November's free article
Genes, Gender, Sport, and Justice
In August the papers were full of Caster Semenya, the South African
athlete who won the 800 metres at the world championships in
Berlin, but who, because of her outstanding performance was to be
tested to establish whether she was eligible to compete as a woman.
In statements this was described as ‘a medical matter’.1
Presumably the suspicion is that Semenya has androgen
insensitivity, or another metabolic anomaly which leads someone
with XY chromosomes to have a female body. No doubt when the
results are available it will again be headline news.
The case raises questions about gender, but also about fairness
in sport and the role of medicine in this. Firstly there is the
wellbeing of the individual athlete. Whatever the situation, it
must be very unpleasant to have a fundamental aspect of your
identify dissected in public. Surely the system could better
protect athletes’ feelings and medical confidentiality. If sexual
chromosomes are crucial to eligibility in sports then perhaps
participants should be required to produce evidence privately
before competitions, rather than questions being raised in public
post hoc. The division of humanity into male and female is
fundamental in most societies. At birth we are defined by our
gender and weight; other distinguishing characteristics come later.
But few things are entirely black and white, and some people have
ambiguous genitalia, or chromosomes and a body form which does not
fit in the usual way; conditions often grouped together as
‘intersex’. As well as difficulties inseparable from some of these
conditions, like infertility, these people often feel stigmatised
and marginalised.2
Men and women compete separately in many sports. We take this
for granted; yet in other areas of life — work, financial affairs,
academic achievement — such separation would be seen as sexual
discrimination or debated as affirmative action. Why do we treat
sport differently? There are of course significant differences in
physiological averages which mean that in some sports women would
be marginalised if they had to compete against men. But if on the
whole, justice and human flourishing are better served by this
arrangement, how do we draw the line between the genders? What is
more basic; our body form, our psychological self-image, or our
chromosomes? And how can we avoid excluding those who straddle
these divisions from sport?
More fundamentally, what does fairness demand in relation to
genetic inheritance in sport? Should we judge athletes on the basis
of effort or performance? It’s not just genes carried on the XY
chromosomes that affect performance; people with particular body
types as a result of their genetic inheritance perform very
differently in many sports. This, like androgen sensitivity, is not
under their control. Why should we accept these differences but not
chromosomal anomalies?
We tend to treat conditions differently according to how complex
their causes are and how well we understand them. If stronger
muscles result from an anomaly we can describe and name, we might
consider this unfair and exclude the athlete; if it comes from a
fortuitous combination of many genes, not all well understood, we
may not. Some would argue that distinctions between the treatment
of dyslexia and poor literacy, between ADHD and bad behaviour,
between psychopathy and evil, are similarly based on differences
between what we now understand and what we do not yet understand,
rather than on morally valid distinctions. If this is so then we
need to be cautious, because medicine can be abused to support
unjust practices and make unfair distinctions. Also we may find our
moral judgements shifting as our understanding increases, because
they are built on shifting sands — an ethical version of the ‘God
of the Gaps’ problem.
How to resolve these issues is not clear: I certainly don’t have
the answers. But we do need to ask questions which go a lot deeper
than what sort of chromosomes Caster Semenya has. Leaked reports,
suggesting that Semenya has androgen insensitivity, or another
metabolic anomaly which leads someone with XY chromosomes to have a
female body form, led to further media debate.
Peter D Toon
References
1. Hart S. Caster
Semenya’s gender test results force IAAF to call in outside help.
Telegraph 2009; 8 Sep:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/6158424/Caster-Semenyas-gender-test-results-force-IAAF-to-call-in-outside-help.html
(accessed 5 Oct 2009).
2. National Examiner. IAAF responsible for prejudice athlete
Caster Semenya facing.
http://www.examiner.com/x-16496-Christian-Pop-Culture-Examiner~y2009m8d25-IAAF-responsible-for-prejudice-athlete-Caster-Semenya-faces
(accessed 5 Oct 2009).
DOI: 10.3399/bjgp09X472962
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