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."
Originally posted by LindsayNB
where there is a conflict between gender based on chromosomes and surgically assigned gender according to the guidelines developed by the international group of experts on a case-by-case basis.
There is no such thing as a conflict between gender based on chromosomes and cosmetic surgery. What makes you think that the removal and reconstruction of external parts is the sum total of a person's sex and all that contributes to that sex? You cannot be assigned sex by having a surgical procedure any more than you can glue wings on a pig, throw it off a barnyard roof and call it an eagle. Also, I have yet to ever see any panel of so called experts on any controversial issue ever reach concensus.
This isn't some drag show. This is serious competition where the lack or addition of body parts may or may not make anydifference. You willing to water it down that far?
With gender evolving into such a "blurry" issue (could be too much chlorine), pehaps we need more categories for competition. For example, what do we do with the transsexual who later becomes gender dysphoric again? Do we force him/her to compete with their new gender, or do we allow them to compete with the gender they were "assigned" at birth? I guess we can just wait until the About Gender UK site is complete to give us all the answers. Alternatively, we could just do away with separate competitions for men and women (as LindsayNB suggests) and compete as one species (although we may need to establish some criteria for that).
Originally posted by LindsayNB
For the record I am in favor of separate competition for the women at the Olympics
Originally posted by gull80
With gender evolving into such a "blurry" issue (could be too much chlorine), pehaps we need more categories for competition. For example, what do we do with the transsexual who later becomes gender dysphoric again? Do we force him/her to compete with their new gender, or do we allow them to compete with the gender they were "assigned" at birth? I guess we can just wait until the About Gender UK site is complete to give us all the answers. Alternatively, we could just do away with separate competitions for men and women (as LindsayNB suggests) and compete as one species (although we may need to establish some criteria for that).
Since Craig's post could be read to say that I prefer that we do away with separate competition let me put myself on the record yet again: my prefered solution is to separate competition by gender, dealing with cases where there is a conflict between gender based on chromosomes and surgically assigned gender according to the guidelines developed by the international group of experts on a case-by-case basis.
Who is going to keep that list???
Well, I can't prove it of course, but perhaps Howard Squirm should ACTUALLY be on "the list?"
Or maybe it's just Halloween?
This thread was before my arrival to the swimming scene.
How about a new thread..."Transexuals in USMS"?
Who is going to keep that list???
:rofl:
"Can you prove you're weren't born a male?"
