Special Edition: Just another few weeks in women's sports...
...the Olympics is all about fame and glory, right?
This week's regular edition coming up on Saturday is being planned on a different topic, but with the Tokyo Olympics on in full swing, there were many more things to say about women's sports, which means we have this short and quick special edition today.
On transgender Olympians...
Laurel Hubbard competed earlier this week in women's +87 kg weightlifting to become the first openly trans woman to compete in the Olympics. She failed to finish with a single valid lift, so the debate on her performance relative to other women, and on being allowed to compete, did not get any extra fuel for now. However, one only needs to google her name, or simply 'New Zealand weightlifting' to find all kinds of uninformed rubbish being passed off as 'expert' opinions against her participation. I have already written about her and about trans women in women's sports in general on this very platform and on Instagram and Twitter several times in the past month or so, so I have nothing more to add about her for now.
Laurel was not the first openly trans Olympian though. In this very edition of the Olympics, there were two others before her. Quinn who competed for Canada in football and is now in the final with their team, and Alana Smith who competed for the US in skateboarding, are both nonbinary. There is not much debate about their participation in women's sports or their hormone levels or any other aspect of their biology. And yet, mainstream commentators found it hard to even address them correctly, even when one of them had their pronouns displayed on their skateboard itself.
Who is a woman after all?
Talking of biology and hormone levels, there has been an ongoing debate about Caster Semenya, Christine Mboma, and Beatrice Masilingi being banned from races in the 400 to 1,500 meter range because of new rules specifically targeted against them, unless they artificially lowered their testosterone levels. So... this debate about testosterone levels is not just limited to trans women, but also extends to those assigned female at birth who do not fit elite Western norms of what an ideal woman looks like, runs like, and what her biology is like.
After Mboma's victory in the 200 meters now, more questions are being raised against her participation in any race at all, not just the 400 meters. The president of the IAAF, who is himself a former Olympic champion and has been a conservative politician for three decades, has been quoted as saying that regulators may now create an 'open' category in sports for everyone and another one just for 'biological females', whatever that means. And a male sprinter has jumped in with his opinion, asking if Mboma is indeed a woman. So... more 'control' over women and their biology is likely to be introduced in women's sports, in the name of 'fairness'. Meanwhile, can anyone tell us where the 'normal range' of testosterone for women comes from? What does the data look like? How many standard deviations away from the average do Caster Semenya and Christine Mboma lie? Which populations is this data based on, and do these averages and ranges differ due to other factors besides gender? Replies are welcome. We would really like to know.
And while we are questioning anything unusual about the biology of certain women athletes, why was Michael Phelps never questioned or criticized or banned for his unusual biology? Why aren’t all elite athletes of every gender tested for their hormone levels and chromosomes and everything else that one speculates about their biology? Is the testing of women athletes’ testosterone levels just a ‘random’ event, or it kicks in when they are seen to be ‘too good’?
Even when there are no questions about someone's womanhood...
Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka have made the news not just for their sporting performances, but for speaking up about mental health. Sha'Carri Richardson lost out on her Olympics spot after testing positive for marijuana. All three are teaching us something, but are we ready to listen yet?
Meanwhile, the German gymnastics team and Norwegian beach volleyball team decided to make a statement against hyper-sexualized uniforms for women athletes. One of them was actually fined for it.
While all these debates about women in sports are going on around the world, India’s women Olympians have been performing better than ever before. Here is one opinion about it... we should ask ourselves, is this really our country’s opinion about our women Olympians? And what does it say about us?
(Translation of the text on the placard: A girl will manage the house and also win a medal. That’s what our Indian woman is like)
That’s all for now.
P.S. Did you notice that I did not specify ‘women’s team’ in several places? Did it matter to you? If it did, why?
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