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International News Articles 2004-2011
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This article is a reflection of Canada’s commitment and leadership to diversity, social ethics and inclusion. In April, we convened in Ottawa as a select panel, hosted by the Canadian Centre of Ethics in Sport. Unanimously condemning gender testing and the Stockholm Consensus despite the sorry history of which they were designed too medicalize women and the definition of womanhood, taking expression of embodied gender identity out of the very hands of the very humans involved , and setting up many other young people for the devastating treatment that Caster Semenya experienced. Moreover, it flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence of the tremendous homonal variability among humans.
NY Times ESSAY – Sports
Redefining the Sexes in Unequal Terms
April 23, 2011
The good news is that the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations, the governing body for track and field, have worked hard to come up with a new policy to deal with athletes whose sex development is unusual.
Although sports officials contend that this reworking is not a specific response to the fiasco surrounding the South African runner Caster Semenya, what happened to Semenya constitutes reason enough to seek reform. Surely no athlete should learn from watching television, as Semenya did, that her sex has been called in question on the international stage. And no athletes should have to face the previous patchwork policy on sex testing, wondering what will happen if their particular condition is not clearly explained in the rules.
The new policy no longer allows any room for a simplistic “I know it when I see it” approach to who counts as a female athlete. Women who test in the male range for functional testosterone will have to have their levels chemically squashed in order to play. (Functional testosterone means not just the amount the body makes, but also how the body responds to it, because some people’s cells lack receptors to respond.)
The bad news is that the new policy seems sexist in its philosophy. Indeed, it is so sexist that it may even count as a violation of Title IX, which will matter because the international policies will undoubtedly trickle down to school-based sports.
The hormones in question are not naturally exclusive to men. Women and men naturally make androgens — sometimes called strength-building hormones — including testosterone.
Yet despite the fact that testosterone belongs to women, too, the I.O.C. and the I.A.A.F. are basically saying it is really a manly thing: “You can have functional testosterone, but if you make too much, you’re out of the game because you’re not a real woman.”
To my knowledge, there is no equivalent of this biochemical policing in men’s sports. If a man has a mutation that gives him a big advantage — say he makes lots of testosterone — he can count that as a natural advantage. Indeed, at least now, men and women are allowed all other advantageous biochemical mutations.
The idea behind this policy is to make a move toward creating the mythical level playing field. But what is really being leveled here is the bodies of female athletes. Thus the game being played seems to be a kind of controlling who will count as a sexually appropriate woman: submit to being made sexually “normal” through hormone treatments or you cannot compete.
The I.O.C. and the track federation would probably say that the typical man’s functional testosterone level is orders of magnitude higher than the typical woman’s. True enough, but the same large variations could be true for other naturally occurring differences between classes of athletes, and yet it is only women who are being limited in terms of natural biochemical advantage.
At a meeting hosted by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport last week in Ottawa, a group of us mulled over this problem. We were all sympathetic to the I.O.C. and I.A.A.F.’s struggle. Sports has surely grown up past the age of sexual innocence, but it has not found its way. There is no perfect solution, one that is reasonably objective, universally applicable and universally satisfying.
Yet this newly proposed biological reduction of women to a hormonally disadvantaged class of people — one medically made disadvantaged, if necessary — struck many of us as regressive from the standpoint of women’s rights. Indeed, it reminds me of those itty-bitty shorts that college women’s volleyball players must wear. They each sexualize the bodies of female athletes as a requirement of play. They each insist that a woman never be manly.
In Ottawa, I met the former Olympian Bruce Kidd, a leader in international sports policy who served for nearly two decades as the dean of the faculty of physical education and health at the University of Toronto.
In a follow-up e-mail correspondence, he wrote: “How can the I.O.C. and I.A.A.F. claim that they support the full inclusion of women when they reimpose a medical test for their very identity? It’s a huge setback for human rights and the integrity of the Olympic movement.”
Alice Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
Goto Full Article – “Click Here”
Published April 26, 2011
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The Toronto Star – Complaints against Caster Semenya ‘total sour grapes
By Randy Starkman – Olympic Sports Reporter
A transgender Toronto cyclist who helped South African runner Caster Semenya get reinstated lashed out Monday at complaints against her return — including a remark by Canadian Diane Cummins that it was like “running against a man.”
Kristen Worley, who attempted to become the first transgender Olympian at the 2008 Beijing Games, was responding to remarks made by Cummins and other athletes after Semenya won Sunday in the women’s 800 metres in 1:59.90 at a major meet in Berlin.
