Here we go again. An article in the Indianapolis Star reports that allegations of NCAA rule violations and allegations of abuse have been lodged against the head coach and associate head coach of women’s basketball at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).
The abuse allegations against coaches Shann Hart and Chanel Spriggs come from 11 former players. The Star article reports that 28 players and assistant coaches have left the program in the last four seasons. This number includes 19 scholarship athletes. Wow. Wouldn’t you think that these numbers might raise some kind of red flag for administrators that something is terribly wrong in the women’s basketball program? These numbers are higher than the 23 people who left the Oregon State women’s program where the head coach was fired amid allegations of abusive and, frankly, a little unhinged behavior. I wrote about the situation at Oregon State in my June 2 post.
The IUPUI players claim that the coaches created an “atmosphere of fear, favoritism, humiliation and inappropriate interest in their personal lives.” One player told the Star that she was asked “explicitly” about her sexual orientation and others described a “reckless” postgame “rant” by the coach about players who “break team rules by becoming involved in intimate relationships with each other.”
IUPUI has named a three member panel to investigate the charges. Coaches Hart and Spriggs have declined to comment on the allegations. No timeline for the investigative panel’s report has been made public, but I will definitely follow-up on this.
A state-wide LGBT rights organization, Indiana Equality, has taken note of the anti-lesbian allegations and sent a letter to the university president and athletic director citing the university’s non-discrimination policy and demanding that they take action if the allegations are confirmed.
If these allegations of abuse are substantiated, it is not only the coaches who should be held accountable. It is also the school athletic administrators and any other athletic staff who ignored or supported the alleged abusive behavior and anti-lesbian interrogations and relationship rules. How many times do we have to hear this story or variations of it for coaches and administrators to begin to take seriously their responsibilities to abide by school policies and state non-discrimination laws?
And, please, to people who say homophobia is no longer an issue in women’s sports: These allegations are exactly the kind of abuse of power and unethical coach behavior that ruins sport for all women athletes, not just lesbians, but any woman athlete who must live in fear of accusation or innuendo.
*Thanks to Helen Carroll for calling this situation to my attention.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Looking Gay Male Athletes
Dee Mosbacher, the acclaimed videographer who brought us the amazing documentary "Training Rules", is planning her next project. She asked me if I would post the following notice on my blog. I am happy to help Dee in anyway I can. She produces high quality award-winning educational videos that advance the cause of LGBT equality in and out of sport.
So, if you are a gay male athlete or if you know gay male athletes who fit the following demographics, please contact Dee or provide your friends with her contact information so we can all help Dee with her new and important project:
Looking for a Few Gay Men
If you are an out gay athlete who was awarded an athletic scholarship to college or recruited from college for a professional career, you may be eligible to be featured in an upcoming documentary by Academy Award nominated producers/directors Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker (see TrainingRules.com for info about our last film). Please send a brief sports bio and your contact information, using the subject line MEN'S SPORTS to:
DMosbacher@aol.com
Dee Mosbacher, MD
Woman Vision
3570 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA, 94118
www.WomanVision.org
www.TrainingRules.com
So, if you are a gay male athlete or if you know gay male athletes who fit the following demographics, please contact Dee or provide your friends with her contact information so we can all help Dee with her new and important project:
Looking for a Few Gay Men
If you are an out gay athlete who was awarded an athletic scholarship to college or recruited from college for a professional career, you may be eligible to be featured in an upcoming documentary by Academy Award nominated producers/directors Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker (see TrainingRules.com for info about our last film). Please send a brief sports bio and your contact information, using the subject line MEN'S SPORTS to:
DMosbacher@aol.com
Dee Mosbacher, MD
Woman Vision
3570 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA, 94118
www.WomanVision.org
www.TrainingRules.com
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Jennie Finch Retires, but Leaves Her Glitter and Make-up Behind
Jennie Finch is an awesome softball pitcher. No question about that. Her accomplishments on the field speak for themselves: NCAA championships, Olympic gold and silver medals, World Championship. She was arguably the face of women’s softball for the last 10 years.
