What Is Sex Testing?
While looking through my research topic I came across some related topics that crossed my mind as very interesting. Sex testing is apparently a very big issue when it comes to athletes and sporting events. Gender verification in sports or sex verification comes around often with International competition and when the person competing doesn’t fit the mold in the way that gender is supposed to physically appear, people start to question.
What I found really hurtful is the women who have to be tested because they do not look like what a woman is supposed to look like. Female athletes go to physical extremes to be what they want to be and how good they want to be at their sport. I feel it is disrespectful to accuse a female of possibly being a male, just because she may have features or body structure like a male. A part of me feels bad because I wonder how that woman feels being that everyone accused her of being a male because she does not look like the average woman athlete. Who is to say that her appearance is not what she should look like? It is encouraged in this day and age to be healthy and fit, and just because a woman takes that to the extreme, now she is questioned if she is a man? If sex verification was such a big problem why don’t they test everybody instead of accusing one person of being the wrong gender? Why are they are so concerned if a female is a male or vice versa? This led to a finding that female athletes with levels of natural testosterone have an unfair advantage over any other competitors. I don’t understand how what you were born with can have such a negative impact in the success of being an athlete.
At some point we have to take people for what they are worth, male or female. Maybe the solution is a birth certificate and a notarized document from a doctor that shows the official gender they are, a month before the competition. That way there is no unfairness to argue about! Sex testing seems insulting and a complete waist of time and causes embarrassment and hatred. We need to stop characterizing people on the way they look and start accepting everyone for who they are and just accept their athletic ability man or woman.