Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Gender and sports

A while ago we talked about the girl whose gender was questioned because she outran the other girls in the race by a huge amount of time.  For some reason I was thinking about this today again and the reasons why some things about it are frustrating.
First of all, I think it's more demeaning to not test the girl for multiple things when she beats the other girls by such a huge gap.  I think they would test a man if he was winning races by a landslide, too, even if they were testing him for drugs instead of things that have to do with gender.  The thing is, men really can't have a genetic factor that will make them have an unfair advantage in the way that a woman could. If a woman has an abnormal amount of testosterone, it can give her an advantage that would make it almost impossible for a woman with less testosterone to compete with her in a race.  I'm not saying that it's fair to the girl with more male genetics to throw her out of the race or anything, but I do think it's important to acknowledge that it really is an unfair advantage in the same way that drugs would be an advantage for a man in a race. 
I would be more offended if people sugar coated everything and took special measures not to test me just because I am a woman.  I wouldn't want different treatment, I would want to be treated the same as any other athlete.
Second, the whole thing about singling people out with random testing could be solved if you just test every single athlete for both gender abnormalities and drugs.  You can't only test someone when they win, because then things like this happen.  Everyone should just be tested to begin with to eliminate the argument that there was some sort of bias when it comes to choosing who gets tested.

No comments:

Post a Comment