Male or female? Not just a question of naughty bits

Caster Semeya celebrates her gold medal win prior to the beginning of the current gender controversy. (Photo by David J. Phillip)

Earlier this week at the World Athletics Championship in Berlin, the women’s 800 meter event was won by the South African athlete, Caster Semenya.  The 18 year old won the gold medal by an amazing 2 second lead.  Of greater international interest, however, is the suggestion that Semenya might not be a woman. This seemingly odd accusation arose from a commonplace drug screening test that found the athlete had testosterone levels three times higher than normal for a female, triggering the need for a gender-verification test. 

When I first heard this news story, my immediate mental image was that of a stark, laboratory-like, sterile white room and some poor athlete forced to pull down their pants in front of a panel of doctors.  All of whom would be holding clipboards because that’s how you can tell they are professionals.

Of course, the reality is much different and much more complex.  Time magazine explains that the simple binary test I envision is not how it is done, nor is the issue as uncommon as one might think.

In his paper “Intersex and the Olympic Games,” Rob Ritchie, a urological surgeon at Oxford University, notes that in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta — the last Games in which all female athletes were subjected to gender testing — eight female athletes were found to be genetically male. Seven of them had androgen-insensitivity syndrome (AIS), a condition in which a genetic male is resistant to androgens, the male sex hormones that include testosterone. In such cases, the testes never descend from the abdomen and the genitalia may resemble female genitalia.

Not only might professional sports be the only career path that requires gender testing (unless your career goals include becoming the Pope), but it might be the only one where you can find out that you are not the gender you thought you were.

But back to the point:  even if an individual has AIS, does that make them “not-female” and unable to race against other women, or is it categorized as a genetic abnormality?

Olympic officials do not consider AIS to necessarily confer an advantage. The seven genetically male athletes with AIS at the Atlanta Olympics were allowed to compete as women. However, the incidence of AIS in Atlanta — seven cases among 3,000 athletes — compared with the rate in the general population, which is 1 in 20,000, suggests that partial AIS can boost athletic ability, Ritchie says. “But,” he adds, “it’s never been proven that women found to be genetically male have any physical advantage above what might otherwise be seen in the extremes of genetically female women.”

Therefore, if being genetically male due to AIS does not preclude women from competing as women, how will it be determined if Semenya is female or not?

The IAAF’s evaluation of Semenya will include an endocrinologist, a gynecologist and a psychologist. Whether Semenya is genetically male will be only one of the factors considered. The test will also likely include a psychological profile to see whether she feels herself to be a woman.

The results of the test are not expected for several weeks.  In the meantime, I cannot even begin to understand the sorts of emotions that a young adult might go through as the entire world waits to hear the outcome of their gender test.