The International Olympic Committee claims that requiring sex testing for every female athlete will \u201cprotect women,\u201d but instead it will force all women to prove their bodies in ways that are invasive, unfair and unnecessary. And the first affected Games will be LA28.<\/p>\n
Under the IOC\u2019s new policy, all girls and women with Olympic dreams will be subjected to mandatory genetic testing. That means giving up private medical information. If they refuse, they don\u2019t get to compete. This isn\u2019t a move toward equal access for women and girls, but a move away.<\/p>\n
Many headlines focused on one point: banning transgender women. But that misses the bigger story: This policy puts every woman\u2019s body under a microscope and creates a system in which officials decide who is \u201cwoman enough\u201d to compete.<\/p>\n
Historically, this has never gone well.<\/p>\n
Sex testing and the policing of women\u2019s bodies in sport is not new; it is a failed idea resurrected. Before genetic testing, women athletes were forced to undergo humiliating exams to prove they were women. Officials judged bodies based on narrow ideas of what a woman should look like, often targeting Black and brown women who were more likely to be seen as \u201cdifferent.\u201d People the officials deemed \u201cwoman enough\u201d to participate often did not include intersex women, who may have a different build, facial or body hair, or other traits outside of the Eurocentric feminine ideal.<\/p>\n
Later, sports organizations tried genetic testing. That didn\u2019t work either. Scientists found that there is no single gene or test that can define sex in a clear, fair way. In fact, the scientist who discovered the SRY gene itself, which was briefly used for Olympic sex testing in the 1990s and is the basis of the new policy, insisted it should not be used<\/a> for such a purpose. These tests were dropped decades ago because they were unreliable and harmful.<\/p>\n Now they\u2019re coming back, and the harm could be even greater.<\/p>\n About 1 in 50 people are born with natural variations in their sex traits \u2014 also known as intersex (referred to in the IOC policy as having a \u201cdifference of sex development\u201d). These variations don\u2019t confer<\/a> athletic advantages<\/a>. But many young women will be disqualified because they have such variations \u2014 and many of them don\u2019t even know it.<\/p>\n More than 80% of Americans have never undergone medical genetic testing, and global rates are even higher. Under IOC\u2019s policy, some young women and girls will find out they\u2019re intersex for the first time through mandatory testing \u2013 without warning, support or privacy.<\/p>\n Imagine training your whole life for a sport, only to be told you don\u2019t belong because of something you didn\u2019t even know about. That\u2019s the reality this policy creates.<\/p>\n Athletes will be publicly exposed and harassed. We\u2019ve seen this before, too.<\/p>\n And for what?<\/p>\n Since the mid-2000s, when transgender athletes began being allowed into Olympic competition, only one openly transgender woman has competed in the women\u2019s category. Trans participation is extremely rare and yet is being used to justify sweeping bans.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the policy\u2019s costs on all women and girls are very real. Genetic testing is expensive. In some cases, athletes are already being told they must pay for it themselves. And in some countries, genetic testing is banned, forcing athletes to travel elsewhere to access it. This adds another barrier in an already difficult system.<\/p>\n Women\u2019s sports don\u2019t need more barriers. They need more support.<\/p>\n They need better funding. Better facilities. More media coverage. Fewer opportunities for abuse. More opportunities for girls to play and grow.<\/p>\n This policy does none of that.<\/p>\n Instead, it will drain funding, divert attention from actual sport and drive mistreatment of athletes. It also sends a message: Before you can compete, you must prove your body is acceptable.<\/p>\n It also raises serious ethical questions: Who will store this sensitive medical data? Who gets access to it? What happens if it\u2019s leaked or misused?<\/p>\n Sports are supposed to be about fairness. But fairness doesn\u2019t mean exclusion. It means creating systems in which athletes can compete with dignity.<\/p>\n At its best, sport celebrates the human body in all its forms. Strength looks different. Speed looks different. Bodies are different. That\u2019s part of the beauty of sports. Putting limitations on who is \u201cwoman enough\u201d to compete hurts that.<\/p>\n Hosting a successful Los Angeles 2028 Olympics means respecting the dignity and humanity of women who compete. Authentic support means increasing investment, access and respect \u2014 not testing, scrutiny or fear.<\/p>\n Because every athlete deserves the chance to compete without having to prove they belong.<\/p>\n Chris Mosier, an advocate for transgender inclusion in sport, is a co-author of \u201cFair Game.\u201d Erika Lorshbough is the executive director of InterACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, an organization advancing the rights of people with intersex variations, and a graduate of UCLA Life Sciences and the Luskin School of Public Affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Olympic Committee claims that requiring sex testing for every female athlete will \u201cprotect women,\u201d but instead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2789,34119,123306,69357,9514,30860,48,52,51,47,50,49,123304,23745,3335,592,123305,123307,7496,11936,1557],"class_list":["post-288030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-body","tag-dignity","tag-equal-access","tag-female-athlete","tag-girl","tag-ioc","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mandatory-genetic-testing","tag-new-policy","tag-official","tag-people","tag-sex-test","tag-sex-testing","tag-sport","tag-system","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}