Unfortunately in women’s sports though, it takes more than being an accomplished athlete to get the mainstream sports media’s attention. You have to combine your awesome talent with physical beauty and then highlight your “femininity” by wearing make-up when you play your sport, swinging a hot pink bat, festooning your long hair with glitter and brightly colored ribbons. You should also pose in sexy photo shoots for men’s magazines if you really want to show your stuff (and I’m not talking about your wicked curve ball).
In perhaps one of the more nauseating quotes I’ve read recently, Jessica Mendoza, one of Jennie’s teammates and President of the Women’s Sports Foundation says of Finch,
"She set the standard for softball in a new era of being able to be feminine and play this sport. Not that you have to be feminine to play this sport, but I see hundreds of thousands of little girls now with glitter headbands, hot pink bats, makeup. I'm not saying that every girl has to do that but when I was growing up, it wasn't like that. She has created a new era of softball player, and it's for those softball players -- those little girls out there -- that want to be cutesy with the bows and the glitter and still be that dirty jock. Covered head to toe in dirt but she's got her hair all perfect with a bow."
It saddens me that the “freedom” to be feminine is somehow interpreted as progress for women’s softball and women’s sports. This is not a new era. Appearing feminine has always been a requirement, hardly a “freedom.” Women athletes have always needed to prove their femininity and heterosexuality. They have always needed to compensate for their athleticism by highlighting their “normality,” that would be their girly-girlness and their interest in men. The acceptance of women athletes has always depended on their ability to project conventional femininity and heterosexuality: She can strike out big league baseball players, but, by gosh, the ribbons in her hair are so darn cute, her make-up is impeccable, and not a hair out of place.
Women athletes have always felt the pressure to compensate for being “dirty jocks” (read lesbians) by presenting a feminine image off the field. Is it really progress that now women have to do it on the field as well? Is it progress that game preparation now includes hair and make-up sessions and the application of glitter and the tying of pretty hair ribbons? Is it really progress that “hundreds of thousands” of little girls now believe that glitter, hair ribbons, and make-up are part of a softball uniform? Will little girls who aspire to be like Jennie Finch believe they need to pose in men's magazines to be accepted as athletes?
Don’t get me wrong, I would be happy if it were true that girl and women athletes had choices in how they present themselves. The ones who like long hair, ribbons, make-up, and glitter can wear it and the ones who don’t are equally celebrated as role models. The ones who are partnered with or married to men and the ones who are partnered with or married to women have their personal lives equally celebrated and respected. Now that would be a new era for softball and all of women’s sports.
Unfortunately in women’s sports though, it takes more than being an accomplished athlete to get the mainstream sports media’s attention. You have to combine your awesome talent with physical beauty and then highlight your “femininity” by wearing make-up when you play your sport, swinging a hot pink bat, festooning your long hair with glitter and brightly colored ribbons. You should also pose in sexy photo shoots for men’s magazines if you really want to show your stuff (and I’m not talking about your wicked curve ball).
In perhaps one of the more nauseating quotes I’ve read recently, Jessica Mendoza, one of Jennie’s teammates and President of the Women’s Sports Foundation says of Finch,
"She set the standard for softball in a new era of being able to be feminine and play this sport. Not that you have to be feminine to play this sport, but I see hundreds of thousands of little girls now with glitter headbands, hot pink bats, makeup. I'm not saying that every girl has to do that but when I was growing up, it wasn't like that. She has created a new era of softball player, and it's for those softball players -- those little girls out there -- that want to be cutesy with the bows and the glitter and still be that dirty jock. Covered head to toe in dirt but she's got her hair all perfect with a bow."
It saddens me that the “freedom” to be feminine is somehow interpreted as progress for women’s softball and women’s sports. This is not a new era. Appearing feminine has always been a requirement, hardly a “freedom.” Women athletes have always needed to prove their femininity and heterosexuality. They have always needed to compensate for their athleticism by highlighting their “normality,” that would be their girly-girlness and their interest in men. The acceptance of women athletes has always depended on their ability to project conventional femininity and heterosexuality: She can strike out big league baseball players, but, by gosh, the ribbons in her hair are so darn cute, her make-up is impeccable, and not a hair out of place.
