Dear Kristen,
Thank you for the many interesting mails you have been sending - things are
really on the move.
The attached paper of November 2011 from Dr. Claire Sullivan has been
especially interesting for me to read. In her paper she goes over the history of
gender testing in detail, and obviously, I find it most satisfactory that all
of the factual informations I have included in my paper of 2004: "The Major
Medical Blunder of the 20th Century" are being confirmed one by one in her
work, without any significant information added concerning the period prior to
2005.
The confirmation also includes my statement that it was the IOC´s Athletic
Commission that called for the discontinuation of the IOC system of gender
verification prior to the Olympic Games in Sydney 2000, however only on a trial
basis, and that both the IOC and the IAAF reserved the right to test if any
questionable case should arise (page 407).
The clause: "“gives the IOC Medical Commission the authority to
conduct any necessary investigation in order to verify the gender of an Olympic
participant, should that be judged desirable”,
as well as its counterpart in the IAAF rules, remained unchanged until late
2011 (when it was replaced by the even more undefined demand that an athlete has
to be "eligible" et al - but that is another story).
On page 414 Dr. Sullivan writes: "Furthermore, the IAAF Council abandoned
its existing Gender Verification Policy concerning the participation of athletes
who have undergone male to female sex reassignment".
This is absolutely not correct, and no reference is offered.
The current rules concerning this can be found on the IAAF website:
GO FOR IT
Best regards,
Georg Facius
Sex-segregated
sports require governing bodies to clearly and accurately place athletes in two
categories, one labeled "men" and the other labeled
"women." Sports governing bodies such as the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) and International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF)
used sex testing procedures to attempt to verify the sex of athletes competing
in women's events. In 2004, the IOC introduced the Stockholm Consensus to
regulate the inclusion of, primarily, male-to-female transsexual athletes, to
compete at the Olympic Games. These governing bodies, and others, are dealing
with society's basic categorization of humans and thus are entangled in
attempts to scientifically and medically define sex. This article will focus on
the history and implications of gender-verification testing and gender policy
on notions of "fair play" and athlete eligibility.
Keywords
gender verification, fair play, gender policy
The notion of what constitutes "fair
play" is one of the fundamental questions concerning the future of sport
in society. One contentious area that has recently called the notion of fair
play into question involves gender verification and the development of gender
policy in sport. Sex-segregated sports require sports governing bodies to clearly
and accurately place athletes in two categories, one labeled "men"
and the other labeled "women." These governing bodies have found
themselves in the awkward-------
'University
of Maine, Orono, ME 04469, USA
Corresponding Author:
Claire
Sullivan, University of Maine, 5724 Dunn Hall, Orono, ME 04469, USA Email: claires@maine.edu
GO TO FULL ARTICLE (RESTRICTED):
http://jss.sagepub.com/content/35/4/400