Archive for the 'Gender Policy in Sport' Category

OutSport Toronto Presents

Then And Now

In a joint collaboration with OutSport Toronto and Cave Painter Films, supported and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Resource Council of Canada. The documentary production was created for a Toronto District School Board Conference (TDSB) at the beginning of May 2012, to bring awareness, language and support to working professionals within the school system to assure greater support to young people who are currently being challenged with these issues, and trying to find their place in the school and athletic system.

Brought together 10 athletes, speaking about growing up with issues of sexuality and gender diversity and the impact and the important role sport has played individual in their lives.

I am just so proud of the all the individuals that had to courage to speak of their experience.

Watch Video Documentary – “Click Here”

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Published May 20th, 2012

IOC COOL things happen when we focus on FULL INCLUSION… THIS IS THE MAGIC WHAT HAPPENS! Who needs steroids to perform, people need access just to participate.

Ms. blog Magazine – Curious Tension: Feminism and the Sporting Woman

By Susan J. Bandy
May 2nd, 2012

As a former athlete and a graduate student in sports studies, I embraced feminism in the 1970s. It seemed to be a natural alliance because I had experienced sports as personally liberating and felt that it offered females the possibility to become accomplished athletes, develop strong and healthy bodies and defy societal views of females as physically and psychologically unsuited for sport.

Simone de Beauvoir’s view of sport and physical activity in The Second Sex, which many consider the starting point of second-wave feminism, clarified what I felt. In 1949, she claimed that if a female could “swim, climb mountain peaks, pilot an airplane, battle against the elements, take risks, go out for adventure … she will not feel before the world … timidity.”

De Beauvoir shared similar views with earlier American feminists of the 19th century, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who understood the importance of educating and liberating the body as pivotal to some of the most basic concerns of early feminism.

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Published may 2nd, 2012

CFRB 1010 – Canada’s Talk Radio – Jim Richard’s Showgram

Ladies Professional Golf Association LPGA – Gender Controversy

October 14, 2010

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Ladies Professional Golf Association LPGA – Gender  Controversy
Kristen discusses with Jim in studio.

Relevant to ongoing discussions High Performance and International/Olympic Sport today.

LISTEN to Full Interview - “Click Here”

Republished April 27th, 2012
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Films On Demand – The Gender Puzzle

NOW PLAYING
The Gender Puzzle
A 5 Part Series
(46:00)

Science is identifying new biological processes that determine a person’s sex. How will these findings affect the transgender and transsexual community? This program explores the latest research into gender development and the medical, cultural, and legal issues at the heart of the “brain sex” school of thought. Showing how human genome research has shifted scientific focus away from chromosomes, the video examines the role of brain receptors and the discovery of the SRY protein, which establishes maleness. Interviews featuring people with intersex and transsexual experiences shed light on how gender identity emerges, and how it figured into one man’s legal battle for the right to marry. (46 minutes)

WATCH Video - “Click Here”

Published April 26th, 2012

The New York Times – For Women at Games, Messages Are Mixed
By JERÉ LONGMAN
Published: April 25, 2012

If Saudi Arabia treated women any more dismissively, it could host the Masters.

After signaling that Saudi women may be allowed to compete in the Olympics for the first time at the London Games, Saudi officials retreated. The only possibility remaining, it seems, is that a few Saudi women might gain entry as unofficial participants. They must walk behind men at home, but apparently cannot walk behind the Saudi flag in London.

“Saudi Arabia has pretty much decided to play hedgehog, head pulled in, spikes out,” said Christoph Wilcke, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, who wrote a scathing report about the discrimination against female athletes in the ultraconservative Islamic kingdom, where even physical education classes and sports club memberships are prohibited. “They are irked by all this attention.”

As the London Games approach, all sorts of mixed messages are being sent about women, some by women themselves, having more to do with what they will wear and how they will behave and how they should be controlled than about how they will perform in competition.

In a recent profile of the beach volleyball player Zara Dampney, The London Evening Standard noted, “She’s got one of the most talked-about bottoms in British Olympic sport but can’t understand the fascination with it.”

Officials of the International Amateur Boxing Association, noted fashion mavens, had a brilliant idea over the past year, a fistic version of “Project Runway.”

They suggested that women try wearing skirts in competition, urging pleats to feminize the punches. The man in charge of the association — they are always men — said he had received complaints that spectators could not tell women from men beneath the protective headgear. Instead of referring these spectators to optometrists, he referred the boxers to the Ring Magazine spring collection.