Published August 23rd, 2010
For Full Article – “Click” Here
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Hope to return Santhi her dignity-Worley
The Times of India, August 1st, 2010
By Nandita Sengupta
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Kristen Worley is a Canadian high performance track cyclist who has been speaking publicly on issues of gender discrimination and treatment of gender variant athletes.
She is also co-founder of Coalition of Athletes for Inclusion in Sport formed in 2009 to address the IOC Gender Policy. Worley’s activism recently ensured world sporting bodies lift the ban on South African runner Caster Semenya, who had to sit out for 11 months after the world champion’s gold medal was revoked as she failed ‘gender tests’.
Published – August 1st, 2010
For Full Article – “CLICK HERE”
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Semenya backer now takes up Santhi’s case
The Times of India, August 1st, 2010
By Nandita Sengupta
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NEW DELHI: There is hope yet for athlete Santhi Soundarajan. The Tamil Nadu athlete was barred from racing and stripped of the silver medal she won at Doha’s Asian Games in 2006 after failing gender tests.
But now Canada-based elite cyclist Kristen Worley, who successfully fought for South African athlete Caster Semenya, has taken up her case.
Published – July 31, 2010
For Full Article – “CLICK HERE”
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gender
Neither male nor female: The secret life of intersex people
The Toronto Star Healthzone.ca April 30th, 2010
By Francine Kopun
Sydney was a cataloguer. For years she worked in a Toronto government library, studying books so she could classify them, fitting them into just the right spot on the shelves. She wished her own life was as neat.
Sydney was 23 years old, an Alabama girl preparing to marry, when she got a call from her doctor telling her she had a cancerous condition that required immediate surgery. Cancer in those days was akin to a death sentence. She hurried to comply.
The hospital agreed to pay for everything if she would agree to be examined by doctors and medical students. She was poor. She said yes. They told her she needed a complete hysterectomy. She believed them.
Goto The Toronto Star Healthzone.ca to Access Full Article – “Click Here”
Published April 30th, 2010
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Gender testing in sport: A case for treatment?
BBC World News Online – February 15, 2010
By Ian O’Reilly
With the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games under way, leading sporting bodies
continue to be embroiled in one of sport’s biggest controversies – the gender verification testing of female athletes.
In January a symposium of experts in Miami concluded that some athletes discovered to have gender ambiguities be advised to have treatment, possibly even surgery, to continue competing at international level.
Last week the International Olympic Committee’s General Assembly was briefed by the head of its Medical Commission Professor Arne Ljungqvist who recommended that “strategically located centres of excellence should be established to which athletes with a DSD (disorder of sex development) could be referred and, if necessary, further investigated and treated.”
Goto BBC News to Access Full Article – “Click Here”
Published February 15, 2010
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Gender testing in sport
Who really defines what is considered normal?
FAZ.NET – February 15, 2010
By Oliver Tolmein
15. In February 2010 opening of the Olympic Winter Games is the theme of “gender test in Vancouver” for the officials was a taboo. To request for the specific action was silent on the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Recently, the “coalition of athletes for inclusion in sport”, which has its headquarters in Canada, published a press release with the demand to ban the sex checks for women at the Winter Games. That is something the IOC has not reacted.
Was the special edition of the British Journal of Sports Medicine “, coordinated by the Medical Commission of the IOC, while containing an essay on doping controls, but none address the growing problems that exist with cases Ambiguous sexual characteristics in female athletes. Only in the semi-official brochure for the snowboarders can be found on page five and a short message: “Gender Review: The Polyclinic in the Olympic village will conduct the confirmation of the sex 2010 Winter Olympics, should one be required by the Medical Commission of the IOC.”
Goto FAZ.NET to Access Full Article – “Click Here”
Published February 15, 2010
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Gender Testing Hangs Before the Games as a Muddled and Vexing Mess
By Gina Kolata
New York Times – Published – January 15th, 2010
At closed meetings in Miami on Sunday and Monday, medical specialists and representatives of the International Olympic Committee will tackle one of the most vexing questions in sports: What test should be used to determine whether an athlete competes as a man or a woman? Or should there be any official testing at all?
Full Article – Goto New York Times “Here”
Published – January 15th, 2010
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What’s the big deal about gender? – Female Identity as Intersex
WNN India Correspondent, NILANJANA BHOWMICK
Women News Network –
WNN – Published – January 5th, 2010
The changing navigation of female identity
A U.N. report on counter-terrorism by Martin Scheinin says, “gender is not synonymous with women, and, instead, encompasses the social constructions that underlie how women’s and men’s roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are understood.”
Full Article – Goto Blog at Women News Network “Here”
Published – January 2010
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There’s nothing sporting about sex tests
Globe & Mail – Published – August 27, 2009
David Zirin and Sherry Wolf
There’s nothing sporting about sex tests
The whole thing is antiquated and stigmatizing, and says far more about those doing the testing than about the athletes tested.
