James Joyce and the advent of Viagra Essay -- Sports, Olympics, Sex Ve

The Olympics are an international competition event for summer sports and winter sports that happen every 2 years. It was originally an event created for men to compete in various sports. However, women were allow to participate in the early 1900s due to the increasing number of female athletes. After female athletes started to participate in the Olympic games, the question of gender identification arose. People fear that males may masquerade as females and have an unfair advantage over other participants in women-only events. To prevent this from happening, the International Olympic Commitee (IOC) started sex verification to test the participant’s sex. The question of sex verification in women’s sports started in 1936, when a Polish journalist accused the American gold medallist in 100m track and field of being a man. Helen Stephen, the gold medallist who broke the 100m record of track legend Stella Walsh was a 6 foot tall female athlete.(Carlson, 2005). Her size brought up the questions about the definition of femininity. Ironically, when Stella Walsh was found dead in an accident it was discovered that she had ambiguous genitalia and abnormal sex chromosomes. Another stunning case which prompted developing the sex verification protocol involved an athlete named Hermann Ratjen in the mid 1950s (Carlson, 2005). Ratjen admitted that he was persuaded to masquerade as a female in an Olympic event in 1936. He hid his genitals and used a fake name, â€Å"Dora,† to compete in the women high jump event. Although he set a world record in 1938 and definitely had some advantages over other female participants, he only came in at fourth place in 1936. This case made a lot of people question the sexuality of some Eastern Bloc competitors. ... ...discriminating. Due to all the human right issues and Semenya’s privacy, her test result was never released to the public and she is able to continue her sports career (Swarr,Gross & Theron, 2009). After all, sex testing is not a reasonable way to identify masquerading men, it only puts female athletes in trouble. The only case of masquerading is Hermann Ratjen, and apparently he did not even win the competition. Sex testing is discriminatory and inaccurate while it is time and money consuming. It puts a number of female athletes with genetic disorders in a nightmare situation. Luckily, Maria Patino and Caster Semenya were re-qualified in the end. We can only conclude that sex testing is simply a black and white method to categorize male and female, but this world has more than male and female. Sex testing underestimates the complexity of the human structure. James Joyce and the advent of Viagra Essay -- Sports, Olympics, Sex Ve The Olympics are an international competition event for summer sports and winter sports that happen every 2 years. It was originally an event created for men to compete in various sports. However, women were allow to participate in the early 1900s due to the increasing number of female athletes. After female athletes started to participate in the Olympic games, the question of gender identification arose. People fear that males may masquerade as females and have an unfair advantage over other participants in women-only events. To prevent this from happening, the International Olympic Commitee (IOC) started sex verification to test the participant’s sex. The question of sex verification in women’s sports started in 1936, when a Polish journalist accused the American gold medallist in 100m track and field of being a man. Helen Stephen, the gold medallist who broke the 100m record of track legend Stella Walsh was a 6 foot tall female athlete.(Carlson, 2005). Her size brought up the questions about the definition of femininity. Ironically, when Stella Walsh was found dead in an accident it was discovered that she had ambiguous genitalia and abnormal sex chromosomes. Another stunning case which prompted developing the sex verification protocol involved an athlete named Hermann Ratjen in the mid 1950s (Carlson, 2005). Ratjen admitted that he was persuaded to masquerade as a female in an Olympic event in 1936. He hid his genitals and used a fake name, â€Å"Dora,† to compete in the women high jump event. Although he set a world record in 1938 and definitely had some advantages over other female participants, he only came in at fourth place in 1936. This case made a lot of people question the sexuality of some Eastern Bloc competitors. ... ...discriminating. Due to all the human right issues and Semenya’s privacy, her test result was never released to the public and she is able to continue her sports career (Swarr,Gross & Theron, 2009). After all, sex testing is not a reasonable way to identify masquerading men, it only puts female athletes in trouble. The only case of masquerading is Hermann Ratjen, and apparently he did not even win the competition. Sex testing is discriminatory and inaccurate while it is time and money consuming. It puts a number of female athletes with genetic disorders in a nightmare situation. Luckily, Maria Patino and Caster Semenya were re-qualified in the end. We can only conclude that sex testing is simply a black and white method to categorize male and female, but this world has more than male and female. Sex testing underestimates the complexity of the human structure.