Beijing to World: Show Us Your Vagina

According to the New York Times, organizers of the Beijing Olympics are setting up a lab to evaluate (and I quote) "suspect" female athletes. All female athletes were required to submit to a "sex verification test" which looked much like you'd probably expect it to look, i.e. highly humiliating. Back in the day "...women were asked to parade nude before a panel of doctors to verify their sex." See, girls? You never know when you'll meet Mr. Right.

Oddly enough, this is not a new phenomenon. Female athletes have been subjected to 'tests' as far back as the 1960's. Again, the NY Times:

The tests never unmasked a man posing as a woman, but they did turn up several athletes who were born with genetic defects that made them appear — according to lab results, at least — to be men. In 1967, the Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was barred from the sport because she failed the chromosomal test, even though she had passed the nude test a year earlier. In the 1980s, the Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez Patino was disqualified because the test revealed, to her surprise, that she was born with a Y chromosome. Her eligibility was reinstated in 1988.

The practice came under increasing criticism in the 1990s by doctors, scientists and athletes who argued that the tests were not just invasive, but were also bad science. During the 1996 Atlanta Games, eight athletes failed the test, but all were later cleared of suspicion because it was determined that they had a birth defect that did not give them an unfair advantage.

“It was an unethical, unscientific and discriminatory practice,” said Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission and one of the most outspoken critics of the testing. In 1999, Ljungqvist helped abolish the blanket testing of women, but international competitions have continued to rely on sex-verification tests in isolated instances.

“We must be ready to take on such cases should they arise,” Ljungqvist said. “Sometimes, fingers are pointed at particular female athletes, and in order to protect them, we have to be able to investigate it and clarify.”

Two years ago, middle-distance runner Santhi Soundarajan of India was stripped of her silver medal at the Asian Games after failing a verification test. Ljungqvist said an official who observed Soundarajan during the mandatory urine test for doping questioned her sex, and she later refused to submit to a more thorough exam.

Although the verification test has changed to adapt to new scientific understandings about gender — athletes are now evaluated by an endocrinologist, gynecologist, a geneticist and a psychologist — critics say the test is based on the false idea that someone’s sex is a cut-and-dried issue.

“It’s very difficult to define what is a man and what is a woman at this point,” said Christine McGinn, a plastic surgeon who specializes in transgender medicine.

Wow. This just gets into a ton of crazy stuff, huh? Thats why I advocate simply flashing the beaver and moving on. If you can fake that one, go the hell ahead, you deserve it.