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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Originally posted by gull80
Medically gender is straightforward. Yes there are specific medical conditions where an individual does not develop the appropriate physical characteristics for their sexual genotype, but that's not what we're talking about here.
I tbelieve it is very much what we're talking about here.
A fully grown functioning and hormonally and genetically male is not likely to undergo the sex change operation.
There is often anomalies, not just physical, but hormonal, chemical and brain struture and early psychological development that thanscends the genital physical features.
People don't undergo sex change operations because they have been born and raised with a clear cut gender identity. If they were, then the sex change would never occur to them, and would be un-necessary.
People who undergo the procedure are not your clear cut males or females to begin with, so whether their genitalia or their genotype indicates on or the other, there is more to it than that. So, we are talking about those people that don't develop appropriate gender charachteristics, be it physically, mentally, hormonally, genetically or any other aspect that defines gender.
As for the political correctness, I'd be the last one to worry about that.
Order in nature... I would say order is too strong of a word. There is hierarchy to things in nature. It is not without fail or without deviation.
As for scientists believing in god....
There is a difference between science and personal beliefs. One is objective, the latter one leaves a lot to subjective interpretation. I'm not a fan of mixing the two, untill we get to into social scences and examining human behavior, individually, and at the level of a society.
When it comes to medicine, physics, math, chemistry and such, I'm not into attempting to apply religious symbology to scientific events and findings. Science can stand on it's own, without religious interpretations.
Originally posted by gull80
Medically gender is straightforward. Yes there are specific medical conditions where an individual does not develop the appropriate physical characteristics for their sexual genotype, but that's not what we're talking about here.
I tbelieve it is very much what we're talking about here.
A fully grown functioning and hormonally and genetically male is not likely to undergo the sex change operation.
There is often anomalies, not just physical, but hormonal, chemical and brain struture and early psychological development that thanscends the genital physical features.
People don't undergo sex change operations because they have been born and raised with a clear cut gender identity. If they were, then the sex change would never occur to them, and would be un-necessary.
People who undergo the procedure are not your clear cut males or females to begin with, so whether their genitalia or their genotype indicates on or the other, there is more to it than that. So, we are talking about those people that don't develop appropriate gender charachteristics, be it physically, mentally, hormonally, genetically or any other aspect that defines gender.
As for the political correctness, I'd be the last one to worry about that.
Order in nature... I would say order is too strong of a word. There is hierarchy to things in nature. It is not without fail or without deviation.
As for scientists believing in god....
There is a difference between science and personal beliefs. One is objective, the latter one leaves a lot to subjective interpretation. I'm not a fan of mixing the two, untill we get to into social scences and examining human behavior, individually, and at the level of a society.
When it comes to medicine, physics, math, chemistry and such, I'm not into attempting to apply religious symbology to scientific events and findings. Science can stand on it's own, without religious interpretations.
