Sportswriters -- the good ones -- are different from other journalists. Well, maybe theater critics are also different in a similar way. Their job and craft is to describe the practice and art of people and collective groups who seek to demonstrate the excellence and delightful potential of our troubled species.
This calling sometimes makes sports journalists unexpectedly blunt commentators on our accompanying societal follies. The existence of athletes who break gender categories can bring out the best of them.
Olympic ban of transgender women an overly simplistic decision with vast consequences
This past week the International Olympic Committee did the easy, simple thing. IOC President Kirsty Coventry announced that transgender women would be banned from all Olympic events, starting in Los Angeles 2028 and going forward.
... It was simple — and simplistic — because it conveniently ignores the science that indicates that this issue is far more complicated and nuanced. But, hey, we live in a time where global warming is ignored, once-eradicated lethal diseases are making a comeback and scientists are mocked for their knowledge, so why not throw one more complex issue on the bonfire of human research and intelligence?
The IOC’s decision was simple because it flaccidly capitulated to the Trump administration, ceding territory to the loudest, meanest and basest elements, and ignoring the objections of scientists and advocates. ...
Killion goes on to explain the uncertain science that exists about the correlations between simple gender markers and athletic performance. The scientist who discovered the genetic variation which the IOC uses to define sex is not a fan of the current determination.
The IOC ban will require every female athlete who wants to compete in the Olympics to do a one-time gene test, either by drawing blood or having a cheek swabbed, to prove they are indeed female athletes.
The test is designed to determine the presence or absence of the SRY gene, found on the male Y chromosome. Forget how this conjures up the long history of discrimination against female athletes and perceptions that if you’re good at sports you must not truly be feminine. The basic science behind this test is controversial.
Andrew Sinclair, the Australian researcher who discovered the SRY gene in 1990, wrote an article last year after World Athletics — the governing body for track and field — adopted the same standard the IOC will implement. He decried the decision.
... Sinclair noted that biological sex is complex with a variety of physiological factors coming into play, and the SRY test only indicates whether the gene is present, not how it is functioning or whether testosterone is being produced. ...
We, both the scientists and the rest of us, know so little about what's "real" and what's meaningful about sex and gender in our species that we easily default to prejudice and bigotry when our preconceptions are challenged. Some people just don't fit. People who don't fit aren't going away.
What's novel is that we live in a time when gender-complex people refuse to be erased. Get used to it.
I recommend again 800 meter runner Caster Semenya's The Race to Be Myself for a peek into what it is like to live inside these contradictions.
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