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THE RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORT (Pedagogical-Psychological and Medico-Biological Problems of Physical Culture and Sports), Volume 13 No.1 2018 _ISSN 2588-008X ISSN 2588-0225
Education and Sport (Pedagogico-Phycological and Medico-Biological Problems of Physical
Culture and Sports), 2018, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 120-125. DOI 10/14526/01_2018_295
DOI 10/14526/01_2018_296
CHALLENGING THE GENDER BINARY IN SPORT: THE SPECIAL CASES OF CASTER SEMENYA AND DUTEE CHAND
Jeffrey O. Segrave - PhD
Department of Health and Human Physiological Sciences, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
Annotation. Sport has long been an important site for affirming beliefs about male-female difference, celebrating heterosexual masculinity, and legitimizing male power and privilege in society. Sports remain one of the few activities in contemporary liberal cultures in which sex segregation is not only expected and accepted, but mandated and policed. Materials. In the article questions of gender ideology in sport are based on a simple binary classification model whereby all athletes are classified as either male or female. In fact, envisioning arenas of organized sport that do not rely on the rigidly defined and defended gender binary remains a challenge in the sex-segregated world of western society. Research methods. Scientific literature analysis and summarizing, specialists (sphere of gender relations) advanced pedagogical experience analysis and summarizing, observation, abstraction. Results. In the article the results of two elite sport women - athletes are discussed. Both athletes highlight the issues associated with the hegemonic gender binary in sport and call into question the efficacy and integrity of sex testing in sport. Both, despite being raised, treated, and identified as women, were faced with the unenviable choice of either taking hormone-suppressing drugs or having surgery - or retiring from sanctioned elite sport. The author determines sight problems, associated with the current "female fairness policy" [8]: policing femininity is unfair because human bodies cannot be divided into two discrete categories; basing women's eligibility on appearance invites discrimination, discourages women's participation in elite sports, and encourages women to use gender makeover strategies to look feminine as defined by "Western" cultural standards; the testing and treatment requirements are unfair to women who lack access to the medical resources of the West; the policy can have harmful psychological effects on women who are told they are not "women enough" to compete in highperformance sport; by suggesting that testosterone is the only factor that identifies sex, the policy ignores numerous other biological factors that gives an advantage to elite athletes as well as research that has shown that neither hyperandrogenism nor testosterone levels accurately predict success in sport; the policy ignores unfair differences in access to resources, such as, training, coaching, technology, facilities, and nutrition, which influence performance more than testosterone; the policy undermines the inclusion of intersexed and transgendered athletes because they can easily be identified as "suspicious"; the policy ignores hormones as a source of unfairness in men's sport, even though hormones are influential in men's athletic performance. Conclusion. Clearly, we need a new approach to defining gender in sport, one that respects athletes' rights to bodily integrity, privacy and self-identification, and promotes inclusivity. Numerous scientists recommend that if a person believes she is female, is raised as a female, is identified as a female by those who know her and is legally recognized as a female in her nation, she should be able to
THE RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORT (Pedagogical-Psychological and Medico-Biological Problems of Physical Culture and Sports), Volume 13 No.1 2018 _ISSN 2588-008X ISSN 2588-0225
compete as a female [10]. This may not be a perfect solution but it is fairer and just than the current policy that requires every National Olympic Committee to "actively investigate any perceived deviation in sex characteristics" for the purposes of maintaining "the essence of the male/female classification" [11].
Keywords: elite sports, hormones, athletes, success in sport, psychological effects, training, competition transgendered athletes.
The Ideological Framework. Sport has long been an important site for affirming beliefs about male-female difference, celebrating heterosexual masculinity, and legitimizing male power and privilege in society. Sports remain one of the few activities in contemporary liberal cultures in which sex segregation is not only expected and accepted, but mandated and policed. Gender ideology in sport is based on a simple binary classification model whereby all athletes are classified as either male or female. In fact, envisioning arenas of organized sport that do not rely on the rigidly defined and defended gender binary remains a challenge in the sex-segregated world of western society. Two athletes of late, however, Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, have confronted what Martine Rothblatt poignantly describes as "the apartheid of sex" [1].
