Where’s the Rulebook for Sex Verification?

[Shana A]

Where's the Rulebook for Sex Verification?

By ALICE DREGER
Published: August 21, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/sports/22runner.html?_r=1

The only thing we know for sure about Caster Semenya, the world-champion sprinter from South Africa, is that she gets to live the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion regarding her sex. Now that officials for track and field's world governing body are investigating her sex, at best Semenya will face an asterisk in every biography and a question in every potential lover's mind. At worst, she will perpetually be subjected to jeers and jokes.

Why? Because the track organization, the I.A.A.F., has not sorted out the rules for the sport of sex typing. Worse yet, the sport's officials are playing by unstated, shifting standards.

To be fair, the biology of sex is a lot more complicated than the average fan believes. Many think you can simply look at a person's "sex chromosomes." If the person has XY chromosomes, you declare him a man. If XX, she's a woman. Right?

[transheretic]

Having Alice Dreger comment on intersexed conditions is roughly equivalent to having Josef Mengele talk about medical ethics. 

[Shana]

Unfortunately, that is the way with most sports organizations.
They get to set the standards, and even the rules governing the standards.. and they do not have to jibe with current scientific or medical standards and practices in all but the most basic instances.