Complete Article - Globe & Mail – “Click Here”
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John Hopkin’s University – Punishing difference
Express Buzz Magazine – January 24, 2009
By Vaibhav Saria
Tamil athlete Santhi Soundararajan attempted suicide in September 2007 in Pudukottai by consuming dangerous amounts of a veterinary drug. She was driven to take her own life because, in 2006, after winning the silver in the women’s 800m race at the Asian Games, she was stripped of her medal, her accolades, and her job (she had earlier that year won the gold in the 1,500m and the silver in the 800m at the South Asian Games in Colombo) and subjected to humiliation and governmental indifference. This is because a test ostensibly revealed that she was biologically intersexed. (which means that while the male has XY chromosomes and the female has XX chromosomes, there are instances when a person might have an XXY chromosome as well, hence, intersex, somewhere between the two sexes). Furthermore, I should just mention at the outset, that having this extra chromosome doesn’t necessary mean that you have external physical manifestations of both the sexes. Hence, let us straightaway clear Santhi of any intentional deception. The way media represented the case didn’t help either; calling it “the sad story of” or “the mysterious case” or “the strange case of” Santhi Soundararajan instead of looking at what assumptions of gender and sex were problematically being made by the federation. Instead of raising a ruckus — the reports were relishing the sensation of the ‘freak’ and had hideous and offensive headlines like ‘Santhi runs like a man, but cries like a woman.’
The Olympic Council of Asia assumes that there are two genders and two sexes (the International Olympic Committee does not do gender tests), but also that these genders and these sexes have something universally definitive about them.
Published- January 2009
Express Buzz Magazine – Full Article
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Shanti Soundarajan weaving Olympian dreams all over again
TNN – Published – January 2nd, 2009
By Prajwal Hegde,TNN
BANGALORE: A failed gender test cost Shanthi Soundarajan more than the 800m silver medal at the Doha Asian Games.
Publicly humiliated and socially scorned, suicide seemed like a good option for the elder daughter of brick kiln labourers – Soundarajan and Manimekalai. Some nine months after one of the saddest stories in Indian sport unraveled itself on an international stage, the village belle from Kathakurichi consumed veterinary medicines in a bid to end her life.
It’s a story best forgotten, given that there are greater areas of darkness than light, except that Shanthi wasn’t born to fade into the night. When she got off her hospital bed in Tamil Nadu’s Pudukottai last September, head tonsured and heart filled with dread, she returned to the very track she dominated as a child, searching for the shards of her shattered dreams. In her new avatar as Tamil Nadu state-appointed athletics coach, she’ll be looking to conquer the same frontiers albeit with a different approach.
The Times of India – Full Article
Published – January 2009
Reuters (Tabloid) version of same article – January 2, 2009
Briefs-Indian athlete takes up coaching after sex test failure
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The XY Games – Olympics Beijing 2008
New York Times – Published August 3rd, 2008
by Jenny Boylan
IN the 1936 Olympic Games, the sprinter Stella Walsh — running for Poland and known as the fastest woman in the world —
was beaten by Helen Stephens of St. Louis, who set a world record by running 100 meters in 11.4 seconds. After the race, a Polish journalist protested that Stephens must be a man. After all, no woman in the world could run that fast.
Olympic officials performed a “sex test” on Stephens, who was found, in fact, to be female, proving once and for all that a person could be incredibly fast and female at the same time
New York Times – Full Article
Published – August 2008
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The Gender Trap – Olympics Beijing 2008
The Guardian, UK – Published July 30th, 2008
by Emine Saner
We’re familiar with drug testing for athletes, but officials at the Beijing Olympics will be taking things one stage further and examining competitors whose sex is in doubt. And it is far from being a new problem, as Emine Saner discovers.
For more than a year, officials in Beijing have been designing a special laboratory to determine the sex of any athletes taking part in this year’s Olympic games. “Suspected athletes will be evaluated from their external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination,” says Professor Tian Qinjie. The tests will not be conducted on every female athlete, but will be required if serious doubts have been raised about an individual competitor – invariably one competing in the women’s events. “The aim is to protect fairness at the games while also protecting the rights of people with abnormal sexual development,” he says.
