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 Tom Ellison
LindsayNB Wrote:
“In not wanting USMS to allow transexuals to compete as their post-operative sex the logical implication is that people are willing to have a sex change in order to do better in masters competition, something totally beyond being taken seriously.”
Gosh, I do not see this as a logical implication at all! I see this thought process or line of thinking to reflect a possible unfair advantage. You are correct in your assumption that it is preposterous to think a Masters Swimmer would undergo a sex change operation to swim faster times as a female swimmer within USMS. It is very logical however to assume an unfair advantage may/could arise out of a former man---competing against a woman--- as a surgically altered woman....knowing good and well that 99.99999999999999999999 % of them would have had this operation for reasons OTHER then swimming fast USMS times.
The logical implication arises from the paragraph prior to the one you quoted, i.e. that people opposed to the new policy were opposed based on the premise that it would be used as a way to "cheat".
BUT, the real issue with respect to logic, which I keep trying to bring up and which keeps being ignored is that the whole argument based on fair/unfair is circular! People assert that a race between someone with XX chromosomes and someone with XY chromosomes is unfair, period. What is your definition of fair? So far, the only definition of fair that fits the argument is that it is only fair if the two people have the same chromosomes! For the sake of the argument, when you give your definition be sure to state it in a way that makes it "fair" for a five foot, 100lb woman to race a six foot lean 170lb woman but makes it "unfair" (to the woman) for a five foot, 100lb man to race the same six foot woman. It is absolutely true that many men are bigger and stronger than many women but it is equally true that many women are bigger and stronger than the average women but no one is arguing that we exclude (naturally) bigger stronger women from competition!
Anyway, please define "fair" in this context.
Originally posted by Tom Ellison
LindsayNB Wrote:
“In not wanting USMS to allow transexuals to compete as their post-operative sex the logical implication is that people are willing to have a sex change in order to do better in masters competition, something totally beyond being taken seriously.”
Gosh, I do not see this as a logical implication at all! I see this thought process or line of thinking to reflect a possible unfair advantage. You are correct in your assumption that it is preposterous to think a Masters Swimmer would undergo a sex change operation to swim faster times as a female swimmer within USMS. It is very logical however to assume an unfair advantage may/could arise out of a former man---competing against a woman--- as a surgically altered woman....knowing good and well that 99.99999999999999999999 % of them would have had this operation for reasons OTHER then swimming fast USMS times.
The logical implication arises from the paragraph prior to the one you quoted, i.e. that people opposed to the new policy were opposed based on the premise that it would be used as a way to "cheat".
BUT, the real issue with respect to logic, which I keep trying to bring up and which keeps being ignored is that the whole argument based on fair/unfair is circular! People assert that a race between someone with XX chromosomes and someone with XY chromosomes is unfair, period. What is your definition of fair? So far, the only definition of fair that fits the argument is that it is only fair if the two people have the same chromosomes! For the sake of the argument, when you give your definition be sure to state it in a way that makes it "fair" for a five foot, 100lb woman to race a six foot lean 170lb woman but makes it "unfair" (to the woman) for a five foot, 100lb man to race the same six foot woman. It is absolutely true that many men are bigger and stronger than many women but it is equally true that many women are bigger and stronger than the average women but no one is arguing that we exclude (naturally) bigger stronger women from competition!
Anyway, please define "fair" in this context.
