GD wrote:
Justice4caster wrote:Read this article for education on your ways of thinking
Found this amazing article online:
http://everydayfeminism.com/20...-athletes/This really is an excellent article. I like this part the best
"2. Ask: “What does racism and nationalism have to do with my ignorance and comfort with questioning, if not humiliating, others?â€"
I think that explains most of the narrow mindedness that goes on around here.
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Actually, this article evades the most important question at stake here which is this: what is the basis upon which we divide women and men into categories for the basis of athletic competition?
The fact that racism and nationalism undergird SOME reactions to Semenya does not mean that the entire question of whether she should compete is wrong-headed or unethical.
It's much easier to say that Semenya, even if she is intersex, ought to be allowed to compete, but it's much more complicated to address my original question. I keep seeing that researcher, Katrina Karkazis (medical bioethicist), arguing that people are overreacting to the intersex issue because the condition is incredibly rare. But actually, intersex conditions aren't that rare. I've seen estimates as high as 1/100 births. So, it's not absurd or reactionary to be concerned that intersex women in the women's category could make it nearly impossible for XX women to compete for medals on the world stage.
All of this evades one of feminism's most difficult questions, which has to do with the crisis of representation. If we define the category "women," especially on biological or physiological terms, we exclude and discriminate against those who don't meet our exact definition. But, if we make the category too capacious, we might erase the category "women" altogether. In the case of elite athletics, if we broaden the category of women too much, we might end up with a situation that nearly excludes XX women.
And what about Caitlyn Jenner? Is she not a woman? If she were 25 years old, should she be able to compete in the women's category?
Certainly, gender is not completely binary. But, we have binary gender categories in sports for pretty good reasons. We can either choose to get rid of the binary in athletics, which which case XX women and probably XY women will not be able to compete on the world stage against XY men, we can keep the existing categories and exclude people based upon some defined gender binary, or we can create more than two gender categories. I guess we could also get rid of the world stage of athletics.
I really, sincerely, want to know what people like Karzakis envision for women's sports or sports in general. I want to know as a feminist and as a track fan. Elite athletics is about testing the limits of the human body. It may well be true that most biological and physiological research about sex differences is ensconced in cultural ideologies about gender, but it is also true that there are differences in the maximum capacity of differently sexed bodies at the elite level. If we ignore this, especially in a world where women's bodies are devalued, we might end up with a situation whereby XX women are marginalized on the basis of their "unruly" and "inferior" bodies.