Gender Verification Tests Research Articles

Beyond Caster as object? Examining media constructions of Caster Semenya through decolonial thinking

ABSTRACT The popular media coverage of South African track and field star Caster Semenya showcases how colonialist discourses shaped the sexed, gendered, and racialised meaning of her public biography. Yet, when researchers study Semenya as their research ‘object’, does this act of inquiry reproduce the knowledge constructs of Western coloniality as well? In this article, we consider both issues by conducting and reflecting on our poststructuralist analysis of popular media coverages of Semenya’s athletic career, with specific attention to her dealings with gender-verification testing. We examine the discursive construction of Semenya’s public biography by popular newspaper outlets in the United States and South Africa from 2009 to 2019, arguing that both geopolitical locales maintained Western social binaries and scientific discourses concerning Semenya’s sexual identity in similar, yet distinct ways. Drawing from the poststructuralist methodology of intertextuality, we reflect on its capacity to deconstruct the colonial discourses shaping the cultural meaning of a non-Western athlete of colour such as Semenya, as well as its relation, as a method of knowledge production, to the epistemological legacies of Western coloniality. We also contend that by approaching Semenya as the ‘object’ of our poststructuralist framework, our analysis implicitly reproduced, rather than challenged, the Eurocentric subject/object framework of modern (Western) epistemology. Thus, our purposes are empirical, methodological, and reflexive as we seek to contribute to critical analyses of the constructed cultural meaning of celebrity athletes while subjecting our own research assumptions and frameworks to poststructuralist and decolonial deconstruction.

‘We Are Equal but Different’: Challenging Compulsory Heterosexuality by Intersexual Female Athletes in the World of Sport

By using the method of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), this article examines how sport is a conservative institution so far as sexuality and gender identity of female athletes are concerned. The article enquires to know what it means for a sportswoman to be physically strong and active like a man. It explores how the process of binary sex segregation in competitive sports affects the non-heterosexual female athletes and how their sexuality and physicality are considered as a foil in the patriarchal domain of sports. It highlights how the ‘gender verification test’ as a discriminatory tool is used by the sports regulatory bodies to prove female athletes’ sexuality, especially heterosexuality and to maintain the system of patriarchal hegemony in the world of sport. The article looks into how the hegemonic masculinity within sport works to uphold male power, while subjugating the female athletes. It unveils the incidents, how the non-heterosexual female athletes fall victims of homophobia and go through mental stress to confirm to the societal norms of compulsory heterosexuality. More specifically, through in-depth analysis of two contemporary cases of intersexual hyper-androgenic female athletes, this article examines the status and challenges being faced by the non-heterosexual female athletes in sport and focuses upon how their sexuality are addressed in the field of competitive sports. The article also focuses on the agony as well as resilience of intersexual female athletes to break the gender stereotype in sport in postmodern era unlike before.

On the Eurocentric nature of sex testing: the case of Caster Semenya

ABSTRACT Black masculinity and femininity have been read outside the normative gender sphere since plantation slavery. The construction of Black femininity, is apparent in the treatment of Caster Semenya, whose treatment is reminiscent to that of ‘the so-called’ Hottentot Venus, Sarah Bartmann. This comparison has been made due to the voyeurism they have been subjected to and the spectacle that has been made of their bodies. Semenya’s treatment is reflective of the legacy of plantation slavery which created material conditions that were used to dominate and dehumanize African men and women. In this paper, we will examine how Caster Semenya’s femininity has been constructed through a racist, Western lens and the different ways in which race has been used to construct Black femininity, and the divergent discourses of Black women’s sexuality and femininity. Furthermore, we will show how the process of gender verification testing is a means of forcing Semenya to assimilate to a white, Western standard of beauty and ensure the continued exclusion of racialized, particularly, Black (female) athletes in sport.

Educación física y deporte trans-formado

El siguiente documento presenta un acercamiento inicial a conceptos de diversidad sexual y su relación con la educación física y el deporte, enfatizando en la contribución de este campo a la reproducción de algunos estereotipos relacionados con el sexo-género de las personas. Se aborda la historia de las pruebas de verificación de género, así mismo, las disposiciones del Comité Olímpico Internacional sobre la normativa para la participación de personas Trans e Intersex en competencias olímpicas. Finalmente se plantean reflexiones sobre la clasificación deportiva basada en la categoría género, de igual forma, la necesidad de proponer nuevas interacciones desde la educación físico-deportiva que reconozcan la diversidad física, biológica, fisiológica, neurológica y social inherente a las personas, teniendo en cuenta el contexto local y nacional de Colombia.