Women athletes have always felt the pressure to compensate for being “dirty jocks” (read lesbians) by presenting a feminine image off the field. Is it really progress that now women have to do it on the field as well? Is it progress that game preparation now includes hair and make-up sessions and the application of glitter and the tying of pretty hair ribbons? Is it really progress that “hundreds of thousands” of little girls now believe that glitter, hair ribbons, and make-up are part of a softball uniform? Will little girls who aspire to be like Jennie Finch believe they need to pose in men's magazines to be accepted as athletes?
Don’t get me wrong, I would be happy if it were true that girl and women athletes had choices in how they present themselves. The ones who like long hair, ribbons, make-up, and glitter can wear it and the ones who don’t are equally celebrated as role models. The ones who are partnered with or married to men and the ones who are partnered with or married to women have their personal lives equally celebrated and respected. Now that would be a new era for softball and all of women’s sports.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Home Again!
We are home from our travels. I was disconnected from cyberworld for eight days while we were on a Grand Canyon raft trip – Amazing! Absolutely no contact with the outside world for eight days. It was pretty cool, but left me wondering what international calamities we would face when we got back to civilization. Though we had absolutely no access to the outside world in the canyon, I had to take my Blackberry with me, buried deep in my dry bag in a waterproof pouch. Somehow it managed to die anyway, so I had to make a quick trip to Verizon for a replacement in Las Vegas.
Last week the powers that be ruled that Caster Semenya can compete as a woman. I must admit that I did not give them enough credit because I feared they would ban her from future competition. I am happy to be surprised. They also refused to release any information about Caster’s medical review which I also applaud.
Next, I am hoping that, at the meeting of international sport governing organizations scheduled to take place in the next few months, guidelines for inclusion of women athletes who are intersex (or have disorders of sexual development, as the docs prefer) will be changed so that women who live and identify as women and are intersex will be eligible to compete, period.
The stumbling block is resistance from sports leaders and competitors who fear that allowing women athletes who are intersex to compete in women’s events will upset “the level playing field” in women’s sports. I think we are singling out intersex athletes as a threat to the so-called level playing field when there are so many ways that the playing field is tilted in favor of some athletes over others that we just accept as part of the competition. How come?
Related to this is the need to revise the process for challenging a competitor’s eligibility to compete in women’s events. Right now, just about anyone can challenge any competitor on just about any prejudiced notion of what a woman is supposed to look, act and perform like. We have already seen what kind of travesty this procedure can cause in the horribly botched process last summer when Caster Semenya was challenged.
I’ll write more on this later. Just wanted you to know I am back and I’m blogging again.
Last week the powers that be ruled that Caster Semenya can compete as a woman. I must admit that I did not give them enough credit because I feared they would ban her from future competition. I am happy to be surprised. They also refused to release any information about Caster’s medical review which I also applaud.
Next, I am hoping that, at the meeting of international sport governing organizations scheduled to take place in the next few months, guidelines for inclusion of women athletes who are intersex (or have disorders of sexual development, as the docs prefer) will be changed so that women who live and identify as women and are intersex will be eligible to compete, period.
The stumbling block is resistance from sports leaders and competitors who fear that allowing women athletes who are intersex to compete in women’s events will upset “the level playing field” in women’s sports. I think we are singling out intersex athletes as a threat to the so-called level playing field when there are so many ways that the playing field is tilted in favor of some athletes over others that we just accept as part of the competition. How come?
Related to this is the need to revise the process for challenging a competitor’s eligibility to compete in women’s events. Right now, just about anyone can challenge any competitor on just about any prejudiced notion of what a woman is supposed to look, act and perform like. We have already seen what kind of travesty this procedure can cause in the horribly botched process last summer when Caster Semenya was challenged.