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Published April 25th, 2012

The dark history of sex testing in international sport/

Dr. Ian Ritichies – Podcast Vancouver

Sex testing in international sporting events. What exactly is it? Where did it come from? The International Olympic Committee claims it was created out of a desire for “fair play.” The grim reality is that the testing is deeply rooted in sexist and imperialist attitudes. Dr. Ian Ritchie of Brock University helps the F Word expose the dark history of the testing.  Followed by a discussion between F Word host Ellie and Ashley McGhee, elite-level soccer player, feminist and critical thinker.

LISTEN to full interview with Dr. Ritchie – “Click Here”

Published April 24th, 2012

How a female athlete’s body became a battleground for gender assumptions (again).

April 23, 2012 | Posted by Ellie Gordon-Moershel

For those of you who follow women’s basketball you will have already heard of Brittney Griner. Though only 21 she has been making waves the past few years most recently having received Associate Press’ Player of the Year and the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Like many elite level athletes Griner possesses some unusual physical traits (think swimmer Micheal Phelps with his wingspan as long as 26 monarch butterflies lined up in a row…or more simply, 6’7”). Standing 6’8″ tall, Griner wears a men’s US size 17 shoes.

The use of the word “unusual” over “unnatural” is an important distinction and kind of the crux of what this blog post will be about. I recently read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. It’s a young adult historical fiction novel about a upper class white girl who finds herself as the only female passenger on a voyage across the Atlantic in the 1800s. As she transitions into a competent member of the crew the antagonist Captain Jaggery attempts to squander any solidarity she builds with the other crew members. In a particularly memorable scene Jaggery accuses Charlotte of a crime using an argument about her “unnaturalness”:

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Published April 23rd, 2012

Questioning Griner’s gender? Please, just shut up and go away

By Ray Ratto | CBSSports.com National Columnist

I think we may be looking at this Brittney Griner thing all wrong. Not the playing thing — that we got all right. She’s a hell of a player, maybe unlike any other player in the history of women’s basketball.

But the insulting, offensive and retrograde remarks about her gender — I think we may be going about her defense all wrong by using persuasion and gentle chiding. We may want to simplify our argument to its essentials, to wit:

If you think Brittney Griner is something other than what she purports to be — that is, a woman — then you are an idiot and a coward.

There. That wasn’t so hard to read, was it?

But here I am taking her word on faith, and there’s always the possibility of being wrong, so let’s adjust our earlier assessment of her critics thus:

Unless you are a licensed gynecologist with access to her medical records or have examined her yourself, you don’t get to express a stupid opinion about her, because you know nothing. So shut the hell up.

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Published April 4, 2012

Semenya qualifies for London Olympics

Reuters – Semenya qualifies for London Olympics

PRETORIA (Reuters) – Former world 800 metres champion Caster Semenya qualified for the London Olympics on Friday when she eased to victory in one minute 59.58 seconds at a Yellow Pages Series meeting.

Semenya, 21, underwent gender tests at the 2009 Berlin world championships where she won the 800 gold medal.

She did not compete for almost a year until the International Association of Athletics Federations cleared her to run again after accepting the conclusions of an expert medical panel.

The South African Olympic committee requires athletes to meet the qualifying time twice, one at a local meeting and once in an international competition.

Semenya reached her first qualifying mark when she finished second in last year’s world championships in Daegu, South Korea.

“It’s a weight off my shoulders and I’m very happy with my time,” Semenya told reporters. “I just ran my own race and it went okay, it’s best that way and I enjoyed it, that’s why I qualified.”

Semenya failed to reach the qualifying standard in last weekend’s national championships in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, clocking 2:02.68 in windy conditions. On Friday she became the first woman in 21 years to run under two minutes on South African soil.

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Published April 21, 2012

IOC picks successor to replace outgoing Medical and Scientific Director.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is pleased to announce that it has chosen a successor to replace Dr Patrick Schamasch as IOC Medical and Scientific Director.

Dr Richard Budgett will join the organisation on 1 October following the completion of his work as Chief Medical Officer at the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG). Dr Schamasch will retire later this year after 27 years in the service of the IOC.

IOC President Jacques Rogge said: “Dr Schamasch will leave the IOC after many years of outstanding service. We are pleased to have found such a capable replacement in Dr Budgett, with whom we first became acquainted as an Olympian and later through his work with Team Great Britain and LOCOG”.