Published – July 2008
Guardian UK – Full Article
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Chatelaine’s 80 Amazing Canadian Women to Watch
Chatelaine Magazine – Published May 2008 Issue
The May 2008 issue of Chatelaine Magazine highlighted 80 Women to Watch. Eight women from sport were selected to the nationwide list of heroes, innovators and visionaries: Meghan Agosta (Ice Hockey); Deirdre Dionne (Freestyle Skiing); Cathy Harris (Event Planning); Carol Huynh (Wrestling); Claudia Larouche (Sports Journalism); Jujie Luan (Fencing); Kalyna Roberge (Short Track); Kristen Worley (Cycling). (These women can be found on pages 9 and 10 of the PDF)
Published – May 2008
CAAWS – Chatelaine Review
Download Complete Review as .PDF
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Athlete Fights For More Than a Spot at 2008 Olympics
San Francisco Bay Times – Published November 14th, 2007
by Jacob Anderson-Minshall
Kristen Worley is on a mission. The Canadian cyclist is determined to make it to the 2008 Olympics, but even more the transitioned athlete—the term she prefers over transsexual—hopes to prevent a repeat of what happened to Shanti Soundarajan.
A runner from India who won a silver medal for women’s 800 meters at the 2006 Asian Games, Soundarajan drew international scrutiny when she “failed”
a gender test and was stripped of her medal. Three weeks ago, the 26-year-old slipped into a coma after attempting suicide.
Published – November 2007
San Francisco Bay Times – Full Article
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“IOC Biggest Threat to the Future of Global Sport”
Hindustan Times – Published – October 30th, 2007
By Ajai Masand
The IOC stopped gender testing after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, then why didn’t it ensure that it was also banned by the continental sports bodies like the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and the likes? Is it laxity on the part of the IOC or the IOC itself is not sure what to do and what not to do?
Kristen: The IOC said they stopped sex testing, Canadian Academy of Sports Medicine (CASM) played in an integral part in their decision, for the very reason of the diversity of women’s gender make-ups, and the invasiveness of the IOC Medical Commissions process, which was assumed to “protect” sport. (Goto CASM Position Statement on Gender)
The “gender parade” was one of the practices the IOC Medical Commission utilised until 2000, at international games or Olympics, in which women athletes had to parade naked in front of IOC Medical Commission members, assuring all females possessed the “sex” characteristics of being female. Historically, since the 30′s, the IOC used chromosome testing, as a method to test for a person’s sex. The level of variances in the female phenotype and inter-sex medical issues, which are “normal” birth issues, are well documented. Santhi is yet another victim among dozens of women who have been turned away from elite sporting events because of chromosomal variations. Many women — and men — never know they are inter-sexed or otherwise have “assumed abnormal” chromosomal make-up, unless they encounter developmental problems, are tested when considering to conceive a child (in the case of difficult conception), or, as only women do, learn publicly at an elite sporting event, such as the Asian games or Olympics. Men, interestingly, are spared this indignity.
Published – October 2007
Hindustan Times – Full Article
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“Who decides what is the definition of a woman?”
Hindustan Times – Published – October 30th, 2007
By Ajai Masand
I guess that’s the question we’re all asking! One would assume that anything coming under the umbrella of the Olympic logo and/or brand is required to follow governance as directed by the parent organisation. National Olympic organisations would then be required to follow the same rules and procedures set forth by the IOC of course. As we have since learnt that the IOC still carries out sex testing, the OCA was in fact merely following IOC procedures. Although the IOC announced it would stop sex testing, it has maintained the ‘right’ to test any athlete upon reasonable suspicion.
Published – October 2007
Hindustan Times – Full Article
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Canadian Cyclist “Paddles” for Santhi
Hindustan Times – October 24th, 2007
Kristen Worley and Santi Soundarajan have never met. They live continents-apart, Worley in North America, Santhi in India.
But Worley, according to a report in Gaywired, a netzine supporting the cause of gays, is fighting for the cause of Santhi and other victims of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), which results in the external physical characteristics typically associated with women despite having XY chromosomes, and wants the Indian athlete to get her Asian Games silver medal back.
Published – October 2007
Hindustan Times – Full Article
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I’m A Woman On The Move
Globe & Mail – Published – September 7th, 2007
By Ann Mcilroy
LONDON, Ont. —
Kristen Worley grabs a large pink gym bag out of her car and walks into the women’s change room at the Forest City Velodrome.
She emerges in skin-tight racing gear provided by a potential new sponsor and carefully tucks her ponytail into an aerodynamic helmet for her final workout on her home course before the women’s national track cycling championships, being held this weekend in Dieppe, N.B. A good showing will give her a shot at qualifying for next year’s Olympic Games in Beijing.
Published – September 2007
Globe & Mail – Full Article
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Santhi: Sports, Gender and Suicide
IndieQuill Blog – September 7th, 2007
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Middle-distance runner Santhi Soundarajan, who was stripped of her Asian Games medal after failing a gender test, was in hospital on Wednesday following an apparent suicide bid, police said.
