high levels of the hormones had unfair advantages. They required such women to either repress their testosterone levels or completely drop the sport. The federation was acting on research published by its affiliate researchers that found there to be a 3% better performance by women with high testosterone levels in some events (Harper, 2019). After a challenge by Semenya, the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) agreed that the regulations for IAAF were discriminatory but added that they were necessary for 'the preservation of the integrity of female athletics'.

The Court of Arbitration for sports' decision may be termed as ironic as it both discriminates against and purports to preserve the integrity of female athletes. Caster Semenya has been on the receiving end of unwarranted attacks over her gender ever since her international debut in athletics. These attacks and questions regarding her gender led to medical testing in 2009 (Kilvington 2017). Although her results were never publicly revealed, some reports claim that she has an intersex condition with XY chromosomes, despite being legally classified as a woman since birth. Outwardly, Caster Semenya has a built physique that resembles that of a male with a deep voice that would be construed to be more of a male than a female voice.

Semenya's most obvious characteristic, her physique, is her most notable involuntary traditional gender norm transgression. Once one sees her, it is immediately clear that she is not a picture of the traditional feminine structure. Although gender norms vary from culture to culture throughout history, there are common concepts that are generally agreed upon across the board (Shepherd, 2009). Caster Semenya, in this regard, presents a threat to the feminist image, expectation, and definition. Having been considered as a woman throughout her life, she deconstructs the traditional image of the feminist form and puts much of the world in limbo as to whether she should be allowed to compete as a woman.

Her race is also a source of imagery of a threat in terms of gender norms. The world of sport has long been considered to be overly scrutinous of people of color. Her case has been described as a return of race science that had long thought to be over (Harper, 2019). Having been classified as 'biologically male' by court documents despite never having come out publicly as a transgender or intersex individual is overly discriminatory. The notion of race science started with the monitoring of testosterone in the 1930s when European scientists fronted the idea of racial inferiority (Harper, 2019). Additionally, Semenya's case resurfaced the lasting legacy of the notion of black female inferiority notion long-held across the world. Similar treatment has been subjected upon Serena Williams in 2018 when she complained of targeted and invasive doping tests. This was based on the fact that she was tested for times more frequently than other female tennis players (Kilvington & Price, 2017). The link of Semenya and Williams' physical athletic builds is unfairly linked to their ethnicities and create a notion that they have an advantage over their peers of the same gender. I think that in the same regard however, athletes such as Michael Phelps, a Caucasian Olympic swimmer who had a great advantage owing to his exceptionally long arms or the skier, Eero Mantyranta, who had an advantageous genetic condition that enabled an overproduction of red blood cells, giving him an advantage over other competitors in endurance events. The sexism intertwined with racist undertones could be the reason why Semenya is constructed as a threat in a patriarchal world that looks down upon women, especially women of color.

Theory

There is a growing interest in the study of women in sports, particularly women of color and transgender or intersex women. Epstein (2013) explains how the media portrays of athleticism as inversely proportional to intelligence, a notion that gained traction when black athletes started to dominate in athletics globally. Notions of race and gender are not a new form of discriminatory criteria with black athletes receiving significantly more negative coverage than their white counterparts in media. Semenya has unfortunately been a victim of both forms of discriminatory measures with her gender being used against her and her race making the allegations against her even worse.

Pieper (2016) argues that Semenya is a classic case of gender policing occasioned by complaints from white athletes who lost to her. She notes that Semenya is construed as a threat in more negative terms as opposed to Jarmila Kratochvilova, the world 800 meters record holder who was significantly more muscular than Semenya. The irrational fear and discrimination the world has shown Semenya are indicative of the long way that we still have to go to get to a fair world.