I’ll write more on this later. Just wanted you to know I am back and I’m blogging again.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Time Out for Blogging - Going On Vacation
I will be on vacation for the next three weeks and will not be posting anything on my blog until Mid-July. The first week we are going on an eight day raft trip through the Grand Canyon. Woo Hoo! I hope all my readers have some fun plans for the summer too. I'll be back soon. Take care, Pat
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
What Do USA Swimming and the Catholic Church Have In Common?
Answer: A big disgusting sex scandal, that’s what.
For several months USA Swimming has been embroiled in lawsuits and accusations related to their lax oversight of and response to numerous instances of male coach sexual misconduct with young female swimmers, some as young as eleven. It has recently come to light that, over the last ten years, USA Swimming has banned 36 male swim coaches for sexual misconduct with female team members. Those are just the ones who have been identified. One of the men on the list is Everett Uchiyama, former director of the US National Team.
The abused swimmers who have come forward, their parents, and their lawyers believe that USA Swimming has failed to take seriously their responsibility to conduct thorough background checks on coaches affiliated with USA Swimming. This ABC 20/20 segment on this scandal includes an incredibly tone deaf interview with the executive director of USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus, that illustrates the problem. Like the leaders of the Catholic Church, he doesn’t seem to understand the magnitude of the problem or want to take responsibility for his organization’s role in failing to protect young girls and women in USA Swimming sponsored programs from sexual predator coaches.
To be sure, USA Swimming is not solely to blame. Parents bear some responsibility as well as local swim clubs who hire these guys. However, it has taken public scrutiny and lawsuits to force USA Swimming to make public the list of banned coaches and begin to beef up their policies and procedures for education, protection, and investigation.
In one of his most insensitive moments, Chuck Wielgus chides the teenaged victims for not coming forward sooner. Right. You are 11, 12 or 13 years old. You have a dream. You want to make the Olympic team. Your coach is going to help you realize your dream. He knows what to do. You want to please him. He’s your coach, you do what he says. You work hard. He is an adult. He is a good coach. Everyone says so. He gets results. What are you to do when he starts doing things that don’t feel right? Do you tell your parents? What will they say? Will the coach stop helping you reach your dream? Is it your fault that he is acting this way? Maybe the special attention feels good in some ways…for awhile. You decide to keep a secret in hopes that things will get better or you can pretend it isn’t happening so that you can keep swimming toward your dream.
Listen to the women athletes who have been sexually abused by their coaches. Even after many years, now adults, they know they have had something stolen from them by men who they trusted to have their best interests at heart when all they really wanted was a secret grope in the equipment room or a blow job in their car on the ride home from practice. One coach directed certain female swimmers to use a “special” locker room where he had a hidden camera set up to secretly record them changing their clothes and showering. I feel like I need a shower just talking about it.
Celia Brackenridge wrote a terrific book, Spoilsports, that examines coach sexual exploitation of athletes. These sexual predators know how to “groom” their targets slowly, gaining their trust and gradually escalating their sexual abuse from simple thoughtfulness or affection to sexually exploitation. It should be required reading for all parents of young girls in sport and the leaders of sport associations like USA Swimming.
A big part of the problem, of course, is that coaches have too much power over their athletes. Athletes tolerate (and parents sometimes condone or ignore or are completely unaware of) all kinds of abusive treatment at the hands of coaches in hopes of reaching their athletic dreams. Athletes and parents often give coaches more trust than they deserve. Athletes spend long hours with a coach, often unsupervised by anyone else, which provides a sexual predator coach with the privacy he needs to get what he wants. The institutions that hire coaches and the organizations that sanction them spend too much time looking at a coach’s win/loss records or the number of Olympians he has tutored and not enough time investigating allegations or suspicions of sexual misconduct by the rotten apples who spoil sport for everyone.
Coach sexual abuse of athletes is a heinous act. It should be treated as the serious crime it is. Every athlete and her or his parents should be educated about what it is, how to recognize it, and what to do about it. Every sports organization should have a strong policy and procedure front and center for dealing with it. A good coach must know more than the best ways to train an athlete for competition. He or she must know what ethical standards are required of adults who have the privilege of coaching young people and must adhere to them.
