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According to Xinhua News Agency, China's state-operated press (07/27/2008), organizing committee for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing "has set up a sex determination lab to test female Olympic athletes suspected to be males." The test would examine external appearance, hormone levels, and genetic and chromosomal status of any athlete suspected of faking her sex.
Prior to 1999, the International Olympic Committee routinely verified female athletes' chromosomal sex, but it had abandoned the practice both because it had resulted in unnecessary and unfair humiliation of women born with androgen insensitivity syndrome and other XY female conditions, and also because there is no definitive medical test that can determine who should be allowed to compete as a woman. The Beijing decision runs contrary to this recent development.
Perhaps it may be the case that the Beijing committee is simply trying to prevent non-intersex males from competing as females, and has no intention to exclude women with AIS and other similar conditions. But the result would be the same: many women would consider being treated as a "suspected male masquerading as a female" is humiliating enough.
Given the absence of any evidence that non-intersex, non-trans men are trying to compete as women (except for the fictional Bender from Futurama universe, who posed as a Robonian fembot), the impossibility of devising a definitive test to determine one's "true" sex, and the harm such test could pose to female athletes born with intersex conditions, the International Olympic Committee should go one step further and prohibit the use of genetic and chromosomal test to determine an athlete's qualification.
Posted by Emi on Jul 27, 2008