PROLYMPIC SPORTS AS A MEDIUM TO PROPAGATE THE GENDER BINARY
Case Study
Caster Semenya is a South African middle-distance athlete who is intersex, or a hermaphrodite. At 18, she won the 800m sprint event at the 2009 World Track and Field Championships by more than two seconds, clocking the fastest time of the year. However, some three hours before the 800m finals, new was leaked that the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) intended to conduct sex-verification tests on Semenya. This was apparently fueled by speculations attributing her significant improvement to drug use but also due to doubts about her gender. What immediately ensued was the exposing of her identity as intersex without Semenya’s consent and allegations regarding the validity and fairness of her titles. Subsequently, she was banned from competition for 11 months before finally being cleared to participate in women’s competitions.
Introduction
Aside from the apparent disregard of her rights to privacy and participation, Semenya’s controversy reveals how sanctioned sport – in particular, prolympic sport – enforces the gender binary via strict gender-segregation, gender-verification tests and gender policies enforced by international governing institutions under the notion of ‘fair play’. It provokes not just a discourse on what is ‘fairness’ but, perhaps more pertinently, an analysis on the
relationship between fairness and gender. Using theories of Hegemonic Masculinity, Sex
Equality via Catherine A. MacKinnon and Advantage Thesis, this essay will seek to analyze the methods and reasons behind why prolympic sport propagates the gender binary as well as its consequences before critiquing the effectiveness and necessity of prolympic sport operating only within the binary.
The Female in Prolympic Sport – A History
Prolympic sport has tried to define and control gender since 1946 when the IAAF required female competitors to submit medical certificates to verify their sex (Heggie, 2010).
Standardized gender tests or ‘femininity testing’ began in the 1960s, allegedly fueled by fears of gender fraud (ibid) and have since attempted to utilize different markers to define what is female. Since 1966, gender markers used to define the female athlete has evolved from the possession of external genitals and secondary sex features to sex-chromatin. In the case of Semenya, genitalia and testosterone levels were used as markers to assess if she was ‘female enough’. In 2011, the IAAF required any female with hyperandrogenism to suppress and maintain androgen levels below 10nmol/L – referenced from testosterone levels in males – or prove that she ‘derives no competitive advantage (IAAF, 2011).
It is not hard to observe that none of these markers were successful, comprehensive or legitimate in defining the female, if gender could be conclusively defined at all. Moreover, they were violating, intrusive and degrading to female athletes. It is also pertinent to note that males were not required to undergo similar tests (Sullivan, 2011). Regulation of gender affords authority to sport governing bodies to dictate how bodies should look and perform like to participate in competition (ibid). This has allowed gender verification tests to reduce
the female to arbitrary and unsubstantiated markers that have cost female athletes deserved recognition for their accomplishments or, in worse cases, their career.
The Advantage Thesis: Testosterone
The IAAF and IOC justify their rights to conduct gender-verification tests and enforce gender policies in cases when suspicions are raised and need to be addressed to create a safe and fair space for elite athletes to compete. Regarding the controversy surrounding Semenya, President of the IAAF, Sebestian Coe, defended IAAF’s actions, insisting that “it is the responsibility of the federation to create a level playing field in female sport” (Kelner, 2017).
The justification of gender-segregation, gender-verification tests and gender policies under the notion of ‘fair play’ is argued using the ‘advantage thesis’ (Sullivan, 2011) – that higher testosterone levels necessarily gives one a biological advantage over ‘regular females’. However, contrary to popular belief propagated even by international governing bodies of sport, it has yet to be scientifically proven that possession of more testosterone will endow one with an inherent and overwhelming advantage. Dr. Eric Vilain, medical geneticist who helped create IOC’s restriction on testosterone levels has also admitted that such a policy ‘is not and cannot be perfect’ as it is impossible to determine that an athlete absolutely has an advantage because of one distinguishable factor (Longman, 2016). To date, the IAAF has yet to provide conclusive evidence to support its claims that elevated levels of testosterone is the distinguishing factor between male and female performance and hence is a source of immediate and unfair advantage over females (CAS, 2014). Thus, IAAF’s regulations on testosterone limits for females in 2011 has since been nullified by the Court of Arbitration of Sport.
Upon closer inspection, what appears to be a discourse on fair play and gender is deeply rooted in hegemonic masculinity, the unrelenting belief that all males possess an inherent physical advantage over all females (Sullivan, 2011). As further explained by Cole (1993), the female body has and continues to be an object of cynicism due to its ability to exhibit both femininity and masculinity, contesting normalised premonitions of what is feminine and masculine (ibid). Hall and Bryson (1990) underscores that this is especially harder to reconcile in sport where superior athleticism accords greater recognition to physical abilities and social characteristics typically affiliated with men (Kane, 1995). Using the case study of female bodybuilders, Miller and Penz (1991) provide evidence to further this assertion, reflecting that when female bodies challenge patriarchal and phallocentric definitions, they are interpreted as an endeavour to encroach on gendered boundaries to contest existing power distribution, thus igniting violent antagonism and opposition (ibid). Hence, it is perhaps not accurate or comprehensive to attribute the resistance and hostility shown to Semenya, and other female athletes whose bodies have confronted prevailing definitions of gender, to a commitment to fair play. Rather, they are driven by prevailing expectations of the female body and how it should look and perform like – its limitations.
Safeguarding the Rights of Female Athletes – Protection or Policing?