The Athletes. Caster Semenya is a South African middle-distance track athlete. Semenya won gold in the women's 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships and the 2017 World Championships. She also won silver medals at the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 London Summer Olympics, both in the 800 meters. In the 2016 Rio Olympics, she won the 800 meters gold medal. Following her victory at the world championships in 2009, questions were raised about her sex. As a result of her rapid athletic progression and her appearance the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) barred her from competition and compelled her to take a sex verification test to ascertain whether she was female. "She is a woman," Pierre Weiss, the General Secretary of the IAAF said, "but maybe not 100 percent" [2]. Although the results of the sex tests were never officially published, information was leaked in the press, compromising Semenya's privacy and
subjecting her to humiliating public scrutiny. In July 2010, she was cleared again to compete in women's competitions. The details of the steps she took, if any, were never made known. The IAAF claimed that the motivation for the sex tests was not suspected cheating but a desire to determine whether she had a "rare medical condition" giving her an "unfair advantage" [3]. The president of the IAAF admitted that the case could have been handled with more sensitivity. Semenya remains resolute: "God made me the way I am, and I accept myself," Semenya said. "I am who I am, and I'm proud of myself' [4].
Dutee Chand is an Indian sprinter and current national champion in the women's 100 meters. In 2013, she became the national champion in both 100 meters and 200 meters and in 2016 she qualified for the 100 meters at the Rio Olympic Games. Most recently at the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships, she won two bronze medals, one in the 100 meters and the other in the women's 4 X 100 meters relay. On August 29, 2014, just days before she was to compete in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, she was informed that she was disqualified for failing a gender test. The tests indicated that her testosterone levels were above the range considered normal for female athletes. Chand challenged the decision: "I feel that it's wrong to have to change your body for sport participation," she said. "I'm not changing for anyone" [5]. In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport temporarily suspended the order that barred Chand from competing as a woman.
Both athletes highlight the issues associated with the hegemonic gender binary in sport and call into question the efficacy and integrity of sex testing in sport. Both, despite being raised, treated, and identified as women, were faced with the unenviable choice of either taking hormone-suppressing
drugs or having surgery - or retiring from sanctioned elite sport.
The History of Sex Testing in Sport.
The treatment and policing of female athletes, and intersex women in particular, has a long and ignoble history, and no governing bodies have so tenaciously tried to determine who does and who does not count as a woman for the purposes of sports as the IAAF and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). During the early years of the 20th century, female athletes were subjected to genital examinations and other embarrassing and often humiliating protocols. By the mid-1940s, international sports administrators required female competitors to bring medical "femininity certificates" to verify their sex. IOC member, Prince Franz Josef of Liechtenstein no doubt spoke for many when he proclaimed that he wanted to be "spared the unaesthetic spectacle of women trying to look and act like men" [6]. By the mid-1960s, partly spurred by the stunning success of the Soviet Union's women athletes in the Olympic Games, international sports officials determined that individual nations could not be trusted to police gender boundaries and instead implemented a mandatory genital check of every woman competing at the international level. In many cases, this involved what became known as the "nude parade" whereby each woman appeared, underpants down, before a panel of doctors, and was subjected to close inspection.
Amid complaints about the gender checks, the IAAF and the IOC introduced a new gender verification strategy in the late 60s: a chromosome test, which, as numerous scientists pointed out, was both unreliable and, in fact, invalid. Discarded in 1991, the chromosome test was replaced in 2011 by a "female fairness" policy that subjected only women who aroused "suspicion" by appearing "too masculine" to be submitted to gender verification, which was determined by a test for hyperandrogenism. The IAAF and IOC ruled that women with hyperandrogenism were ineligible to compete only if their testosterone level was below "the normal range" [7]. In 2015, and in direct response to Dutee Chand's challenge, the
Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended the IAAF's testosterone policy and ordered the IAAF to justify - with hard data - its policies. The IAAF has returned with new information. Like Dutee Chand, we all await the Court's decision.
