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."
Parents
Former Member
Originally posted by LindsayNB
I believe the IOC has determined a set of objective criteria that allows them to decide which competition a transexual should compete in
I hadn't been aware of that. I thought IOC had simply said that all transexuals would compete under their new sex. Was I mistaken about this?
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 agree, and my impression is that most of the participants in this thread would agree. The problem is that the "body type" of a transexual may not fit cleanly into either of the two traditional categories.
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.
The fact that there is no fixed rule doesn't mean that there is no rule at all. A basis can be defined for making the decision, even though the decision is ultimately not black and white, but involves varying shades of gray.
A similar situation exists with regard to use of banned substances by athletes for medical reasons: An athlete can apply for an exemption, but no black-and-white criteria for the decision are specified in the rules. Such applications are considered on a case by case basis.
The committee's questions would be: Can the athlete demonstrate that he has a medical problem that would be treated by use of the banned substance? Are alternative therapies available that wouldn't involve use of a banned substance? Will the athlete's use of the banned substance be restricted to the amount needed to actually treat his/her condition?
But what if there is an alternative therapy, but the athlete's doctors feel that it would be harmful for the athlete to use it for some reason? In the end, this is going to require a judgement call by the committee. But this doesn't mean that their judgement will be arbitrary, or that, as a consequence, there will be "no rule at all."
In the case of transexuals, the basis would be: Does the athlete's body have more of the athletic characteristics of a male or of a female? And the answer might even vary depending on the sport and on the physical characteristics that are deemed most important to that sport. In the case of, e.g., an XY athlete who had malformed genitalia, and who was therefore surgically altered during infancy and given female hormones, the decision is likely to be fairly clear cut. In the case of, e.g., an XY weightlifter who was raised as a male, was competing successfully as a male, but who then got a sex change, and whose muscle masses still look more or less like they did before the sex change, the decision might go the other way.
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.
I believe that masters competitions should simply use legal sex, without any questions being asked. And I believe this for the same reasons that I don't favor mandatory drug testing for masters swimmers: There is little justification for the invasion of privacy this entails for anyone who is not competing in elite-level competitions, and USMS does not have the resources to handle the workload of case-by-case decisions that would be required.
Originally posted by LindsayNB
I believe the IOC has determined a set of objective criteria that allows them to decide which competition a transexual should compete in
I hadn't been aware of that. I thought IOC had simply said that all transexuals would compete under their new sex. Was I mistaken about this?
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 agree, and my impression is that most of the participants in this thread would agree. The problem is that the "body type" of a transexual may not fit cleanly into either of the two traditional categories.
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.
The fact that there is no fixed rule doesn't mean that there is no rule at all. A basis can be defined for making the decision, even though the decision is ultimately not black and white, but involves varying shades of gray.
A similar situation exists with regard to use of banned substances by athletes for medical reasons: An athlete can apply for an exemption, but no black-and-white criteria for the decision are specified in the rules. Such applications are considered on a case by case basis.
The committee's questions would be: Can the athlete demonstrate that he has a medical problem that would be treated by use of the banned substance? Are alternative therapies available that wouldn't involve use of a banned substance? Will the athlete's use of the banned substance be restricted to the amount needed to actually treat his/her condition?
But what if there is an alternative therapy, but the athlete's doctors feel that it would be harmful for the athlete to use it for some reason? In the end, this is going to require a judgement call by the committee. But this doesn't mean that their judgement will be arbitrary, or that, as a consequence, there will be "no rule at all."
In the case of transexuals, the basis would be: Does the athlete's body have more of the athletic characteristics of a male or of a female? And the answer might even vary depending on the sport and on the physical characteristics that are deemed most important to that sport. In the case of, e.g., an XY athlete who had malformed genitalia, and who was therefore surgically altered during infancy and given female hormones, the decision is likely to be fairly clear cut. In the case of, e.g., an XY weightlifter who was raised as a male, was competing successfully as a male, but who then got a sex change, and whose muscle masses still look more or less like they did before the sex change, the decision might go the other way.
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.
I believe that masters competitions should simply use legal sex, without any questions being asked. And I believe this for the same reasons that I don't favor mandatory drug testing for masters swimmers: There is little justification for the invasion of privacy this entails for anyone who is not competing in elite-level competitions, and USMS does not have the resources to handle the workload of case-by-case decisions that would be required.
