Sex Tested, Gender Verified: Controlling Female Sexuality in the Age of Containment

Abstract

cern of this paper: the emergence and control of modern sexuality, specifically the socio-historical construction of the sexual body in sport. What follows is the history of a sport policy. The so-called “sex test” policy and its concomitant battery of verification procedures was imposed upon elite female athletes in major international athletic competitions from the 1960s until the IOC’s recent decision to cancel testing in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. 3 The procedure—referred to synonymously as “sex testing,” “gender verification,” or “femininity controls”—required that women entered in major international competitions—most notably and visibly the Olympic Games—undergo either a chromosomal or physical inspection in order to “verify” their femininity. Although the specific reasons for its implementation were never cited formerly in International Olympic Committee publications, the test’s apparent purpose was to guard against men posing as females in women’s athletic competition. 4 However, beneath the sex test’s “ethical” integument lay sport’s gendered practices and institutions, ones through which athletes became markers of social-sexual normalcy and deviancy. The history of the sex test presents an opportunity to trace several gender-based facets of modern sport. These include the social construction and control of sex and sexuality; the operation of social and political power in and through the body in sport; the hegemony of male-controlled scientific and medical disciplines