A very valid and emotional point of contention to maintaining the gender binary is the fear of infringing upon the rights of athletes who fall into the binary, especially females. This concern is not only echoed by the IAAF and IOC but by elite female athletes themselves as well. On Semenya, Italian middle-distance runner Elisa Cusma said, “These kinds of people should not run with us. For me, she is not a woman. She is a man.” Bioethicist Katrina
Karkazis identifies this as a fear of a ‘gender apocalypse’, of ‘male imposters’ dominating female sport, that is perhaps more rooted in unsound speculations than empirical evidence (Longman, 2016). Subsequently, she dismisses the notion that female sport must be safeguarded, contending that is ‘paternalistic’, a position that encourages discrimination and sexism (ibid). This is furthered by Wackwitz (2003), who raises the irony that systems implemented to ensure safe and fair competition for females simultaneously legitimises their inferiority (Sullivan, 2011). When sport governing bodies and athletes themselves make such claims to ‘protect females’, they operate from the gender binary and concede to the biologyis-destiny paradigm – that gender is dichotomous by nature – ignoring the complex relationship between gender and culture (Kane, 1995). Consequently, they propagate further polarization between genders, conflating differences and ignoring similarities (ibid), legitimising the competitive inferiority of females as true and irrefutable. This forces females to not only internalise any gender discrimination, but to enforce limitations and discrimination on their own gender as well.
Gender and Fairness – A Constructed Opposition
Prolympic sport has and continues to build its existence and virtues around the elusive narrative of equality and fairness but is in fact built on the very back of inequality, ranging from genetic variations that lead to advantageous physical abnormalities to unequal distribution and access to resources and opportunities attributed to socio-economic inequality.
A result of this misleading notion is a controversial discourse on fairness that has, in recent times, been constructed to be in opposition to gender. At this juncture, two questions arise: Is gender a form of inequality? And if so, is there anything wrong with inequality?
Finnish skier Eero Mäntyranta possessed a condition called primary familial and congenital polycythemia, a genetic mutation which enabled his body to produce 65 percent more red blood cells than the average male. David Epstein, author of “The Sports Gene”, calls Mäntyranta’s condition a “gold medal mutation”. Today, with seven Olympic medals, he is heralded as an all-time great of Nordic skiing (Schultz, 2016). Mäntyranta is just one among many examples of explicit and celebrated inequality in prolympic sport which include the physically abnormal bodies of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. These inequalities can be argued to be significantly and scientifically legitimate in comparison to elevated testosterone levels in an intersex athlete. So why are these inequalities celebrated while Semenya’s born gender, that has not been proven to be significantly advantageous, condemned? There seems to be some apparent discrepancies between how we treat different performance-enhancing polymorphisms according to the gender in which they are exhibited. There is gender discrimination in prolympic sport, and it is allowed to propagate and legitimize itself because gender and equality has been constructed to be in opposition where there is none.
Sex equality in sport is hinged on the theory of sameness and difference, where equality is defined as an equivalence and gender a distinction (MacKinnon, 1987). Gender is thus constructed as a distinction under which exists commonality (ibid). This is complementary to and supported by the biological reductionism of prevailing ‘biology-is-nature’ paradigm which reduces gender to a duality (Kane, 1995). These skewed notions of gender and sex equality are conveniently and ideally situated in and enforced by prolympic sport because sport is predominantly preoccupied with measurable performance differences especially between males and females (ibid). Gender-segregation in prolympic sport does not afford the
female opportunity to outperform a male; it provides apparent and unmediated evidence of male masculinity and superiority (ibid) to allow male dominance to continue. Therefore, it is not females who are protected by gender segregation and policing, but males and their constructed superiority and following dominance.
Conclusion Prolympic sport operates within, and enforces, the gender binary via gender segregation, gender-verification tests and gender policies under the veneer of fairness. However, this notion of fairness disguises deep-seated hegemonic masculinity and allows prevailing and inaccurate premonitions of gender and equality to persist. Due to the physicality of sport, it is being used to internalize and legitimize a dichotomous definition of gender and the position of females as inferior when neither notions are true. Hence existing policies ultimately serve to protect not the female but to maintain male dominance and superiority by defining the female athlete by her limitations in reference to the male physique. Therefore it is questionable whether prolympic sport only operating within the gender binary is productive and necessarily ‘fairer’ or ‘safer’ for athletes. At present, the gender binary in prolympic sport can be argued to be non-progressive and counter-productive.
References
CAS. (2014). CAS 2014/A/3759 Dutee Chand v. Athle9cs Federa9on of India (AFI) and the Interna9onal Associa9on of Athle9cs Federa9ons (IAAF). Court of Arbitra4on for Sport. Heggie, V. (2010). Tes4ng sex and gender in sports; reinven4ng, reimagining and reconstruc4ng histories. Endeavour, 157-163.
IAAF. (2011). IAAF to introduce eligibility rules for females with hyperandrogenism. IAAF News. Retrieved from hPps://www.iaaf.org/news/iaaf-news/iaaf-to-introduce-eligibility-rules-forfemal-1
Kane, M. J. (1995). Resistance/Transforma4on of the Opposi4onal Binary: Exposing Sport as a Con4nuum. Sage Social Science Collec9ons.
Kelner, M. (2017, August 13). Caster Semenya storms to third world 800m gold to leave trouble behind. The Guardian. London. Retrieved from hPps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/ aug/13/caster-semenya-800m-gold-london-2017
Longman, J. (2016). Understanding the Controversy Over Caster Semenya. The New York Times. Retrieved from hPps://www.ny4mes.com/2016/08/20/sports/caster-semenya-800meters.html
MacKinnon, C. A. (1987). Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimina4on (1984). Harvard University Press.
Schultz, J. (2016). It's Time to Stop Gender-Tes4ng Athletes. The Conversa9on. Retrieved from hPps://newrepublic.com/ar4cle/136083/its-4me-stop-gender-tes4ng-athletes
Sullivan, C. F. (2011). Gender VErifica4on and Gender Policies in Elite Sport: Eligibility and "Fair Play". Journal of Sport and Social Issues
7/10 Consultation:
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