Since this is an LGBT sports blog, I will say that coach sexual abuse of athletes is not a gender or sexual orientation issue. It is wrong no matter who the coach is. That said, can we also contemplate the possibility that there may be something about heterosexual male privilege, the sexual exploitation of women, and sexism in general that make this problem primarily one of male perpetrators and female victims? I am not saying that heterosexual women or lesbian coaches could not be sexual predators, but I think that our culture has a tendency to create, tolerate or excuse male sexual predators and blame their female victims for calling our attention to them. It is way past time to challenge this passivity in response to sex abuse by men whether we are talking about the Catholic Church or the local club swim team.
For several months USA Swimming has been embroiled in lawsuits and accusations related to their lax oversight of and response to numerous instances of male coach sexual misconduct with young female swimmers, some as young as eleven. It has recently come to light that, over the last ten years, USA Swimming has banned 36 male swim coaches for sexual misconduct with female team members. Those are just the ones who have been identified. One of the men on the list is Everett Uchiyama, former director of the US National Team.
The abused swimmers who have come forward, their parents, and their lawyers believe that USA Swimming has failed to take seriously their responsibility to conduct thorough background checks on coaches affiliated with USA Swimming. This ABC 20/20 segment on this scandal includes an incredibly tone deaf interview with the executive director of USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus, that illustrates the problem. Like the leaders of the Catholic Church, he doesn’t seem to understand the magnitude of the problem or want to take responsibility for his organization’s role in failing to protect young girls and women in USA Swimming sponsored programs from sexual predator coaches.
To be sure, USA Swimming is not solely to blame. Parents bear some responsibility as well as local swim clubs who hire these guys. However, it has taken public scrutiny and lawsuits to force USA Swimming to make public the list of banned coaches and begin to beef up their policies and procedures for education, protection, and investigation.
In one of his most insensitive moments, Chuck Wielgus chides the teenaged victims for not coming forward sooner. Right. You are 11, 12 or 13 years old. You have a dream. You want to make the Olympic team. Your coach is going to help you realize your dream. He knows what to do. You want to please him. He’s your coach, you do what he says. You work hard. He is an adult. He is a good coach. Everyone says so. He gets results. What are you to do when he starts doing things that don’t feel right? Do you tell your parents? What will they say? Will the coach stop helping you reach your dream? Is it your fault that he is acting this way? Maybe the special attention feels good in some ways…for awhile. You decide to keep a secret in hopes that things will get better or you can pretend it isn’t happening so that you can keep swimming toward your dream.
Listen to the women athletes who have been sexually abused by their coaches. Even after many years, now adults, they know they have had something stolen from them by men who they trusted to have their best interests at heart when all they really wanted was a secret grope in the equipment room or a blow job in their car on the ride home from practice. One coach directed certain female swimmers to use a “special” locker room where he had a hidden camera set up to secretly record them changing their clothes and showering. I feel like I need a shower just talking about it.
Celia Brackenridge wrote a terrific book, Spoilsports, that examines coach sexual exploitation of athletes. These sexual predators know how to “groom” their targets slowly, gaining their trust and gradually escalating their sexual abuse from simple thoughtfulness or affection to sexually exploitation. It should be required reading for all parents of young girls in sport and the leaders of sport associations like USA Swimming.
A big part of the problem, of course, is that coaches have too much power over their athletes. Athletes tolerate (and parents sometimes condone or ignore or are completely unaware of) all kinds of abusive treatment at the hands of coaches in hopes of reaching their athletic dreams. Athletes and parents often give coaches more trust than they deserve. Athletes spend long hours with a coach, often unsupervised by anyone else, which provides a sexual predator coach with the privacy he needs to get what he wants. The institutions that hire coaches and the organizations that sanction them spend too much time looking at a coach’s win/loss records or the number of Olympians he has tutored and not enough time investigating allegations or suspicions of sexual misconduct by the rotten apples who spoil sport for everyone.
