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."
Lefty - has the heat and humidity of Houston finally seeped into the frontal lobe?
I'm not sure what I'm guilty of. Guilty of swimming, yes. Guilty of thinking your assertions are silly, yes. Guilty of thinking Ellison is sitting back chuckling to himself, yes, yes, yes.
And, what are you talking about with me being called gay? I could care less if someone calls me gay. Maybe I am gay. Maybe you are gay, so what. What does being gay have to do with any of this?
Holy swimming hijinx - dude, you are way off base here. Surface for air, oxygen induced loopiness.
Originally posted by lefty
If I call your mama fat you are probably going to try to fight me at the park!
My mom was fat and, oh the fights I had over that, especially with her wearing combat boots and all. She lost a lot of weight so don't try to date her now that she is more attractive.
Maybe we can fight halfway to the park since she is half her old size now. We'll meet at the pool where I'll dress as a transsexual and we'll have a gentically altered Texas-Death-Match-Loser-Leave-Town swimming showdown.
I enjoy adults who think of themselves as more mature. I bet you are a blast at parties.
Originally posted by Phil Arcuni
Here is an interesting and well presented article, definitely anti:
nytimes.com/.../20roberts.html
I was actually rather unimpressed with the article. Sample:
Think a sex-change operation is too radical to contemplate? As late as the 1980's, East Germany had a state-sponsored system that left female athletes with masculine features. In some underdeveloped nation, officials may wonder if surgery could reap the glory of gold. Who would know, anyway?
An Olympic caliber male swimmer deciding to have a sex change is equated with a female swimmer being left with masculine features? Give me a break!
Who would know? Well the drug testers for starters, the idea that it won't be totally obvious that a person has just undergone at least two years of heavy hormone theropy is just silly.
Isn't the purity of sport essential? Isn't that what Balco is all about?
What is purity and what does it have to do with this? It's supposed to be about avoiding unhealthy performance-enhancing drugs.
The I.O.C. only complicated this search for purity by allowing a surgically enhanced route to the finish line.
A sex change is a performance degrading procedure!
I'm very disappointed the NYT published such poor quality stuff.
Was I way out? I questioned her intellectual rigor, not her ethics, or her morals, which I am sure are fine. I never claimed that people should not be judgemental, and I am judgemental of people who try to stop conversations by assertions of unsubstantiated fact. I am not nor will be a PC police, but state my beliefs clearly.
Do I have to repeat things to be sure that I am not misunderstood? Please read more carefully.
Originally posted by cinc310
No one here said a transexual should be excluded from going to a masters swim meet.
My comment derived from the following statement in a posting on page one of this thread:
I personally have a BIG problem with it and think it is unfair. Let them have their own competition! Call it the He/She/It Games! ;) No male/female division. I hope USMS will not follow suit.
I guess that you could argue that forcing a post-operative, post-hormone-treatment male-to-female transexual to compete in the male heats is not excluding them but I think it has the same effect.
I still find it surprising that people claim that whether a person has XX or XY chromosones, something that can't be determined without quite advanced medical technology, is the sole determining factor in determining whether a race is fair, ignoring all the other variations from person to person. It seems like a very strange definition of fair.
Really though, I think the root of the disagreement here is mostly that the anti-IOC-policy side of the debate assumes the transexual competitor will be someone who changed sexes in order to win a medal while the pro side of the debate assumes the competitor will have changed sexes for medical/gender dysphoria reasons. 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.
Phil I agree, you did not attack her morality nor her character. You stated that her argument, "It's not fair" was, well, lacking depth. I agree. But then you said "evidently Beth did not do well in her philosophy or medical ethics courses." Out of line? I don't know, but really not very nice!
I have noticed that Aquageek is obsessed with two things: "Willies" as he likes to call them and Ion. Interesting.
I am guilty of intellectual arrogance by not realizing that "did not do well in medical ethics class" could be interpreted as having bad ethics instead of does not have the experience/training/aptitude to apply rigorous analysis to difficult moral and ethical situations. So I was surprised by the content of Beth's angry response (though I expected an angry response), and I apologize for not making myself more clear to everybody.
And I see aquageek, in
When you insisted girls was wrong, you assumed the role of Chief PC Man for this forum. It's refreshing to have a PC cop on board since that always does wonders for true debate.
and
And, Ion, I'm sorry, we'll re-read your posts until we understand better.
twice uses the honorable ad hominum debating technique. Who is damaging the debate? Just because the girl/women is the stereotypical PC issue does not mean that was the way I brought it up. You know you used 'girl' deliberately to make your statement more funny and more ridiculous, and I called you on it.
I think LindsayNB's summary of the fundamental differences in this debate is on the mark.
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.
Originally posted by aquageek
Yes, my two comments do definitely suggest an obsession. Maybe if I say it a third time gull80 can give me a psychiatric diagnosis and then the IOC can spend time deciding if I can swim with the boys or girls. Oops, sorry Phil, I mean men and women, my apologies.
Lefty, I could be wrong but I do recall you (maybe) calling me Ion a few weeks back. Maybe you are the obsessed one, but with whom is the question? Do you lean towards Mr. Beza or the Swampyone? What does this say about you? Delve into your XY chromosomes, swim on it, and get back to us.
Sorry, you have me confused with someone else. I think it was Madsen, and I think he made the comment more than once. It is worth pointing out that when someone is accused of something that is true, the guilty immediately accuse someone else.
PS: the difference between you and me is that if someone called me gay, I would think they were ignorant. You actually take it as an insult. Now THAT is funny!
EDIT: just to clarify for Geek, the reason it is FUNNY is because - and I don't mean this to be condescending it just inherantly is - you really do act like a 3rd grader. It is funny to imagine an adult actually acting how you do! If I call your mama fat you are probably going to try to fight me at the park!
