(DOWNLOAD) "Sex Typing for Sport (Report)" by The Hastings Center Report * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Sex Typing for Sport (Report)
- Author : The Hastings Center Report
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Life Sciences,Books,Science & Nature,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 145 KB
Description
In January, the International Olympic Committee sponsored a meeting of medical professionals in Miami aimed at revising the "gender verification" policies of the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations. These are the policies that come into play when someone questions whether a particular athlete should be allowed to compete as a woman. The Miami meeting failed to produce any clear consensus and only seemed to create confusion about what is now considered fair or allowable so far as sports gender divisions go. (1) It's obvious that more policy meetings are going to have to happen, with more definitive outcomes. This policy revision is happening in the wake of the fiasco surrounding the young South African runner Caster Semenya, who, after blasting past competitors in Berlin last August, had her sex called into question on the international stage. Semenya's story demonstrates that a clear policy that allows for definitive, consistent, private, precompetition rulings is necessary not only to clarify what's going to count as fair in gender-divided sports, but also to protect individual athletes at risk for challenges. (2) Semenya has essentially gone into hiding following her hellish media-circus experience. (Imagine finding out, by watching TV reports about yourself, that the flurry of medical exams you recently had was aimed at determining your "real" sex, as Semenya apparently did. (3)) Santhi Soundarajan, another runner, even attempted suicide after she "failed" a "gender test" and was stripped of her 2006 Asian games medal. (4) At this point, not having a policy that allows athletes to know privately, in advance, if they will be disqualified as women is like asking bobsledders to head down the track without helmets: it's downright dangerous.