Coach sexual abuse of athletes is a heinous act. It should be treated as the serious crime it is. Every athlete and her or his parents should be educated about what it is, how to recognize it, and what to do about it. Every sports organization should have a strong policy and procedure front and center for dealing with it. A good coach must know more than the best ways to train an athlete for competition. He or she must know what ethical standards are required of adults who have the privilege of coaching young people and must adhere to them.
Since this is an LGBT sports blog, I will say that coach sexual abuse of athletes is not a gender or sexual orientation issue. It is wrong no matter who the coach is. That said, can we also contemplate the possibility that there may be something about heterosexual male privilege, the sexual exploitation of women, and sexism in general that make this problem primarily one of male perpetrators and female victims? I am not saying that heterosexual women or lesbian coaches could not be sexual predators, but I think that our culture has a tendency to create, tolerate or excuse male sexual predators and blame their female victims for calling our attention to them. It is way past time to challenge this passivity in response to sex abuse by men whether we are talking about the Catholic Church or the local club swim team.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Ain’t I A Woman?
This is the title of a speech given by African-American abolitionist and former slave, Sojourner Truth, in 1851 at a Women’s Rights Conference in Ohio. Her speech was in reaction to the privileges that white women had and the comparative silence about the oppression of Black women within both the women’s suffrage movement and the abolitionist movement. Her words reminded the delegates that their definitions of “woman” excluded many women who were not white or middle class.
I am borrowing Sojourner Truth's speech title to raise the question of how sports governing organizations determine whether or not an athlete “qualifies” as a woman eligible to compete in women’s sports events. I attended a meeting this weekend in Baltimore co-sponsored by Women’s Sports International and the American College of Sports Medicine. The meeting was focused on sex verification testing in sport. The purpose was to discuss this controversial issue and, if possible, identify some recommendations for the International Olympic Committee and other sport governing organizations as they work to clarify their own thinking about sex verification testing in the wake of the monumental mishandling of the Caster Semenya case at the World Championships last summer.
The discussion was interesting and revealed a variety of perspectives on sex testing in sport. We are now working via email to come up with a statement that will represent the aspects of our discussion where we are able to reach some consensus. It seems to me it will be fairly easy for us to agree that the health, safety, and privacy of individual athletes should be a central concern. I think we also can agree that education and research about sex and gender identity in relationship to sport performance is sorely needed at all levels of all sports. I believe that we can all agree that it is a good thing that mandatory sex testing has been abolished.
Beyond that, I am not sure if we can agree on specific policy recommendations. From my perspective, participants around the table represented views that run the gamut. That would be from - Stop all sex verification testing and declare eligibility to participate in women’s sports based on an athlete’s gender identity. Based on this hypothetical policy, women athletes who are intersex (or as the medical doctors prefer – have disorders of sexual development -DSD) would compete in women’s events. Period.
At the other end of the opinion spectrum – Some people believe that case by case sex verification testing is warranted to assure that we maintain a “level playing field” in women’s sports by identifying competitors whose DSD could confer an “unfair” advantage because of higher than typical testosterone levels associated with that particular DSD. The other rationale for case by case sex verification testing is to prevent a man from pretending to be a woman in order to compete in women’s sports events (even though in the entire history of women’s sports only one possible and questionable instance of this kind of deception has ever been revealed).
I won’t try to recreate our conversations here. It’s just too complicated and incredibly smart and informed people come down in different places on this. At the same time, there is also an amazing about of misinformation and plain old ignorance surrounding this topic, not to mention some serious anxiety about challenging sex and gender binaries. Because we use “sex” as a way to divide competitors into competition categories – women’s and men’s sports – it becomes important to determine who gets to compete in which category. Unfortunately, this either/or binary we use in sport does not reflect the spectrum of sex and gender identities in the real world. So, we are in this situation of needing to draw a line somewhere on that spectrum to make decisions about who gets to compete where.
Most sports people would probably agree that dividing competitors by sex is the most practical and effective way to approach a level playing field for competition, at least at this point in the history of women’s sports. This division affords the most participation opportunities for the most girls and women. I agree with this perspective, but it can lead to an arbitrary and painful determination that a competitor who identifies and lives as a woman should be disqualified from competing in women’s sports – Caster Semenya is the perfect example of this - because of a belief that a genetic condition she may have affords her an “unfair” competitive advantage.
