About Sex Testing and The Olympics

There's been a whole lot of fuss made over a couple of athletes in the Olympics who don't appear female enough to satisfy some people that they are in fact women.  I'm not going to link to the various stories on the specific incidents in part because I do not wish to contribute further (or in the future) to their harassment.  

A large number of people are running around going "If your chromosomes are XY, you are a man".  This is false - a wide range of variations can result in people having atypical chromosomes and their bodies still being female, or predominantly feminized.  

The Gender Police and the Olympics

I see that in spite of transsexual athletes being approved to compete in the Olympics, China is going to subject female athletes to a 'gender test'.

The New York Times article points out, quite correctly, that "gender tests" tend to find people who are actually intersex to some degree or another:

The tests never unmasked a man posing as a woman, but they did turn up several athletes who were born with genetic defects that made them appear — according to lab results, at least — to be men. In 1967, the Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was barred from the sport because she failed the chromosomal test, even though she had passed the nude test a year earlier. In the 1980s, the Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez Patino was disqualified because the test revealed, to her surprise, that she was born with a Y chromosome. Her eligibility was reinstated in 1988.

So, basically, the Bejing games are going to subject female athletes to invasive testing (both in a physical, but also in an emotional sense) simply because they are afraid that someone who isn't a "real woman" isn't competing.

While I can certainly understand that a man posing as a woman is problematic, that's fairly easy to check - without invasive testing. Also, the IOC standards set out in 2004 are quite significant:

The committee said transgender athletes could compete in the Olympics if they met certain requirements, such as completing genital reconstructive surgery and at least two years of hormonal therapy. The IOC also requires that "legal recognition of their assigned sex has been conferred by the appropriate official authorities," such as by a nation's courts.

Sex hormones - especially estrogen and testosterone have pronounced effects on the body. A male to female transsexual will not have a significant advantage over a genetic female in most events - the male skeleton is heavier than the female skeleton, and the muscle mass and power will be reduced to female normal. At most, there might be a mild advantage in some events due to slightly longer limbs, but even that's not likely to be significant at the elite levels of Olympic calibre athletes.

It is a shame that in today's world, there are still those who believe that there is some absolute definition of gender that can be applied.