Outrunning Bias: Unmasking the Justifications for Excluding Non-Binary Athletes in Elite Sport

The inclusion of intersex and transgender athletes in sport has long been the subject of vigorous debate. Elite sport governing bodies like the International Association of Athletics Federations have attempted to articulate policies limiting the extent to which such athletes can compete in the female category. The most common reasons given to prevent their participation include: (1) the presence of testosterone and attendant physiological advantages, (2) the unfairness of competing against athletes with typically male-attributed qualities, and (3) the need to protect women’s sport from those who may destroy it. This Article looks to the historical use of gender verification tests as a starting point to question these justifications. It then shows that the lack of scientific evidence connecting testosterone to increased athleticism and sports’ tolerance of other physiological differences both fail to support the dominant “unfair advantage” claims. This Article suggests that current regulations are instead grounded in the reification of traditional gender norms and circumscribed notions of femininity. Rather than protecting the fairness of women’s sports, the ongoing exclusion of non-binary athletes polices gender norms in ways that extend far beyond the arena.

Spectacles and Scholarship: Caster Semenya, Intersex Studies, and the Problem of Race in Feminist Theory

In this essay I use the case of Caster Semenya, a South African sprinter forced to undergo gender verification testing in 2008, as a point of entry for looking at the role that race and nation have historically played in the production and reproduction of the concept of intersex. I examine feminist scholars’ previous work on Semenya in order to highlight how their inattention to issues of race and nation made them unable to see the ways in which intersex—as a classificatory schema, an object of knowledge, and a technology of subject formation—contains within it a racially exclusive impulse. The essay examines the production and reproduction of the idea of intersex in two locations—the United States and South Africa—during three different time periods in order to show how ideas about race were written into the subject from its earliest conception. A number of other scholars have argued that intersex has played a key role in the production of ontological gender. I take this work a step further by showing how the issues of race and nation have factored into both the historical production and reproduction of intersex and, through that, have come to exert a powerful but hidden effect on gender as an object of analysis and conceptual tool.

Sex Dilemmas, Amazons and Cyborgs: Feminist Cultural Studies and Sport

In this article, I discuss sport and physical activities as a field of empirical investigation for feminist cultural studies with a potential to contribute to theorizing the body, gender and difference. Sport has, historically, served to legitimize and rein-force the gender dichotomy by making men “masculine” through developing physical strength and endurance, while women generally have been excluded or di-rected towards activities fostering a “feminine suppleness”. The recent case of runner Caster Semenya, who was subjected to extensive gender tests, demon-strates how athletic superiority and “masculine” attributes in women still today stir public emotions and evoke cultural anxieties of gender blurring. But the rigid gender boundaries have also made sport a field of transgressions. From the “Soviet amazon” of the Cold War, transgressions in sport have publicly demonstrated, but also pushed, the boundaries of cultural understandings of gender. Gender verification tests have exposed a continuum of bodies that cannot easily be arranged into two stable, separate gender categories. In spite of the so called “corporeal turn”, sport is still rather neglected within cultural studies and feminist research. This appears to be linked to a degradation, and fear, of the body and of the risk that women – once again – be reduced to biology and physical capacity. But studies of sport might further develop under-standings of the processes through which embodied knowledge and subjectivity is produced, in a way that overcomes the split between corporeality and discursive regimes or representations. Furthermore, with the fitness upsurge since the 1980s, the athletic female body has emerged as a cultural ideal and a rare validation of “female masculinity” (Halberstam) in popular culture. This is an area well-suited for “third wave” feminist cultural studies that are at ease with complexities and contradictions: the practices and commercialized images of the sportswoman are potentially both oppressive and empowering.

Policing the Boundaries of Sex: A Critical Examination of Gender Verification and the Caster Semenya Controversy

On August 19, 2009, Caster Semenya, South African track star, won a gold medal in the women's 800-meter event. According to media reports, on the same day, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ordered Semenya to undergo gender verification testing. This article critically assesses the main concepts and claims that undergird international sport organizations' policies regarding “gender verification” or “sex testing.” We examine the ways in which these policies operate through several highly contested assumptions, including that (a) sex exists as a binary; (b) sport is a level playing field for competitors; and (c) some intersex athletes have an unfair advantage over women who are not intersex and, as such, they should be banned from competition to ensure that sport is a level playing field. To conclude, we make three recommendations that are consistent with the attainment of sex and gender justice in sport, which include acknowledging that myriad physical advantages are accepted in sport, recognizing that sport as a level playing field is a myth, and eliminating sex testing in sport.

