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
Hi Bob,
The issue of practicality is an interesting one that I have grappled with when thinking about whether there are potential improvements to masters swimming competitions and I agree that practicality is an important consideration. Having impractical criteria invites unfairness in the "adhering to the rules" sense of the word. I would note however that practicality and fairness are very different concepts, being more practical does not make something more fair.
I see two issues here:
is it fair for transexuals to swim against people of unlike chromosomes?
is it practical to segregate competion in a way that allows transexuals to compete in their assigned sex
I believe the IOC has determined a set of objective criteria that allows them to decide which competition a transexual should compete in, so I believe the second question has an affirmative answer. That puts us back to square one in answering the first question.
The IOC has defined three catagories of people, men, women, and transexuals. Like women, people in the transexual catagory are at a disadvantage compared to the men. Some people in the transexual catagory may have an advantage over women (this is not as obvious to me as it seems to some, as far as I know there is no instance of a transexual that can swim at an Olympic medal level). To me the question comes down to whether a transexual should be catagorized by their body or by their chomosomes.
Fundamentally, I think transexuals should be treated in all respects according to their new body type. I don't think that fairness is compromised to any greater extent by the possibility of a transexual with an advantage than by a non-transexual with an advantage.
My problem with the case by case basis is that it seems to me that implies no rule at all, either you can define the basis for the distinction or it becomes arbitrary and the basis for "fair" in terms of conforming to the rules is lost.
As I said earlier, I am much more concerned with the idea that transexuals should be forced to compete according to their chromosomes at the masters level. The thought of a person who has the physique and legal status of one sex being forced to swim in the heats of the other sex is worse than the thought of someone losing the race to that person. At the masters level the issue goes both ways, depending on the level of the meet it is quite possible a formerly female athlete could win a male age group.
Hi Bob,
The issue of practicality is an interesting one that I have grappled with when thinking about whether there are potential improvements to masters swimming competitions and I agree that practicality is an important consideration. Having impractical criteria invites unfairness in the "adhering to the rules" sense of the word. I would note however that practicality and fairness are very different concepts, being more practical does not make something more fair.
I see two issues here:
is it fair for transexuals to swim against people of unlike chromosomes?
is it practical to segregate competion in a way that allows transexuals to compete in their assigned sex
I believe the IOC has determined a set of objective criteria that allows them to decide which competition a transexual should compete in, so I believe the second question has an affirmative answer. That puts us back to square one in answering the first question.
The IOC has defined three catagories of people, men, women, and transexuals. Like women, people in the transexual catagory are at a disadvantage compared to the men. Some people in the transexual catagory may have an advantage over women (this is not as obvious to me as it seems to some, as far as I know there is no instance of a transexual that can swim at an Olympic medal level). To me the question comes down to whether a transexual should be catagorized by their body or by their chomosomes.
Fundamentally, I think transexuals should be treated in all respects according to their new body type. I don't think that fairness is compromised to any greater extent by the possibility of a transexual with an advantage than by a non-transexual with an advantage.
My problem with the case by case basis is that it seems to me that implies no rule at all, either you can define the basis for the distinction or it becomes arbitrary and the basis for "fair" in terms of conforming to the rules is lost.
As I said earlier, I am much more concerned with the idea that transexuals should be forced to compete according to their chromosomes at the masters level. The thought of a person who has the physique and legal status of one sex being forced to swim in the heats of the other sex is worse than the thought of someone losing the race to that person. At the masters level the issue goes both ways, depending on the level of the meet it is quite possible a formerly female athlete could win a male age group.