I think the whole “level playing field” argument is bogus myself. Why are our undies in such a bunch about women who are intersex and women who are transgender competing with other women when we don’t even think twice about many other kinds of competitive advantages that some athletes enjoy. Other genetic conditions confer advantage too, but we just accept them as part of the game. Our height, weight, cardio-vascular capacities, etc. are all largely determined by our genetics. Depending on the sport, our varying genetic characteristics create a decidedly unlevel playing field that we accept. Genetic disorders that confer advantage, like Marfans Syndrome in height sports like basketball or volleyball, are just part of the game. Non-intersex and non-transgender women have varying levels of natural testosterone production too, but we accept that. Why are disorders of sexual development the only conditions we get all hinky about?
The problem I have with case by case sex verification testing, in addition to my skepticism about the so-called “level playing field,” is that the criteria that are used to determine who needs a sex test are primarily based on gender expectations and sour grapes, not genes and science. “She looks too masculine. She plays like a man. She’s too strong, too fast. Her hair is too short” and most important of all, “she won and I didn’t”. I doubt this would even be an issue if Caster Semenya had finished last in the 800m.
Not only are the criteria for case by case sex testing based on social characteristics, but sex verification testing is too simplistic to fairly account for the incredibly complex spectrum of factors that determine our sex and our gender identity. Our physical bodies don’t always link up with our gender identities. Our physical bodies are incredibly diverse in genetic make-up, sexual and otherwise. Sex verification testing, at least as we know it, is inherently unfair and arbitrary.
What to do? We could eliminate sex as a sport category – do away with men’s and women’s sports. We could use some other criteria to determine where and with whom athletes compete. Testosterone levels, height, weight, ability to take up hemoglobin, whatever. There are advocates for this position. It would solve the problem of determining who gets to compete as a woman or man. Transgender women and men, athletes with disorders of sexual development compete according to other criteria just like everyone else. I am reluctant to support this approach because I think it would have a devastating effect on the opportunities for most girls and women to enjoy sport competition.
Or we could open up our minds, hearts and sex categories a little to include a broader and more realistic spectrum of who we acknowledge as women. I think that would enable the most girls and women the best opportunities to pursue their sporting dreams. Thus, I find myself on the far end of the continuum of perspectives advocating that we should let athletes who identify as women compete in women’s sports. I don’t want any more women to have to go through what Caster Semenya has and still is going through (we still don’t know if she will be able to compete again). I don’t want another woman to have to face a panel of “experts” and ask, “Ain’t I a woman?”
I am borrowing Sojourner Truth's speech title to raise the question of how sports governing organizations determine whether or not an athlete “qualifies” as a woman eligible to compete in women’s sports events. I attended a meeting this weekend in Baltimore co-sponsored by Women’s Sports International and the American College of Sports Medicine. The meeting was focused on sex verification testing in sport. The purpose was to discuss this controversial issue and, if possible, identify some recommendations for the International Olympic Committee and other sport governing organizations as they work to clarify their own thinking about sex verification testing in the wake of the monumental mishandling of the Caster Semenya case at the World Championships last summer.
The discussion was interesting and revealed a variety of perspectives on sex testing in sport. We are now working via email to come up with a statement that will represent the aspects of our discussion where we are able to reach some consensus. It seems to me it will be fairly easy for us to agree that the health, safety, and privacy of individual athletes should be a central concern. I think we also can agree that education and research about sex and gender identity in relationship to sport performance is sorely needed at all levels of all sports. I believe that we can all agree that it is a good thing that mandatory sex testing has been abolished.
Beyond that, I am not sure if we can agree on specific policy recommendations. From my perspective, participants around the table represented views that run the gamut. That would be from - Stop all sex verification testing and declare eligibility to participate in women’s sports based on an athlete’s gender identity. Based on this hypothetical policy, women athletes who are intersex (or as the medical doctors prefer – have disorders of sexual development -DSD) would compete in women’s events. Period.