I stand from a Post-Structuralist point of view, agreeing with the notion that the set societal norms and notions about biological gender roles are performative. Semenya has also exposed the levels of transphobia that exists with the waves of anti-trans movements popping up that seek to create a negative public perception. The fight put up by Semenya in her case is indicative of the progress in the feminist movement. The progress the debate is having on the role of gender and feminism can also not be ignored. The case brings forth the struggle women, particularly black women, have had to undergo throughout modern history, to be treated fairly. The similarity in the struggle by transgender and intersex individuals with that of the feminist movement is similar in many ways.

Judith Butler's theory of performativity does not point to coherent or stable gender identity. She argues that gender is a repetition of acts and words that are shaped by and shape people. She argues that the currently accepted gender actions for men and women have been passed down generations to create a social idea that a certain gender binary is natural. Therefore, our idea of gender is taken as natural as our minds and bodies conform to the idea of what our gender might be through series of acts that are constantly revised, consolidated and renewed over time. In other words, she argues that our gender isn't biological but rather, a historical construct invented for us and that keeps evolving. With the notion that one is not born but rather grows or becomes a particular gender, the queer and feminist theory of human identity is reinforced (Mountjoy, 2014).

Cooper-Cunningham (2019) conceptualizes security in the gender context and aptly connects it to how it has been used in silencing and marginalizing women. Although speaking with reference to politics, he makes a good argument on the power of visuals to aesthetic individuals. He adds that the study of images by focusing on their immediate context, their constitution, their policy discourses and the contextual meaning ascribed to them by other texts supports their polysemous nature. This is integral in the accurate interpretation of drawn images and meanings about intersex people, in this context. He also argues that images, especially drawn ones always capture the insecurity by which masculinity perceives the compromise of the patriarchic construct and the threat posed by the feminist movement. Cooper-Cunningham (2019) also adds that color is a significant tool used by artists to either emphasize certain points they want to make over others, hide some aspects of their image, reinforce an idea, or reconstruct boundaries.

Hansen, (2000) argues that silence is security in instances where the subject has the potential to worsen the situation by confronting it publicly through speech. The threat of activating further scrutiny in cases such as these creates a paradox that may aggravate the situation to a greater degree. However, silence is also a tool that may be used by individuals as a way of countering negative depictions from images (Cooper-Cunningham, 2019). He also captures how images are used to silence and marginalize individuals or movements.

In the case of intersex individuals in sports, some evidence has come to light that seems to suggest that talent and not testosterone are the reason for the good performance of intersex individuals. They suggest that there is no link between athletic performance and testosterone levels and that the assumed correlation is a myth that is not scientific (Hichimoto, 2019). The same studies have gone on to suggest that even though the average male has a higher level of testosterone, which increases hemoglobin, strength, and mass, than the average female, there is no difference in elite sport.

Ardis (2017) wrote that many intersex athletes may get a raw deal from the new IAAF rules on testosterone levels. The writer argues that some intersex conditions may cause some female athletes to respond atypically to or have abnormal testosterone levels, resulting in concerns about their competitive advantage. For instance, some individuals have been diagnosed with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), which is characterized by high Testosterone levels as a result of the presence of XY chromosomes that they have (Ardis, 2017). However, AIS either partially or completely limits the athlete's body to effectively respond to testosterone, meaning that they will have unusable testosterone in their bodies. Such an individual should not be barred from competing due to the fact that their testosterone levels do not give them any competitive advantage. In addition to this, since women do typically use the testosterone in their bodies, those with AIS would be less musculature in physique (Harper, 2019).

Ardis (2017) also adds that some intersex conditions result in a traditional female-identified feminine structure with much more usable testosterone in their systems than women without AIS. Conditions such as congenital adrenal Hyperplasia is a condition that affects the adrenal gland, resulting in the impairment of the production of aldosterone and coristol. In the absence of these two hormones in the system, there is an overproduction of testosterone (Mountjoy, 2014). However, he adds that even though the high testosterone levels may affect muscle development on a woman, the response to testosterone levels vary from woman to woman. Many other factors such as size, shape, and genetic characteristics in women influence their levels of testosterone and their response to it. In this light, singling out testosterone levels that may be high due to intersex conditions particularly as the reason for competitiv...