“What Makes a Woman a Woman?” Versus “Our First Lady of Sport”

Caster Semenya, a South African female track and field star from rural Limpopo South Africa, won the IAAF 2009 World Championships in the 800-meter event. She was then subjected to “gender-verification” testing. Media reports, especially in the United States, underscored that Semenya underwent gender-verification testing because of her “deep voice, muscular build, and rapid improvement in times.” Combining content and textual analysis, we conducted a comparative media analysis of the Caster Semenya controversy in the United States and the South African print news media. Results demonstrated that the United States print media coverage framed the controversy in terms of Semenya’s “true” sex, “medicalized” debates about sex testing, and discussed the limitations of medical assessment of male and female bodies in sport. In comparison, South African print media sources focused on human rights, nationalism, and “strategic essentialism” to frame Semenya as a “true” woman defending the nation against a perceived racist assault. We conclude the article with transformative visions of sport rooted in postcolonial feminism and critical feminist studies.

Gender Verification and Gender Policies in Elite Sport

Sex-segregated sports require governing bodies to clearly and accurately place athletes in two categories, one labeled “men” and the other labeled “women.” Sports governing bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) used sex testing procedures to attempt to verify the sex of athletes competing in women’s events. In 2004, the IOC introduced the Stockholm Consensus to regulate the inclusion of, primarily, male-to-female transsexual athletes, to compete at the Olympic Games. These governing bodies, and others, are dealing with society’s basic categorization of humans and thus are entangled in attempts to scientifically and medically define sex. This article will focus on the history and implications of gender-verification testing and gender policy on notions of “fair play” and athlete eligibility.

Intersexuality and Gender Verification Tests: The Need to Assure Human Rights and Privacy

Intersexuality and Gender Verification Tests: The Need to Assure Human Rights and Privacy

Girl, Interrupted: Interpreting Semenya’s Body, Gender Verification Testing, and Public Discourse

This article addresses the social implications of gender verification testing in sport. The authors ask how sex—gender is contained in mediated public discourses that questioned Caster Semenya’s identity following her success in the women’s 800 m at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Championship. The authors use critical discourse analysis to examine the perception of the case surrounding Semenya along with perceptions of her sex and gender identity. The authors argue that the manner by which Semenya’s body is discursively constructed via news board discussants, scientific and medical communities, and athletic governance policies renders her flesh abject and promotes the interpretation of her body as being “‘disordered,” all in the service of maintaining the rhetoric of “fair play” and “equal opportunity” for female athletes. The authors claim that such tests reproduce existing hegemonic gender ideologies via the categories they reinforce and through the mechanism of testing itself, as this leads to sex—gender “verification.”

Caster Semenya and the “Question of Too”: Sex Testing in Elite Women's Sport and the Issue of Advantage

In 2009, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) forced Caster Semenya, the women's 800-meter champion from South Africa, to submit to “gender verification tests.” It took eleven months for officials to review the results of those tests and, ultimately, permit her compete again. Sports organizations, including the IAAF and the International Olympic Committee, have implemented sex testing since the 1960s, but Semenya's story reinvigorated debates about how to determine sex and whether sex testing is necessary in sport. However, I argue that there is another issue at which researchers should direct energies. That is, instead of asking whether an athlete “counts as” a woman, kinesiologists and those in affiliated fields might better concentrate their efforts on discerning which conditions, naturally occurring or otherwise, constitute unfair advantages.

The Culture of the Elite Athlete: An Enhanced Perspective on the Case of Caster Semenya, and Gender Verification Testing

The Culture of the Elite Athlete: An Enhanced Perspective on the Case of Caster Semenya, and Gender Verification Testing

An approach to the biological, historical and psychological repercussions of gender verification in top level competitions