Goto Full IOC Press Release – “Click Here”

Published April 13th, 2012

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April 4th, 2012 | CTV National News – Facing Gender Discrimination

Facing gender discrimination
Following the Miss Universe Pagents’ decision to change their rules regarding gender, Cyclist Kristen Worley discusses how she faced similar discrimination within her own sport of high-performance cycling, claiming existing policies oppress the athlete.

Watch Full Interview – “Click Here”

Published April 4th, 2012

Playthegame 2011 Conference Review | Being a real woman: A matter of testing or self-declaration?

Playthegame 2011 conference review, October – Cologne Germany.
Gender Section – Scroll to page 18.

Being a real woman: A matter of testing or self-declaration?
By Kirsten Sparre

Both solutions were put forward in an intense discussion at Play the Game about what sport should do with athletes who have changed sex or for other reasons do not fit into the normal categories of male or female.

The first solution was suggested by Arne Ljungqvist, Chair of the IOC’s Medical Commission. For the past 25 years he has worked within international sports federations on finding ways to protect female athletes from competing against men.

For the IOC, the question is mainly biological: Is a given athlete eligible to compete in a female competition? Over the years, the IOC and international sports federations have attempted to settle this question with controversial tests and gender screening of all female athletes – a practice that was only abandoned within the last ten years.

Ljungqvist has been a passionate campaigner against the general gender screening and is the architect behind a new decision from the IOC’s Executive Commission about what he calls eligibility to take part in female competitions. Now all females recognised as such by law should be eligible to compete in female competitions provided she has androgen levels below the male range or, if within the male range, she has an androgen resistance.

The key point for Ljungqvist is that the new test of androgen levels will only be applied if it is deemed necessary by relevant authorities in individual cases. Not all women have to be tested.

In the past ten years, Ljungqvist has only seen a handful of cases of such cases, but nevertheless he believes it is important to spend time and money on finding out how best to do it.

“We have to do it to protect the women who compete against them. This is what they want,” he said.

‘Let us commit to inclusion’
Self-declaration of gender as a way of resolving increasing gender confusion in sport was proposed by professor Bruce Kidd from the University of Toronto.

Kidd was less concerned about the potential benefit that a man who had undergone sexual reassignment and become a woman could have in the competition against other women. There are so many other factors that also affect performance, he argued.

Instead he saw the question of gender as an issue of identity – something which should be protected by the Olympic movement.

“Self-identity is fundamental to human rights and the ideal of self-experession that is the basis for Olympic sports. How can the Olympic movement serve as a beacon of universiality and then single out this one difference,” he asked.

“Let’s be politically committed to inclusion. If one in 2000 babies is born with atypical sexual characteristics, that is a huge population. We should welcome them into the Olympic family, instead of casting doubt and aspersion on them,” Kidd said.

LiveStream Playthegame Gender Session – “Click Here”

Playthegame 2011 conference review, October – Cologne Germany.
Gender Section – Scroll to page 18.
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Published March 30th, 2012

New York Times Repost From Pre 2008 Beijing Olympics – “A Lab Is Set to Test the Gender of Some Female Athletes”

By KATIE THOMAS
Published July 30th, 2008

By the time they arrive in Beijing, most athletes have resigned themselves to the possibility of undergoing a battery of tests for banned substances, like anabolic steroids and certain cough medicines.

But some female athletes may find they are asked to submit to an entirely different examination — one that will test whether they are, in fact, women.

Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have set up a sex-determination laboratory to evaluate “suspect” female athletes, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Sunday. The lab is similar to ones set up at previous Olympics in Sydney and Athens, and will draw on the resources of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital to evaluate an athlete’s external appearance, hormones and genes.

Some medical ethicists have said the practice is too intrusive. “Real people are going to be hurt by this,” said Alice Dreger, an associate professor in medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University.

Goto Full Article - “Click Here”

Reposted March 29th, 2012

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Other Key References:

New York Times - Redefining the Sexes in Unequal Terms

Canadian Running - Former Canadian Olympian Bruce Kidd wants gender testing banned

Uptown Magazine - “You Don’t run like a girl…” As the 2012 Summer Games draw near, the debate about gender testing heats up.

Georg Facius (Denmark) EAA – The Major Medical Blunder of the 20th Century