Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy. Robyn Ryle

performed slightly better (1.78 percent to 2.73 percent) compared to women whose testosterone was in the “normal” range.^[39] But as with most of what we’ve discovered about the relationship between hormones and competition, the study results are more complicated than that. The biggest advantage for women with higher levels of testosterone were in two events—the pole vault and the hammer throw—which the IAAF decided not to regulate. Additionally, men with lower levels of testosterone performed better in those two events, demonstrating again that the effects of testosterone are more complicated than always and straightforwardly providing a competitive advantage to those with more of the hormone in their bodies.

      The long history of gender testing in the Olympics reveals the truth about gender as a social category in general—any biological component of gender is much, much more complex than our simple dichotomies can describe. Every biological criterion, which we believe allows us to easily sort people into two types—male and female—ends up failing in the face of the great variation of our bodies. Genitalia didn’t work as a criterion, and neither did chromosomes. The IAAF’s insistence on hormones as a better measure is also deeply flawed.

      If all the biological criteria fail in the end, perhaps a better way might be to abandon them altogether. Some officials have suggested simply allowing athletes to compete as whatever gender they were socialized into. If an athlete was raised as a girl, she should compete as a woman. Or maybe athletes should compete based on their gender identity rather than their gender assignment. That is, athletes who feel like they are women should be able to compete as such.

      As we’ve seen, gender testing of women in athletic competition is about much more than competitive advantage or ensuring fairness. The evidence that having higher levels of testosterone make you a better athlete is weak, if not nonexistent. Sports competition by its nature isn’t fair, as athletes bring all kinds of different genetic (as well as social and economic) advantages with them onto the field. Michael Phelps was born with the long arms and legs that make him a better swimmer, just as Caster Semenya was born with her particular mix of hormones. The gender testing of athletes has less to do with athletic competition and more to do with ensuring our belief in a strict and infallible gender binary. It is a way to create and re-create the idea that there really are women and men and that they really are different. Because we test only female athletes, it also helps to reinforce the idea that women are inherently inferior at sports. Women are the ones who need to be protected from unfairness, not men. Clearly, there are no sports in which women would have a biological competitive advantage over men, right? Or are there? That’s one the questions we’ll explore in the next chapter.

      1.

      Jaime Schultz, Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women’s Sports (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 118.

      2.

      Ibid., 118.

      3.

      Ruth Padawer, “The Humiliating Practice of Sex-Testing Female Athletes,” New York Times Magazine, June 28, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html (accessed July 16, 2019).

      4.

      Schultz, Qualifying Times, 104.

      5.

      Ibid.

      6.

      Ibid., 104–5.

      7.

      Ibid., 106–7.

      8.

      Ibid., 108.

      9.

      Ibid., 109.

      10.

      Ibid., 110.

      11.

      Ibid., 111–16.

      12.

      Ibid., 117.

      13.

      Ibid., 110.

      14.

      “Klinefelter Syndrome,” Intersex Society of North America, n.d., http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/klinefelter (accessed February 8, 2019); “Turner Syndrome,” Intersex Society of North America, n.d., http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/turner (accessed February 8, 2019).

      15.

      Schultz, Qualifying Times, 112.

      16.

      Ibid., 117.

      17.

      “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS),” Intersex Society of North America, n.d., http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/ais (accessed February 8, 2019).

      18.

      Jamie Strashin, “What’s the Real Problem with Caster Semenya?” CBC, May 14, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/trackandfield/caster-semenya-cultural-bias-1.4661929 (accessed July 5, 2019).

      19.

      Quoted in Strashin, “What’s the Real Problem with Caster Semenya?”

      20.

      Padawer, “The Humiliating Practice.”

      21.

      Ibid.

      22.

      Katrina Karkazis, “The Testosterone Myth,” Wired, March 27, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/testosterone-treatment-myth/ (accessed February 14, 2019).

      23.

      Lisa Wade, “The New Science of Sex Difference,” Sociology Compass 7, no. 4 (2013): 282.

      24.

      Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Gender & Sexuality,” Fields of Inquiry, n.d., http://www.annefaustosterling.com/fields-of-inquiry/gender/ (accessed February 14, 2019).

      25.

      Katrina Karkazis, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Georgiann Davis, and Silvia Camporesi, “Out of Bounds? A Critique of the New Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes,” American Journal of Bioethics 12, no. 7 (2012): 9.

      26.

      Shalender Bhasin et al., “The Effects of Supraphysiologic Doses of Testosterone on Muscle Size and Strength in Normal Men,” New England Journal of Medicine 335, no. 1 (1996): 1–7; Bent R. Ronnestad, Havard Nyaard, and Truls Raastad, “Physiological Elevation of Endogenous Hormones Result in Superior Strength and Training Adaptation,” European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology 111, no. 9 (2011): 2249–59; Thomas W. Storer et al., “Testosterone Dose-Dependently Increases Maximal Voluntary Strength and Leg Power, but Does Not Affect Fatigability of Specific Tension,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 88, no. 4 (2003): 1478–85.

      27.

      Gail Vines, “Last Olympics for the Sex Test?” NewScientist, July 4, 1992, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13518284-900-last-olympics-for-the-sex-test/ (accessed February 17, 2019).

      28.

      Karkazis et al., “Out of Bounds?” 9.

      29.