Doping, Genes, and Gender

• Pages: 115-158
• Date: 28 September 2018
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78743-753-120181005
• Published date: 28 September 2018
• Author: Helen Jefferson Lenskyj University of Toronto, Canada

CHAPTER 4

DOPING, GENES, AND GENDER

While doping dominates the attention of CAS panels and the

general public, important issues of gender and ‘race’/ethnicity

are also played out in two other related areas, identified in

CAS jurisprudence as eligibility and discipline. The following

discussion continues to investigate doping, with a focus on

testosterone-related controversies and their impacts on

gender-variant women and on racialized men. Finally, the

experiences of female and male athletes charged with bring-

ing themselves and/or their sport into ‘disrepute’will be

examined.

4.1. GENDER POLICING

It is axiomatic in sport circles that a ‘level playing field’

requires competitors to be divided into two strict categories:

male and female. Equestrian sports are the only Olympic

events in which men and women compete against each other.

Concepts of gender fluidity and gender variance, widely

accepted in social and legal contexts outside of sport, are for

the most part rejected in high performance sport. All men are

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faster and stronger than all women, according to the binary

thinking that characterizes most sport policy, so it would be

unfair to pit the sexes against one another. As in the war

against doping, the mainstream media support the majority

view that ‘fairness’demands draconian measures, and jour-

nalists can readily find ‘real women’to complain about unfair

competition and invoke ‘level playing field’arguments to sup-

port the demonization of gender-variant women. It is in this

context that female athletes with high levels of naturally

occurring testosterone (hyperandrogenism), and transgender

women who have transitioned from male to female struggle

for justice.

The stigmatization, harassment and violence that gender-

variant athletes have experienced are serious concerns. Many

scholarly analyses of these issues present convincing argu-

ments that the IAAF’s and IOC’s policies constitute gender

policing: a twenty-first-century version of the invasive and

humiliating sex tests, starting with ‘nude parades,’to which

all female athletes were subject from the 1960s to 1999. Anti-

doping procedures introduced in the 1990s require that a

urine sample be produced under direct observation, with the

area of the athlete’s body from nipple to knee exposed, a pro-

cedure that women, in particular, often find degrading and

distressing (Mazanov, 2016, p. 177). No longer is the goal to

prevent male athletes from masquerading as women, since

the anti-doping observer who supervises the production of

the urine sample will presumably recognize the difference.

Rather, it is to establish whether a female athlete is ‘woman

enough’(Ferguson-Smith & Bavington, 2014; Genel et al.,

2016; Schultz, 2012).

The moral crusade against gender-variant female athletes

parallels the general tone of the war against doping: that is,

it’safight that must be won at all costs. Like rationales for

harsh anti-doping measures and penalties, much of the

116 Gender, Athletes’Rights, and CAS

rhetoric about unfairness to ‘normal’female athletes conveys

the message that a few gender-variant women may have to

suffer for the greater good. That one woman, Indian runner

Santhi Soundararajan, attempted suicide after details of her

failed ‘sex test’were leaked to the media was not sufficient, it

seems, to raise awareness of the human cost of these

practices.

4.2. THE T WORD: TESTOSTERONE

A discussion of controversies over hyperandrogenism neces-

sarily begins by examining the assumption that testosterone

defines maleness and determines athletic prowess. As a result

of widespread acceptance of this flawed reasoning, testoster-

one levels are at the core of most eligibility issues. Contrary

to the stereotypical labeling of testosterone as the ‘male hor-

mone’and estrogen as ‘the female hormone,’these hormones

are produced in both male and female bodies, but usually in

different proportions.

Recent research shows that sex-related differences in tes-

tosterone are lower among athletes than non-athletes, and

that there is complete overlap between the sexes (Healy et al.,

2014). These findings should not come as a surprise to sport

scientists. Exercise physiology research dating back to the

1980s showed that athletes differed from the non-athlete

population on a number of measures, and, within the same

sport, differences in body size and composition accounted for

most sex differences. In terms of cardiovascular fitness, male

and female athletes in the same sport shared more similarities

with one other than with their sedentary, sex-matched coun-

terparts (Drinkwater, 1984; O’Toole & Douglas, 1988).

Although countless other doping products have emerged

in the last few decades, anabolic steroids, which are synthetic

117Doping, Genes, and Gender