Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport: A History of the Present PDF
Preview Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport: A History of the Present
Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport T his book critically explores the history of gender verification in international sport, to show how culture, politics, and science come together to produce “femaleness” and, consequently, the female body as we know it. T racing gender verification policies and practices in sport since the 1930s till the present, the book shows how and why medical “sex tests” have been used to “verify” women athletes’ femaleness, in ways that both reflect and have shaped broader social and scientific ideas about femaleness in the process. Exploring how geopolitics, gender, and class and race relations intertwined with scientific ideas about femaleness and womanhood to shape gender verification, the book shows how sports competitions became a battleground where new and old ideas about sex difference collided. By mapping the social, historical, and material instability of sex and gender, it shows why so much investment has been placed in distinguishing femaleness from maleness in sport and beyond. T he book will be of interest to researchers and later-year undergraduate and graduate students in a broad range of areas including gender studies, sports studies, social and historical studies of science, and medicine. It will also be relevant to sports policy as it historically and conceptually contextualises gender verification policies. Sonja Erikainen is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests cluster around social, historical, and ethical issues concerning biomedicine and gender. Her publications cover areas including digital health, new and emerging biotechnologies, and gender identity as well as gender and sports. Routledge Advances in Critical Diversities Series Editors: Yvette Taylor and Sally Hines Creativity, Religion and Youth Cultures Anne M. Harris Intersexualization Lena Eckert The Sexual Politics of Asylum Calogero Giametta Exploring LGBT Spaces and Communities Eleanor Formby Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias Caterina Nirta Sexualities Research Critical Interjections, Diverse Methodologies, and Practical Applications Edited by Andrew King, Ana Cristina Santos and Isabel Crowhurst Queer Business Queering Organization Sexualities Nick Rumens Queer in Africa LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship, and Activism Edited by Zethu Matebeni, Surya Monro and Vasu Reddy Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport A History of the Present Sonja Erikainen F or more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/sociology/ series/RACD Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport A History of the Present Sonja Erikainen First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Sonja Erikainen The right of Sonja Erikainen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Erikainen, Sonja, author. Title: Gender verification and the making of the female body in sport : a history of the present / Sonja Erikainen. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge advances in critical diversities | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043298 (print) | LCCN 2019043299 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367313012 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429316159 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Women athletes—Physiology. | Sports—Sex differences. | Gender identity in sports. Classification: LCC GV709 .E85 2020 (print) | LCC GV709 (ebook) | DDC 796.082—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043298 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043299 ISBN: 978-0-367-31301-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-31615-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC To mum, the first feminist athlete I ever met, for showing me how to tackle life like a judoka. Contents Acknowledgements x List of abbreviations xii 1 Introduction: gender verification, sex difference, and the body 1 Writing histories of gender verification 5 A genealogy of the female category in sport 9 Socio-scientific configurations of sex, gender and the body 10 Feminist configurations of sex, gender and the body 16 Structure of the book 20 Notes 22 2 Sex instability from the 1920s to the 1950s 24 “The peculiar awkwardness of women’s efforts” 25 Sex changes, metamorphoses, and hormonal sex instability 29 Hermaphrodites, monstrosities, and sex borderlines 34 Physical examinations and femininity certificates 37 Conclusion 40 Notes 41 3 Pure and polluted bodies in Cold War sports 43 Cold War geopolitics in international sport 44 Gendered Cold War sporting dynamics 47 Artificial substances and sex abnormality 48 Naked parades 53 Borderline bodies, hybrid creatures, and the feminisation of women’s sport 56 Conclusion 60 Notes 62 viii Contents 4 Sex screening and diagnosis in the Olympics 63 The medicalisation of the Olympics 64 The medical management of sex abnormalities 65 Naked parades, embarrassment, and further examinations 68 A diagnostic paradigm for sex 70 The impact of on-site gender verification in the Olympics 73 Conclusion 79 Notes 80 5 Gender fraud and masquerade in the 1970s and 1980s 81 Chromosomal disorders and transsexual women 82 Gender masquerade 86 Ferguson-Smith and the male masquerade threat 87 De la Chapelle and the scientific opposition to chromosome screening 90 (Re)defining the aims of gender verification 92 “Man has a penis and a scrotum; a woman does not” 96 Conclusion 99 Notes 100 6 Gendered suspicions at the turn of the millennia 102 Gendered suspicion, excessive bodies, and feminine body aesthetics 103 Objections to the health and gender examinations, and the PCR test 105 Genitals, gendered suspicion and hypermuscular women 107 The “essence of man” 110 The discontinuation of PCR testing 114 Santhi Soundarajan and Caster Semenya 116 Conclusion 120 Note 122 7 The testosterone debate – from hyperandrogenic females to biological males 123 Conceptualising androgens 124 Regulations on female hyperandrogenism 126 Diagnosing and treating hyperandrogenism 130 Debating a testosterone sex gap 134 Contents ix The Rio Olympics 137 IAAF DSD regulations and the testosterone debate 138 Conclusion 144 Notes 146 8 The past, present, and future of gender verification and sex categories in sport 147 Continuities and discontinuities in the making of the female body 148 Drawing lines in the sand – current delineations of femaleness 151 Beyond binary sex and gender categories? 155 Notes 160 Bibliography 161 Index 182
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