Chasing the world’s fastest man/Chasing world’s fastest women are “Gender Tested
The Chronicle “Chasing the world’s fastest man” written by journalist Steve Connor writes today:
“HE IS the fastest man on two legs, the greatest sprinter of all time – and Usain Bolt can also claim another superlative. He alone has caused the other top athletes in the world to run faster.
Scientists are calling it the “Usain Bolt Effect” because he has significantly improved the average performance of the world’s top sprinters, who are now suddenly running about 1 per cent faster than they did prior to Bolt’s explosive appearance in 2008 – a significant margin at this distance.”
But when a woman does it, we don’t rejoice in her athleticism and call her the “worlds fastest woman on two legs” or “explosive” as Connor’s writes about Bolt- we instead, have policy specifically designed by the International Olympic Committee [IOC] in development partnership with the International Association of Athletics Federation [IAAF], to oppress women’s athletic performances, and going as far as history has shown over and over again, not based on science, but a social ideology, putting women in a box, their place in society literally dis-empowering and humiliating them. Going even as far to create policy to physically gain access and violate their bodies and feeling one they can do this, but in-fact have a right to do it, questioning their performances as being “unwomanly”. Men are rejoiced and brought to a hirer status amongst their peers within sport and fellow countrymen, endorsements, media and business opportunities fall literally out the sky overnight. But when a woman does as history has shown are and women are punished when performing well. As history has shown, physically and publicly violated, humiliated, isolated, left in poverty and in some cases attempted suicide.
This is the direct impact of gender verification testing of women.
This is a direct problem of policy created by the IOC, that is not reflective of society and of women, whom which the sport community is to afraid to upset the apple cart, knowing what is going on, as everyone has their hands in the cookie jar. If a person and or media takes the IOC to task, as has happened to several media outlets, the IOC’s lawyers send letters threatening access to future games for either the journalist of news outlet. This has happened on several occasions, afraid of the truth of the impact of gender verification of women getting into the public realm and the oppression and human rights violations it has created.
The athletes are not the problem, the IOC is!
Watching journalists like Steve Connor has just written, calling it the “Usain Bolt Effect”, there are many women in many sports capable of the creating the same effect and even have done so on many occasions and growing, as greater opportunity for women in sport to participate.
Using Athletics as an example in par with Bolt, young Caster Semenya a brilliant and talented young woman was physically violated for being a talented female athlete. The IOC and IAAF, with all their wisdom (NOT), in parallel to Bolt instead of celebrating her excellence as an athlete, as they do for Bolt the man, cast a cloud of judgement over her, because of her success. Going as far, to question her very identity – As they found out, her gender was never in question, and in-fact the they had raped her for running fast, yes as a woman. Suggesting, women cannot run this fast, where in-fact until Caster’s performance in Berlin, 13 athletes had run faster then her since 1983, over a 27 year period. Important to note, were never gender tested.
Conn
or’s speaks of the effect Bolt has had on the men and their performance, stating; “…he has significantly improved the average performance of the world’s top sprinters, who are now suddenly running about 1 per cent faster than they did prior to Bolt’s explosive appearance in 2008″.
Caster has done the very same thing if not even higher level of improvement the women’s 800m event. In Daegu, Korea this past September at the IAAF World Championships, won by Russian 800m specialists Mariya Savinova with a winning time of 1:55.87, who dominated the Diamond League all season long. Young Caster placing second, almost a full second behind, with a time of 1:56.35, well behind Savinova.
Important to note, Savinova with the “Caster Semenya Effect” was 3/100′s of a second off of Caster’s time of Berlin 1:55.45. Savinova was not subjected to gender verification testing after her conclusive win in Daegu, as Caster was for her equal performance in Berlin two years prior. The qualifications for the women’s 800m final was set 1:59:00, where just two years prior the majority of the women could not break 2:00.00.
Caster’s effect, far out ways Bolt’s, but yet as history has shown and noted by Canadian Olympian Dr. Bruce Kidd in a recent article in Canadian Running magazine this wanting to ban gender verification testing of women, led by Canada before the London games in July, Kidd states;
“But Kidd said women’s success in sports is too often seen as unnatural and a threat to male dominance.
“When women get really, really good, their femaleness has tended to be challenged: they’re not really women, they’re dykes, they’re men pretending to be women. Something’s gotta be wrong because real women can’t be that good,” he said.
Instead, Kidd suggests sport stop separating women and men as two separate groups. He said “we need to think of humans as a spectrum of variation.”
Clearly working with experts in Canada and around the world, this is a social conditioning, and are waking up to the effect, we are not allowing women to be women, and or be strong bodied. And that, the IOC through regressive and oppressive gender policy targeting women, unsupported by facts and or science, are illegally designing and using policy to oppress women and women’s gender. Moreover, creating a two tier system for women and men sport, creating barriers that are socially driven NOT scientifically supported, creating barriers to not allow women to perform at their very best as top high performances athletes, and if you fall outside of the IOC’s “woman criteria”, solely based on the woman’s appearance, “we are going to get you…”.
We have no criteria for men (we don’t test for men’s high excessive serum testosterone levels – its a free ride…), moreover we do not gender test men and discuss (competitive performance advantage amongst men, that Bolt, Phelps and other distinctly have. As Connor’s article suggest, we in-fact celebrate it and relish in the fact, that such a fine specimen exists. In-fact we have a system in many sports searching for that next genetic anomaly to supersede in their sport), though it is men creating the criteria for women and how women should be and appear in sport. Gender verification testing and the IOC gender policies are clear violations of “Human Rights and of Women and Women’s Bodies”.
As a social science exercise, as the evidence and experts are showing, this is not an issue of athleticism, but a social one and determining in the “vision of men” how women should and will be perceived and acceptable visually in sport. Thus as science is showing and the evolution of women in sport and having greater opportunity, more and more women, are rapidly closing the gap between the sexes. It is not so much physiology, as it about access and opportunity to participate and develop.
The IOC historically has royally screwed this up, as indicated by experts because of their complete and verified by experts, “incompetence” has led to the most catastrophic circumstances on female athletes over the last five decades, until now with very little accountability. Georg Facius (Denmark) of the EAA spoke directly to the media and international sport leaders, at the Playthegame conference in Cologne Germany, asking for the immediate resignation of Professor Anre Ljungqvist, IOC Medical Chair while reflecting as Georg stated to Ljungqvist “for 50 years of his incompetence”. Further stating; “the medical blunder of the 20th century”. Ljungqvist the father of gender testing with Dr. Myron Genel, Pediatrics at Yale University.
The incompetence is at the very top of the sports system, unfortunately women are the ones paying a dear price for it!
Let’s rejoice in the “Caster Semenya Effect” and women’s bodies and athleticism as we do men! Truly Awesome! Bolt, though a great athlete, Caster impact in the women’s 800m, far more impressive then the mens 100m by far, and she had to break through so many barriers to do it! That is a woman with great courage and internal strength, someone who is super human – Something Usain Bolt never had to think about to do it and or experience being assumed Atypical male, which of course he is not as he is so exceptional physiologically, and treated as such.
Published March 28th, 2012
