Transmissions: An Olympic moment
Published 06/28/2012
by Gwendolyn Ann Smith
http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=67843On July 27 in London, the Games of the XXX Olympiad will begin. It will be the usual mix of pageantry, sportsmanship, and likely a dash of scandal. If Keelin Godsey had had his way, he would have been the first out transgender man to compete in the Olympics. Godsey hoped to be a part of the United States track and field team, and while he would have been competing in the women's hammer throw, he identifies as male and plans to undergo surgery sometime after the trials.
A lot of news agencies have reported Godsey, 28, as aiming to be the first transgender Olympian, which isn't exactly accurate. There have been a number of intersex competitors who have made it into the Olympics, and at least one individual who underwent transition post-Olympics. It's also statistically possible that there have been others, likely forgotten to history.
Indeed, the Olympics themselves have had a history of gender testing athletes, introducing tests officially at the 1968 Winter Olympics. The International Olympic Committee discontinued mandatory gender testing in 1999, though it still reserves the right to do specific tests as desired to "prove" the gender of any given athlete in cases of dispute.