The Problems with the Current
Policy. It seems to me that there are numerous problems associated with the current "female fairness" policy [8]. Let me suggest eight:
1. Policing femininity is unfair because human bodies cannot be divided into two discrete categories;
2. Basing women's eligibility on appearance invites discrimination, discourages women's participation in elite sports, and encourages women to use gender makeover strategies to look feminine as defined by "Western" cultural standards;
3. The testing and treatment requirements are unfair to women who lack access to the medical resources of the West;
4. The policy can have harmful psychological effects on women who are told they are not "women enough" to compete in high-performance sport;
5. By suggesting that testosterone is the only factor that identifies sex, the policy ignores numerous other biological factors that gives an advantage to elite athletes as well as research that has shown that neither hyperandrogenism nor testosterone levels accurately predict success in sport;
6. The policy ignores unfair differences in access to resources, such as, training, coaching, technology, facilities, and nutrition, which influence performance more than testosterone;
7. The policy undermines the inclusion of intersexed and transgendered athletes because they can easily be identified as "suspicious";
8. The policy ignores hormones as a source of unfairness in men's sport, even though hormones are influential in men's athletic performance [9].
The Solution (Or at least a Recommendation). Clearly, we need a new approach to defining gender in sport, one that respects athletes' rights to bodily integrity, privacy and self-identification, and promotes
inclusivity. Numerous scientists recommend that if a person believes she is female, is raised as a female, is identified as a female by those who know her and is legally recognized as a female in her nation, she should be able to compete as a female [10]. This may not be a perfect solution but it is fairer and just than the current policy that requires every National Olympic Committee to "actively investigate any perceived deviation in sex characteristics" for the purposes of maintaining "the essence of the male/female classification" [11]. Alice Dreger, professor of clinical medical humanities and ethics at Northwestern University, uses the following analogy to cogently argue that it is unfair to eliminate female athletes with relatively high levels of naturally produced testosterone:
Men on average are taller than women. But do we stop women from competing if a male-typical height gives them an advantage over shorter women? Can we imagine a Michele Phelps or a LeBronna James being told, "You're too tall to compete as a woman?" So why should we want to tell some women, "You naturally have too high a level of androgens to compete as a woman?" There seems to be nothing wrong with this kind of natural advantage [12].
From a cultural perspective, when women have unique anatomical, mutational, or biomedical advantages, they are invariably viewed as deviant; when men have them, they are celebrated as supermen and superstars.
As long as the sports world is rigidly gendered as bimodal, it is doomed to perpetually struggle to adapt to nuanced gender distinctions, and it will, by default, continue to affirm, and celebrate, regressive gender constructions. Like Alice Dreger, the Journal of the American Medical Association, too, recently averred that it was appropriate for athletes who were born with a disorder in sex development and were raised as women to compete as women [13]. That sounds like the right call to me. I hope the Court of Arbitration for Sport agrees. We will know shortly.
References
1. Martine Rothblatt. The apartheid of sex: A manifesto on the freedom of gender. New York: Crown Publishers. 1995.
2. Quoted in Jere Longman. "Understanding the controversy over Caster Semenya." New York Times. August 16, 2016. Availed as: http://nytimes.com/2016/08/20/sports/caster-semenya-800-meters.html.
3. "SA fury over athlete gender test." BBC Sport. August 20, 2009. Availed as: http://news.bbc.co.uk2/hi/africa/8211319.stm
4. Quoted in Longman. op. cit.
5. Quoted in Juliet Macur. "Fighting for the body she was born with." New York Times. October 7, 2014, B1.
6. Quoted in Ruth Padawer. "The humiliating practice of sex-testing female athletes." New York Times. June 28, 2016. Availed as: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html.
7. IAAF. IAAF regulations governing eligibility for female athletes with hyperandrogenism to compete in women's competitions. 2011. Availed as: http ://www. iaaf. org/about-iaaf/documents/medical.html.