Martinez-Patino MJ, Mateos-Padorno C, Martinez-Vidal A, Sanchez AM, Garcia JL, Diaz MP, Tourino CF. An approach to the biological, historical and psychological repercussions of gender verification in top level competitions. J. Hum. Sport Exerc. Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 307-321, 2010. Different kinds of disorders of sex development (DSD) have been observed in athletes from different countries along the history of sport. The detection of an abnormal chromosomal pattern or gonadal dysgenesis has been always associated to the gender verification tests which international sports institutions have performed from 1960s and abandoned as systematic practice in 2000. Such methods have been heavily criticized by specialists of different fields such as genetics, endocrinologists and psychologists. The use of a femininity control at the present days to detect possible males who fraudulently pretend to compete in female only events is inconsistent. The possible decision of the International Olympic Committee to establish special centers to manage future DSD cases is also discussed. A major concern on the confidentiality between doctors and patients and the establishment of care protocols for the psychological support of athletes in such delicate situations is needed. This ties altogether with the psychological and social repercussions of the gender verification on the lives of athletes with DSD. When cases of sex ambiguities are detected, issues such as the respect of privacy, the need of specific protocols to follow with flexible and diversified tests considering the particularity of each case as well as the psychological support of the athletes and their family have to be taken into account. Although health tests are needed for both men and women, DSD athletes should not be discriminated for their genetic pattern and they should be allowed to compete as it occurs with other athletes with genetic affections which do not involve the sex and that give them a phenotypical advantage over other athletes. Key words: GENDER TEST, DISORDERS SEX DEVELOPMENT (DSD), GENDER VERIFICATION, SPORT, FEMALE

Gender verification in the Olympics.

FOR NEARLY 15 YEARS, WE HAVE ADVOCATED ABOLItion of laboratory-based, on-site testing for gender verification in sports competition. The ostensible goal of gender verification is to ensure that female athletes do not unwittingly compete against men. Given that men presumably would have an unfair competitive advantage on the basis of speed or muscle mass, such a policy superficially seems endorsable on the grounds of fairness. In reality, gender verification tests are difficult, expensive, and potentially inaccurate. Furthermore, these tests fail to exclude all potential impostors (eg, some 46,XX males), are discriminatory against women with disorders of sexual development, and may have shattering consequences for athletes who “fail” a test. During the 1996 International Olympic Committee (IOC) World Conference on Women and Health, the IOC passed a resolution “to discontinue the current process of gender verification during the Olympic Games.” In January 1999 the IOC Athletes’ Commission recommended to the IOC Executive Board that gender verification testing be discontinued, and the decision was ratified in June 1999 by the 109th IOC session in Seoul, South Korea. The medical community should applaud the decision of the IOC to abolish onsite gender verification preceding athletic events, effective with the current Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The issue of gender verification arose in the early 1960s when rumors circulated that men secretly posing as women were competing against female athletes. At the 1966 European Track and Field Championships in Budapest, Hungary, and at the 1967 Pan American games in Winnipeg, Manitoba, physical inspection was made of disrobed female athletes. At the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica, gynecologic examinations were performed. Complaints and resentment about this embarrassing approach led the IOC to search for an alternative gender verification method at its competitions. The IOC decided to require all female athletes to undergo sex chromatin analysis (X chromatin or Barr body analysis). Laboratory-based gender verification became compulsory in 1968 at the Mexico City Summer Olympics, after it was introduced on a small scale at the European Cup in Track and Field Athletics in Kiev, Ukraine (1967) and the Grenoble Winter Olympics (1968) in France. Gender verification has long been criticized by geneticists, endocrinologists, and others in the medical community. One major problem was unfairly excluding women who had a birth defect involving gonads and external genitalia (ie, male pseudohermaphroditism). Male pseudohermaphroditism is defined as genetic males (Y chromosome) whose external genitalia fail to develop—the genitalia may be ambiguous or resemble female genitalia. Many different forms of male pseudohermaphroditism exist. A second problem is that only women, not men, were stigmatized by gender verification testing. Systematic follow-up was rarely available for female athletes “failing” the test, which often was performed under very public circumstances. Follow-up was crucial because the problem was not male impostors, but rather confusion caused by misunderstanding of male pseudohermaphroditism. Noteworthy was the courageous contribution of the Spanish hurdler Maria Martinez Patino in documenting abuse by sports authorities. Patino had complete androgen insensitivity, and like most male pseudohermaphrodites she was raised as female. If athletic, these individuals naturally compete as women. Few if any plausible athletic advantages exist, especially given that gonadal extirpation usually has occurred by adulthood; however, abnormalities in external genitalia and gonads understandably create confusion.

