Cut From Yahoo News:
LAUSANNE, Switzerland - Transsexuals were cleared Monday to compete in the Olympics for the first time.
Under a proposal approved by the IOC executive board, athletes who have undergone sex-change surgery will be eligible for the Olympics if their new gender has been legally recognized and they have gone through a minimum two-year period of postoperative hormone therapy.
The decision, which covers both male-to-female and female-to-male cases, goes into effect starting with the Athens Olympics in August.
The IOC had put off a decision in February, saying more time was needed to consider all the medical issues.
Some members had been concerned whether male-to-female transsexuals would have physical advantages competing against women.
Men have higher levels of testosterone and greater muscle-to-fat ratio and heart and lung capacity. However, doctors say, testosterone levels and muscle mass drop after hormone therapy and sex-change surgery.
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said the situation of transsexuals competing in high-level sports was "rare but becoming more common."
IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch said no specific sports had been singled out by the ruling.
"Any sport may be touched by this problem," he said. "Until now, we didn't have any rules or regulations. We needed to establish some sort of policy."
Until 1999, the IOC conducted gender verification tests at the Olympics but the screenings were dropped before the 2000 Sydney Games.
One of the best known cases of transsexuals in sports involves Renee Richards, formerly Richard Raskind, who played on the women's tennis tour in the 1970s.
In March, Australia's Mianne Bagger became the first transsexual to play in a pro golf tournament.
Michelle Dumaresq, formerly Michael, has competed in mountain bike racing for Canada.
Richards, now a New York opthamologist, was surprised by the IOC decision and was against it. She said decisions on transsexuals should be made on an individual basis.
"Basically, I think they're making a wrong judgment here, although I would have loved to have that judgment made in my case in 1976," she said.
"They're probably looking for trouble down the line. There may be a true transsexual — not someone who's nuts and wants to make money — who will be a very good champion player, and it will be a young person, let's say a Jimmy Connors or a Tiger Woods, and then they'll have an unequal playing field.
"In some sports, the physical superiority of men over women is very significant."
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Former Member
Perhaps it would be useful to get back to first principles here: what is the purpose of excluding transexuals from competition? I can see two plausible sounding lines of reasoning:
1) The anti-drug analogy of wanting to avoid having elite male swimmers feel pressured to have sex change operations and multiple years of hormone therapy in order to try to win an olympic medal as a female. I think this line of reasoning is clearly nonsense, no world class male swimmer is going to undergo a sex change in hopes of winning a medal.
2) It is unfair to the female competitors to have to compete and potentially lose to a formerly male swimmer, but how is that different from it being unfair to any swimmer to have to swim against someone else who is bigger and stronger than they are? Why is it fair for a woman to win a gold medal when there hypothetically could be one or more male swimmers of equal or lesser stature and equal or lesser muscle mass who are faster? Why is this one physical characteristic treated in such a special manner? I believe it is because women would be discouraged from participating and competing if they had to compete against men (although we all know that many women are faster than many men). Do we really believe that women will not participate and compete because they figure some male to female transexual might beat them in the Olympics? I really doubt it.
So what purpose will be served by excluding transexuals?
Perhaps it would be useful to get back to first principles here: what is the purpose of excluding transexuals from competition? I can see two plausible sounding lines of reasoning:
1) The anti-drug analogy of wanting to avoid having elite male swimmers feel pressured to have sex change operations and multiple years of hormone therapy in order to try to win an olympic medal as a female. I think this line of reasoning is clearly nonsense, no world class male swimmer is going to undergo a sex change in hopes of winning a medal.
2) It is unfair to the female competitors to have to compete and potentially lose to a formerly male swimmer, but how is that different from it being unfair to any swimmer to have to swim against someone else who is bigger and stronger than they are? Why is it fair for a woman to win a gold medal when there hypothetically could be one or more male swimmers of equal or lesser stature and equal or lesser muscle mass who are faster? Why is this one physical characteristic treated in such a special manner? I believe it is because women would be discouraged from participating and competing if they had to compete against men (although we all know that many women are faster than many men). Do we really believe that women will not participate and compete because they figure some male to female transexual might beat them in the Olympics? I really doubt it.
So what purpose will be served by excluding transexuals?
