[Jack_]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Unisex is definitely the way forward when it comes to toilets and changing areas but proper stalls etc I think prisons need to be separated by sex (obviously post op transsexuals would go with their "new" sex) and in regards to sport I just don't think they should be able to compete against women if they were born a man as it's completely unfair

The thing is, the sport issue is quite a complex one - especially when it concerns intersex athletes - unfortunately they never get much attention in these kind of discussions. I wrote a case study last year on Caster Semenya, she's been the pariah of much controversy in track and field for almost a decade but the issue really isn't a clearcut as most people perceive it to be. And what's more is, in our obsession with policing the sex binary, we miss the numerous other genetic advantages that exist in sport that we don't account for.

This is a really great piece that I referenced and discussed in my work, it's thought-provoking IMO

https://nature.berkeley.edu/garbelot...orkin-2013.pdf

Sport studies scholars have noted the ways in which sport is not a level playing field; rather, it is a site wherein broader forms of social inequality are accepted, tolerated, and ignored. The historic and contemporary structure and culture of sport institutions often reproduces hegemonic masculinity, racism, classism, gender inequalities, and nationalism (Messner, 2002; Sage, 1998). In Western societies, sporting institutions have been organizationally structured to benefit the interests of dominant groups (i.e., White, male, economically affluent; see Burstyn, 1999; Sage, 1998).

...


If monitoring genetically conferred advantage to ensure a level playing field was the primary basis for ensuring fair play, as the IOC and the IAAF claim, athletes would not simply be tested for sex; sport organizations would also test for ‘‘performance enhancing genes that predispose them to be athletically superior’’ by improving muscle growth and efficiency as well as blood flow to skeletal muscles (Vilain & Sánchez, 2012). Sport governing bodies would also test for other conditions that may predispose athletes to be athletically superior. For example, several basketball players have acromegaly, which is a condition responsible for excessive tallness, a clear advantage in basketball (Zaccone, 2010). Female volleyball players have been found to have Marfan syndrome, a disorder that contributes to their unusually tall height, an advantage in that sport. Endurance skier, Eero Ma ̈ntyranta, has primary familial and congenital polycythemia (PFCO), which causes high hemoglobin and increased oxygen capacity due to an inherited mutation in the erythropoietin receptor gene (EPOR) (Genel, 2010).

(p. 107)

Genetically or biologically conferred physical advantages are ‘‘unfair’’ to the same degree that various intersex conditions may be, yet sport organizations do not implement policies to test athletes for these variations, while they do so for those who do not fit into the dichotomous sex binary. At the same time, sport organizations do not view athletes with other types of genetic advantages as a threat to the so-called level playing field, even though researchers have found that athletes with these conditions benefit from clear physical advantages, which by the IOC/IAAF’s standards would be construed as unfair. Thus, as we have illustrated, the second key assumption which justifies the use of sex testing—it levels the playing field by eliminating unfair advantages—has not been consistently upheld when it comes to other naturally occurring genetic variations that predispose athletes to be ‘‘athletically superior.’’ Furthermore, we have shown that sport is not a level playing field, and we argued the claims that current policies are necessary to maintain ‘‘fairness’’ are contradictory (and later, we argue that these are discriminatory). Indeed, sport celebrates those individuals who exist on the extreme end of the biological, physical, and genetic spectrum of human diversity. Here we echo Vilain and Sánchez (2012) who argued that ‘‘attempting to create a ‘level playing field’ among people with unique biological profiles may be a futile endeavor’’ (pp. 198–199).

(pp. 107-108)