Policing women’s bodies is an age-old phenomenon in our society. From talking about what women wear to how much we weigh and how pretty (or not) we look, there is a dangerous, unnatural, and unhealthy obsession with making sure that women are scrutinized from top to bottom in every single way. Female athletes are no exception to this rule. In fact, when a woman is an athlete, not only is she subjected to commentary about her body ad nauseam but if she also happens to be quite muscular, there are almost always vigorous debates about how her figure appears “mannish” and unattractive. These debates about female athletes’ physiques are painful, but they can also be incredibly damaging to their careers.
In the case of Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter, questions about her body and gender have resulted in invasive and inappropriate testing by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) to confirm that she is indeed a woman. Once they confirmed that she is, they left her alone, temporarily. Now the IAAF wants to subject her to more testing—this time to prove that she has not been given an advantage over her peers due to high testosterone levels.
Chand, who had to undergo incredibly invasive sex testing without her consent when she was only 18 years old due to questions about her gender that arose after she became national champion in the 100 meters, was upset this issue had returned to haunt her before such an important competition.
“Dutee does not understand why the IAAF believes she should be subjected to medical review, testing or alteration,” a representative for Chand said in a statement provided to ThinkProgress. “She simply wishes to run just as she was born.”
As reasoning for this hideous invasion of Chand’s privacy, the IAAF is citing a study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine saying that “it found that females with higher testosterone levels than their peers had a 1.8 to 4.5 percent performance advantage in athletics.” Besides fulfilling their absurd need to know if she’s really a woman (she is), all this will do is allow the organization to reinstate it’s ban on hyperandrogenism, which is a condition that occurs when there is an overproduction of testosterone in female bodies. But researchers say that the study’s findings will not help the IAAF’s cause, nor does testosterone determine athletic achievement.
[Katrina Karkazis, a senior researcher at Stanford University] says that the sensational headlines and overreaching analysis about the study is overshadowing its most important statistical finding— that researchers did not find any correlation between testosterone and athleticism in men, calling into question the importance of the hormone.
“[That] completely undermines policymakers’ theory that testosterone is the primary driver of athleticism,” Karkazis said.
This is appalling. The IAAF not only wants to punish women who have superior athletic ability by making them prove they are women, but it also wants to prove that if they have any natural, biological advantages over their competitors then they shouldn’t be allowed to compete. That makes no sense and we know that they most certainly wouldn’t be doing this if she were a man. When she was younger, Chand was subjected to gynecological testing and chromosome analysis after it was suspected that she might not be a “real” woman. In this next round, in order to evaluate the levels of testosterone, the IAAF exam involves the measuring of a woman’s sex organs and evaluating breast size and pubic hair. This is humiliating, disgusting, and completely and utterly violent. How about we believe that Chand is a woman simply because she identifies as one? There is no intent to defraud anyone on her part. She wants to run and she’s good at it—or at least she was until the IAAF decided that her body and gender were up for debate.
She earned two bronze medals at the Asian Championships last week, but ran well below her best time amid all the distractions. Her time of 11:52 seconds in the 100 meters was not good enough to qualify her for the wold championships. [...]
“It’s my life, you know. I have once been unceremoniously thrown out of competition,” [Chand] said at the Asian Championships. “But I have a great legal team and also have the support of the state and central governments. So I am only going to concentrate on working hard to make my dreams come true and win laurels for India.”
Women pay a very high price for simply being women in a society deeply steeped in patriarchy and misogyny. And for talented athletes, that price is even higher. It’s time to stop policing women’s bodies and allow us to simply be. Our hypervigilance around trying to decide what’s feminine, and who is a “real” woman and who is not, is robbing women of their dignity and full human rights.