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."
Former Member
Originally posted by LindsayNB
Come now Tom, in the context of the post that line clearly referred to a hypothetical state that was supposed to be reaping the benefit of having one of its citizens win a medal, and the fact that if a country is winning medals by getting its athletes to have sex change operations they are not going to reap much in the way of prestige, rather more likely that they will be ridiculed.
You're getting yourself in a hot water coming across as pretty negatively judgemental, by not choosing your words very carefully.
Then on the other hand, you seem to try and carry on a philosophical discussion, which would imply that you are quite capable of choosing what you say carefully. That makes it very tough for people to accept your 'disclaimer' as sincere.
Originally posted by Howard
Why couldn't YOUR mean England?
Cause the audience being addressed is in US, large majority, so when one adresses an audience of, let's say, Latvians, and they refer to "Your Country" that carries an implied meaning of "the country that you people are from".
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.
From this page on the IOC site :
The group confirms the previous recommendation that any “individuals undergoing sex reassignment of male to female before puberty should be regarded as girls and women” (female). This also applies to individuals undergoing female to male reassignment, who should be regarded as boys and men (male).
The group recommends that individuals undergoing sex reassignment from male to female after puberty (and vice versa) be eligible for participation in female or male competitions, respectively, under the following conditions:
-Surgical anatomical changes have been completed, including external genitalia changes and gonadectomy
-Legal recognition of their assigned sex has been conferred by the appropriate official authorities
-Hormonal therapy appropriate for the assigned sex has been administered in a verifiable manner and for a sufficient length of time to minimise gender-related advantages in sport competitions.
In the opinion of the group, eligibility should begin no sooner than two years after gonadectomy.
It is understood that a confidential case-by-case evaluation will occur.
In the event that the gender of a competing athlete is questioned, the medical delegate (or equivalent) of the relevant sporting body shall have the authority to take all appropriate measures for the determination of the gender of a competitor.
I wish I had gone directly to the source to start with. It could make one cynical about the media that they reported the recommendations so poorly, leaving out the fact that there will in fact be a case-by-case evaluation and the criteria that the hormones must have been administered for a sufficient period of time to minimize gender-related advantages.
Now that I've read the actual policy I support the it more than ever. As stated on the web page the criteria are just a statement of criteria to be used in the case-by-case evaluation.
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.
Originally posted by LindsayNB
Having XX or XY chromosomes, in itself, does not make any difference to a person's swimming ability and is therefore an inadequate basis for justifying segregation of competitors.
On what scientific basis do you base this? Are you stating the entirety of the difference between male and female athletes are gonads?
It doesn't take a sophisticated medical test to figure someone 6'0" with long arms and legs but lacking only gonads is at a clear advantage.
The policy is bunk. It assumes the only differences between the two sexes are a bra, a jock strap and hefty doses of hormones. Why does a person have to continue to take hormones? It's because the body thinks they are what they were born as, not some surgically altered, psychologically counseled alternative.
And yet, oddly enough, the policy says nothing about the fact the person is still a biological male/female.
The chromosomes are still male/female. A dress and hormone shots don't change your sex.
I find it insulting that there is a policy that allows males/females to now swim as the opposite only becuase of shots, clothing and a legal document saying John is now Jane.
However the gonadectomy removes the testis which produce the hormones which give the characteristics that give males advantages over females. Having XX or XY chromosomes, in itself, does not make any difference to a person's swimming ability and is therefore an inadequate basis for justifying segregation of competitors. To be sure, it is a quick and dirty test that will usually catagorize people correctly, but not always. A person who has sex reassignment surgury at birth for instance, and there are a lot of these, will have XY (or XXY if that is what they were born with) chromosomes and yet will be indistinguishable from other females in any way other than a sophisticated medical test. To argue that someone who is otherwise indistinguishable from other females ought to swim with the males violates the justifications for segregation in the first place. Chromosomes are only relevent to the extent that they confer an advantage.
Clearly one can construct examples where the mere fact of surgery and hormones are inadequate, but the policy addresses those cases via the guidelines and case-by-case evaluation. The IOC policy allows them to exclude someone with an advantage but to include someone who has no advantage, this seems like a good thing.
No, I did not miss that part. In fact my post specifically addressed it. A person is not a "new" sex only by removing certain parts, that was my point. Chromosomes are still intact and there are a lot more cells in the body than external genitalia, probably by a few million or so.
Remember in the 70s those kits you could put on the front of a VW Bettle that made it look like a Rolls Royce? Still wasn't a Rolls any more than removing genitalia makes someone a new sex.