At the other end of the opinion spectrum – Some people believe that case by case sex verification testing is warranted to assure that we maintain a “level playing field” in women’s sports by identifying competitors whose DSD could confer an “unfair” advantage because of higher than typical testosterone levels associated with that particular DSD. The other rationale for case by case sex verification testing is to prevent a man from pretending to be a woman in order to compete in women’s sports events (even though in the entire history of women’s sports only one possible and questionable instance of this kind of deception has ever been revealed).
I won’t try to recreate our conversations here. It’s just too complicated and incredibly smart and informed people come down in different places on this. At the same time, there is also an amazing about of misinformation and plain old ignorance surrounding this topic, not to mention some serious anxiety about challenging sex and gender binaries. Because we use “sex” as a way to divide competitors into competition categories – women’s and men’s sports – it becomes important to determine who gets to compete in which category. Unfortunately, this either/or binary we use in sport does not reflect the spectrum of sex and gender identities in the real world. So, we are in this situation of needing to draw a line somewhere on that spectrum to make decisions about who gets to compete where.
Most sports people would probably agree that dividing competitors by sex is the most practical and effective way to approach a level playing field for competition, at least at this point in the history of women’s sports. This division affords the most participation opportunities for the most girls and women. I agree with this perspective, but it can lead to an arbitrary and painful determination that a competitor who identifies and lives as a woman should be disqualified from competing in women’s sports – Caster Semenya is the perfect example of this - because of a belief that a genetic condition she may have affords her an “unfair” competitive advantage.
I think the whole “level playing field” argument is bogus myself. Why are our undies in such a bunch about women who are intersex and women who are transgender competing with other women when we don’t even think twice about many other kinds of competitive advantages that some athletes enjoy. Other genetic conditions confer advantage too, but we just accept them as part of the game. Our height, weight, cardio-vascular capacities, etc. are all largely determined by our genetics. Depending on the sport, our varying genetic characteristics create a decidedly unlevel playing field that we accept. Genetic disorders that confer advantage, like Marfans Syndrome in height sports like basketball or volleyball, are just part of the game. Non-intersex and non-transgender women have varying levels of natural testosterone production too, but we accept that. Why are disorders of sexual development the only conditions we get all hinky about?
The problem I have with case by case sex verification testing, in addition to my skepticism about the so-called “level playing field,” is that the criteria that are used to determine who needs a sex test are primarily based on gender expectations and sour grapes, not genes and science. “She looks too masculine. She plays like a man. She’s too strong, too fast. Her hair is too short” and most important of all, “she won and I didn’t”. I doubt this would even be an issue if Caster Semenya had finished last in the 800m.
Not only are the criteria for case by case sex testing based on social characteristics, but sex verification testing is too simplistic to fairly account for the incredibly complex spectrum of factors that determine our sex and our gender identity. Our physical bodies don’t always link up with our gender identities. Our physical bodies are incredibly diverse in genetic make-up, sexual and otherwise. Sex verification testing, at least as we know it, is inherently unfair and arbitrary.
What to do? We could eliminate sex as a sport category – do away with men’s and women’s sports. We could use some other criteria to determine where and with whom athletes compete. Testosterone levels, height, weight, ability to take up hemoglobin, whatever. There are advocates for this position. It would solve the problem of determining who gets to compete as a woman or man. Transgender women and men, athletes with disorders of sexual development compete according to other criteria just like everyone else. I am reluctant to support this approach because I think it would have a devastating effect on the opportunities for most girls and women to enjoy sport competition.
Or we could open up our minds, hearts and sex categories a little to include a broader and more realistic spectrum of who we acknowledge as women. I think that would enable the most girls and women the best opportunities to pursue their sporting dreams. Thus, I find myself on the far end of the continuum of perspectives advocating that we should let athletes who identify as women compete in women’s sports. I don’t want any more women to have to go through what Caster Semenya has and still is going through (we still don’t know if she will be able to compete again). I don’t want another woman to have to face a panel of “experts” and ask, “Ain’t I a woman?”
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