“It is a possible suicide attempt,” police superintendent Kapil Kumar told Reuters. “The doctors are yet to confirm what she consumed.
“She is out of danger now and is not accepting the version of suicide now,” he added.
Local athletics official Jehangir told Reuters Soundarajan had taken pesticide in her home town in Tamil Nadu.
Published – September 2007
Reuters – Full Article
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Runner Santhi Soundarajan in apparent suicide bid
Reuters – Published – September 5th, 2007
Just a few months ago, Santhi Soundarajan was the butt of late night jokes on American TV and the subject of outraged editorials in Indian newspapers as the Indian woman athlete who failed a gender test.
While details are scarce and confusing, news reports have it that Soundarajan, who won the silver in the women’s 800 metre event for India at the Asian Games in Doha last year, failed a routine test carried out by a team of doctors (including a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and internal medicine specialist). Their consensus? Soundarajan “does not possess the sexual characteristics”
necessary to qualify as a female of the species.
Or maybe they just saw an Indian win a medal in a sporting event and thought, Now what’s wrong with this picture? Hey, don’t hate on me – I’
m just pointing out what you already know.
Published – September 2007
IndieQuill Blog – Full Article
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Most Influential Women in Canadian Sport for 2007
CAAWS – Published – January 12th, 2007
Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical
Activity – (CAAWS)
Published – January 2008
CAAWS – 2007 Most Influential Women Review
The sad story of Santhi Soundarajan
The Times of India – Published -January 9th, 2007
CHENNAI, Jan 9: She should have been home with her poor brick-kiln working parents and four siblings in rural South India celebrating her moment of glory at the Asian Games.
Instead, Santhi Soundarajan has been reduced to leading a life of public humiliation amid uncaring and insensitive officials, shattered by the fact that her sporting career may be over.
The Olympic Council of Asia stripped Santhi of the silver medal she won in the 800m in Qatar, saying she had been “disqualified as per the recommendations of the medical committee on a Games rule violation.”
The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) said the 25-year-old had failed a sex test, implying she had deceived the sporting world by competing as a woman when she was actually a man
Published – January 2007
The Times of India – Full Article
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Transgender movement emerging from shadows
Chicago Tribune – Published – April 3rd, 2006
By Bonnie Miller Rubin
CHICAGO – Shawn Coleman bristles when an application poses the question “male or female?” – as if there are only two choices.
When it comes to sexual identity, the 23-year-old Shawn – born Patricia – sees a broad spectrum, a man-to-woman or a woman-to-man continuum with many stops along the way. Think gender without borders. He (the preferred pronoun) looks male but not completely. He is not a lesbian, a cross-dresser or contemplating a sex-change operation any time soon.
“I always knew I was different than other girls,” explained Coleman. “I was never a fan of Barbie but liked playing sports with my two older brothers. People were always telling me to act more feminine – that I should sit with my legs crossed – but I found that stuff incredibly difficult. It wasn’t the way I felt inside.”
Published – April 2006
Chicago Tribune – Full Article
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DRUG TESTING; East German Steroids’ Toll: ‘They Killed Heidi’
New York Times – January 26th, 2004
By Jere Longman
Some athletes were unaware of the fund, while others were embarrassed, afraid of losing their jobs, unable to gain full access to their medical files or unsuccessful in convincing doctors that their ailments were directly related to steroid use, Boese said.
”There was a lot of denial and still is,” Boese said of the athletes. ”Many have never, or only now, understood that they were abused by people they trusted.”
Some of the most outspoken have faced harassment and threats. Ines Geipel, a retired East German sprinter who chronicled the doping system in a book, ”Lost Games,” said she had been confronted at readings in 2001 by former East German officials. As recently as Jan. 18, she said, an anonymous phone caller told her, ”You know there is not much time left for you.”
Neither she nor Krieger has been deterred.
”People should know what happened, what side effects can be generated,” Krieger said, speaking through an interpreter inside a concrete-block apartment building left from the Communist days in Magdeburg, a 90-minute train ride west of Berlin.
As Andreas, he has a goatee, wide shoulders and a narrow waist, and is handsome in a Three Musketeers kind of way. Told this, his wife, Ute Krause, said, ”D’Artagnan,” and he gestured as if sword fighting, saying ”en garde” to an imaginary foe.
When discussing the effects of doping, Andreas became serious and animated, sometimes emotional, smoking cigarettes and nervously rubbing his palms. When he was Heidi Krieger, scratching of the hands became a compulsive act and sometimes drew blood.
Published-January 2004
The New York Times – Full Article