8. See Alex Hutchinson. "An imperfect dividing line." New Yorker. March 27, 2015. Availed as: https://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/dutee-chand-gender-testing-imperfect-linen.html; Katrina Karkazis, Fixing sex: Intersex, medical authority, and lived experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Douglas Robson, "Gender issues in sport, court." USA Today (November 30, 2100): 1-2C; Pam R. Sailors, Sarah Teetzel, and Charlene Weaving, "The complexities of gender, sport and drug testing." American Journal of Bioethics 12(7) (2012): 23-25; Roi Shani and Yechiel Michael Barilan, "Excellence, deviance and gender: Lessons from the XYY episode." American Journal of Bioethics (12(7) (2012): 27-30; Claire F. Sullivan, "Gender verification and gender policies in elite sport: Eligibility and "fair play."" Journal of Sport and Social Issues 35(4) (2011): 400-419; Hilda Patricia Vilora and Maria Jose Martinez-Patino, "Reexamining rationales of "fairness": An athlete's and insider's perspective on the new policies of hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes." American Journal of Bioethics 12(7) (2102): 17-19; Lance Wahlert and Autumn Fiester, "Gender transports: Privileging the "natural" in gender testing debates for intersex and transgebder athletes." American Journal of Bioethics, no 12(7), 2102. pp. 1921.
9. This list is taken and adapted from Coakley. Sports in society: Issues and controversies New York: McGraw-Hill. 2017, p. 181.
10. See David Epstein. "Well, is she, or isn't she?" Sports Illustrated. September 9, 2009. Availed as:
http://www.si.com/vault/2009/09/07/105854299/well-is-she-or-isnt-she.html; Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, "You say you're a woman? That should be enough." New York Times (Jue 17, 2012): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/sports/olym[pics/
olympic-sex-verification-you-say-you-are-a-woman-that-should-be-enough.html; Katrina Karkazis, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Georgiann Davis, and Silvia Camporesi,"Out of bounds? A critique of the new policies on hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes." American Journal of Bioetbhics 12(7) (2012): 3-16; Juliet Macur, "Who qualifies to compete as a woman? A fight continues." New York Times (August 6, 2017): http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/sports/olymplics/ gender-dutee-chand--india.html; Sarah Teetzel, The onus on inclusivity: Sport policies and the enforcement of the women's category in sport." Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. no 41(1), 2014. pp. 113-127. Availed as:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2013.858394.html
11. Quoted in Coakley. op. cit., 181.
12. Alice Dreger. "Where's the rule book for sex segregation?" New York Times. August 21, 2009.
Submitted: 21.01.2018 Received: 25.01.2018
Availed as:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/sports/22runnerh tml
13. Longman. op. cit.
14. Kuznetsova Z., Kuznetsov A., Mutaeva I., Khalikov G., Zakharova A., 2015. Athletes preparation based on a complex assessment of functional state. In
Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress on Sport Sciences Research and Technology support. SCITEPRESS. P. 156-160 (Scopus).
15. Kuznetsov A., Mutaeva I., Kuznetsova Z., 2017. Diagnostics of Functional State and Recerve Capacity of young Athletes' Organizm. In Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on Sport Sciences Research and Technology support. SCITEPRESS. P. 111-115 (Scopus).
Author's information:
Jeffrey O. Segrave - PhD, Department of Health and Human Physiological Sciences, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, e-mail: jsegrave@skidmore. edu
For citations: Jeffrey O. Segrave. Challenging the gender binary in sport: the special cases of caster semenya and dutee chand, The Russian Journal of Physical Education and Sport (Pedagogico-Phycological and Medico-Biological Problems of Physical Culture and Sports), 2018, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 125-129. DOI 10/14526/01_2018_296
DOI 10/14526/01_2018_297
THE CONSIDERATION OF FOOT POSTURE INDEX IN RUSSIAN SOCCER PLAYERS
10-12 YEARS OLD
Hosseinikhezri S.A. - Postgraduate Zakharova A.B. - Candidate of Pedagogics, Associate Professor Institute of Physical Education, Sport and Youth Policy, Ural Federal University, House 19, Mira str., Ekaterinburg, 620002, Russia
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. Foot posture has long been considered to contribute to the development of lower limb musculoskeletal conditions as it may alter the mechanical alignment and dynamic function of the lower limb to consider the structural status of the foot is effective in the process of training, implementation skills and preventing injuries in soccer player adolescents. Aim. The aim of the study was to understand the foot posture characteristics of Russian soccer players and determine the foot posture characteristics of 10-12 years old soccer players foot structure. The obtained data clearly indicated that there was no inappropriate position of foot in both leg. Just, calcaneus