Gender Verification in Competitive Sports

The possibility that men might masquerade as women and be unfair competitors in women's sports is accepted as outrageous by athletes and the public alike. Since the 1930s, media reports have fuelled claims that individuals who once competed as female athletes subsequently appeared to be men. In most of these cases there was probably ambiguity of the external genitalia, possibly as a result of male pseudohermaphroditism. Nonetheless, beginning at the Rome Olympic Games in 1960, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) began establishing rules of eligibility for women athletes. Initially, physical examination was used as a method for gender verification, but this plan was widely resented. Thus, sex chromatin testing (buccal smear) was introduced at the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968. The principle was that genetic females (46,XX) show a single X-chromatic mass, whereas males (46,XY) do not. Unfortunately, sex chromatin analysis fell out of common diagnostic use by geneticists shortly after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) began its implementation for gender verification. The lack of laboratories routinely performing the test aggravated the problem of errors in interpretation by inexperienced workers, yielding false-positive and false-negative results. However, an even greater problem is that there exist phenotypic females with male sex chromatin patterns (e.g. androgen insensitivity, XY gonadal dysgenesis). These individuals have no athletic advantage as a result of their congenital abnormality and reasonably should not be excluded from competition. That is, only the chromosomal (genetic) sex is analysed by sex chromatin testing, not the anatomical or psychosocial status. For all the above reasons sex chromatin testing unfairly excludes many athletes. Although the IOC offered follow-up physical examinations that could have restored eligibility for those 'failing' sex chromatin tests, most affected athletes seemed to prefer to 'retire'. All these problems remain with the current laboratory based gender verification test, polymerase chain reaction based testing of the SRY gene, the main candidate for male sex determination. Thus, this 'advance' in fact still fails to address the fundamental inequities of laboratory based gender verification tests. The IAAF considered the issue in 1991 and 1992, and concluded that gender verification testing was not needed. This was thought to be especially true because of the current use of urine testing to exclude doping: voiding is observed by an official in order to verify that a sample from a given athlete has actually come from his or her urethra. That males could masquerade as females in these circumstances seems extraordinarily unlikely. Screening for gender is no longer undertaken at IAAF competitions.

A simple method for gender verification based on PCR detection of Y-chromosomal DNA and its application at the Winter Universiade 1991 in Sapporo City, Japan.

A simple and reliable screening method for gender verification at international sports competitions was developed on the basis of detection of Y-chromosomal DNA which was specifically amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Total DNA obtained from buccal mucous membrane cells by digestion with proteinase K followed by boiling treatment was directly used for the PCR. The amplified product was electrophoresed on an agarose gel staining with ethidium bromide. We adopted three sets of the PCR primer, identifying different regions of Y-chromosome, of which sensitivity and specificity were preliminary evaluated for 228 (112 male, 116 female) DNA samples from lymphocytes. This new method was first applied for the gender verification test at the Winter Universiade 1991 Sapporo, accompanied by traditional microscopic tests for X- and Y-chromatins. No positive results were obtained for 155 female competitors using both the PCR and the microscopic methods. The superiority of the proposed method was clearly shown in the reliability of the results and also in the saving on instrumental and personnel costs as compared to previous cytologic methods.

Sex Testing in International Athletics A Small Step Forward

As described in the report by Ljungqvist and Simpson for the International Amateur Athletic Federation's work group, 1 gender verification tests were introduced into competitive sports in the 1960s because of the widespread belief that individuals, either acting alone or under some type of coercion, might masquerade as the opposite sex so as to gain advantage in athletic competition. This practice poses two issues: one, whether testing of any type is desirable, and two, if testing is to be performed, what type of test would be best? See also p 850. As to whether testing should be done, it must be emphasized that both the mechanisms for anatomical sexual differentiation and the mechanisms for development of gender identity—the feeling by an individual of maleness or femaleness—are poorly understood. Sex is determined ultimately by the chromosome composition (46,XX being female and 46,XX male), but the initial development of embryos of both

Gender verification testing in sport

Gender verification testing in sport, first introduced in 1966 by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) in response to fears that males with a physical advantage in terms of muscle mass and strength were cheating by masquerading as females in women's competition, has led to unfair disqualifications of women athletes and untold psychological harm. The discredited sex chromatin test, which identifies only the sex chromosome component of gender and is therefore misleading, was abandoned in 1991 by the IAAF in favour of medical checks for all athletes, women and men, which preclude the need for gender testing. But, women athletes will still be tested at the Olympic Games at Albertville and Barcelona using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA sequences on the Y chromosome which identifies genetic sex only. Gender verification testing may in time be abolished when the sporting community are fully cognizant of its scientific and ethical implications.