FIFA Must Stop Performing “Gender Tests”

[Panich52]

Care2Causes

FIFA Must Stop Performing “Gender Tests”
Chris Sosa

Yes, the endlessly-embattled FIFA is still engaging in “gender testing,” whereby women who want to participate in the Women’s World Cup are forced to prove that they’re women, whatever that means to the officials policing the bodies of women.

Reportedly, no testing is ever done for men, making this not only a gender identity issue, but one of blatant sexism specifically targeting women.

A Care2 petition is calling on FIFA to completely cease unscientific “gender testing” and respect the identities of the players in the Women’s World Cup.

The backwards rules require that, if a woman fails a gender test, she must subject herself to medical intervention to align herself more closely to what the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other leading sports bodies require, according to the BBC.

This mean that male-dominated sports committees decide a self-identified woman isn’t womanly enough, they will put her through unnecessary medical procedures, including surgery or hormone suppression therapy, to make her body and hormone levels into what they believe a woman’s should be.

Keep in mind that this entire concept of being able to test a person’s sex to place people as concretely male or female doesn’t exist. It’s a social construct, not a fact of biology. FIFA is just profoundly behind the times.

More
http://www.care2.com/causes/fifa-must-stop-performing-gender-tests.html

Petition
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/833/361/279?TAP=1007&cid=causes_petition

[MADem]

1. What's next? Leagues categorized by hormone levels instead of genders?

Now there's an opportunity for some interesting team names!!!

It would probably be fairer to do that--level the old playing field...

[PoliticAverse]

2. Is the article's author calling for ending sex-segregated sporting events? n/t

[geek tragedy]

3. The Olympics have rules on trans people

and their eligibility for men's/women's events.

[Brickbat]

7. Says you.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. So call it "sex testing"?

I respect the right of anyone to self identify as whatever gender the individual is comfortable with.

This is different than the sex to which the individual is born. Females have two X chromosomes while males have one X and one Y. The testing is not unscientific. It is exactly the opposite.

Persons born male have an advantage as far as physical strength is concerned. That is why people competing in women's events need to be tested. This helps keep the playing field level (so to speak).






Background:

http://www.livestrong.com/article/246036-how-much-more-muscle-mass-does-a-male-have-than-a-female/

^snip^

Muscle Numbers
Studies have proven again and again that men have a greater amount of skeletal muscle than women. In one such study that examined 468 men and women and was published in a 1985 issue of the “Journal of Applied Physiology,” researchers determined that men had an average of 72.6 pounds of muscle compared to the 46.2 pounds found in women. The men had 40 percent more muscle mass in the upper body and 33 percent more in the lower body.

Strength Translation
Men not only have more muscle, but pound for pound, their muscle is slightly stronger than a woman's -- about 5 to 10 percent, says Lou Schuler in "The New Rules of Lifting for Women." A study reported in a 1993 issue of the "European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology" attributed this strength difference to larger muscle fibers in men.

[Katashi_itto]

10. Agree. You can't avoid physiological differences. I am all for letting people identify with

whatever gender they feel comfortable with but this is an entirely different matter.

[Lucky Luciano]

6. What if Bruce Jenner had claimed claimed to be a woman in 1976?

(I say Bruce because that was the name in 1976 - Caitlyn seems like the wrong name when referring to Jenner 39 years ago - correct me if I am wrong on pronouns/names).

Then a male body competing in the women's track and field competition would have been grossly unfair. Look at the world records for men and women in the events. The men would dominate the women and it would not have been fair to allow Jenner to compete as a woman.

[Fred Sanders]

8. Yes. There is a stark difference between the physical sporting abilities of each gender. Period.

"Fair play" is a motto of the Olympics.

[Igel]

9. It's like saying "dead" and "alive" is a social construct because there are outliers.

Things that appear dead but aren't; things that die but can be resuscitated.

Otherwise, it's confusing sex and gender--a rather recent linguistic distinction. If I'm biologically male and self-identify as woman, that doesn't do me a lot of good without surgery and hormone replacement therapy, without which "self-identification" is pretty pointless from the biological point of view. All I can change are behaviors that are non-biological.

If it's all just a social construction and a male self-identifies as female, I'd expect her to be able to conceive and bear a socially-constructed child based entirely on social phenomena, nothing biological or medical. Or, if the child born biologically female self-identifies as male and it's all socially constructed, to sire a child without artificial interventions.

Outliers are chimeras, hermaphrodites, XXY ... all of which are biological in nature, and there have been a number of cases where "socially constructed" identities are suddenly shaken by determination of the biology of the body containing the brain doing the social construction.