Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
  • Subscribe BJGP on YouTube
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
The Back Pages

Genes, Gender, Sport, and Justice

Peter D Toon
British Journal of General Practice 2009; 59 (568): 871. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp09X472962
Peter D Toon
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

In August the papers were full of Caster Semenya, the South African athlete who won the 800 metres at the world championships in Berlin, but who, because of her outstanding performance was to be tested to establish whether she was eligible to compete as a woman. In statements this was described as ‘a medical matter’.1 Presumably the suspicion is that Semenya has androgen insensitivity, or another metabolic anomaly which leads someone with XY chromosomes to have a female body. No doubt when the results are available it will again be headline news.

The case raises questions about gender, but also about fairness in sport and the role of medicine in this. Firstly there is the wellbeing of the individual athlete. Whatever the situation, it must be very unpleasant to have a fundamental aspect of your identify dissected in public. Surely the system could better protect athletes' feelings and medical confidentiality. If sexual chromosomes are crucial to eligibility in sports then perhaps participants should be required to produce evidence privately before competitions, rather than questions being raised in public post hoc. The division of humanity into male and female is fundamental in most societies. At birth we are defined by our gender and weight; other distinguishing characteristics come later. But few things are entirely black and white, and some people have ambiguous genitalia, or chromosomes and a body form which does not fit in the usual way; conditions often grouped together as ‘intersex’. As well as difficulties inseparable from some of these conditions, like infertility, these people often feel stigmatised and marginalised.2

Men and women compete separately in many sports. We take this for granted; yet in other areas of life — work, financial affairs, academic achievement — such separation would be seen as sexual discrimination or debated as affirmative action. Why do we treat sport differently? There are of course significant differences in physiological averages which mean that in some sports women would be marginalised if they had to compete against men. But if on the whole, justice and human flourishing are better served by this arrangement, how do we draw the line between the genders? What is more basic; our body form, our psychological self-image, or our chromosomes? And how can we avoid excluding those who straddle these divisions from sport?

More fundamentally, what does fairness demand in relation to genetic inheritance in sport? Should we judge athletes on the basis of effort or performance? It's not just genes carried on the XY chromosomes that affect performance; people with particular body types as a result of their genetic inheritance perform very differently in many sports. This, like androgen sensitivity, is not under their control. Why should we accept these differences but not chromosomal anomalies?

We tend to treat conditions differently according to how complex their causes are and how well we understand them. If stronger muscles result from an anomaly we can describe and name, we might consider this unfair and exclude the athlete; if it comes from a fortuitous combination of many genes, not all well understood, we may not. Some would argue that distinctions between the treatment of dyslexia and poor literacy, between ADHD and bad behaviour, between psychopathy and evil, are similarly based on differences between what we now understand and what we do not yet understand, rather than on morally valid distinctions. If this is so then we need to be cautious, because medicine can be abused to support unjust practices and make unfair distinctions. Also we may find our moral judgements shifting as our understanding increases, because they are built on shifting sands — an ethical version of the ‘God of the Gaps’ problem.

How to resolve these issues is not clear: I certainly don't have the answers. But we do need to ask questions which go a lot deeper than what sort of chromosomes Caster Semenya has. Leaked reports, suggesting that Semenya has androgen insensitivity, or another metabolic anomaly which leads someone with XY chromosomes to have a female body form, led to further media debate.

  • © British Journal of General Practice, 2009.

REFERENCES

  1. ↵
    1. Hart S
    (2009) Caster Semenya's gender test results force IAAF to call in outside help. Telegraph 8 Sep:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/6158424/Caster-Semenyas-gender-test-results-force-IAAF-to-call-in-outside-help.html (accessed 5 Oct 2009).
  2. ↵
    1. National Examiner
    IAAF responsible for prejudice athlete Caster Semenya facing. http://www.examiner.com/x-16496-Christian-Pop-Culture-Examiner~y2009m8d25-IAAF-responsible-for-prejudice-athlete-Caster-Semenya-faces (accessed 5 Oct 2009).
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 59 (568)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 59, Issue 568
November 2009
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Genes, Gender, Sport, and Justice
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Genes, Gender, Sport, and Justice
Peter D Toon
British Journal of General Practice 2009; 59 (568): 871. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp09X472962

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Genes, Gender, Sport, and Justice
Peter D Toon
British Journal of General Practice 2009; 59 (568): 871. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp09X472962
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
    • REFERENCES
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

The Back Pages

  • The ethics of listening and responding to patients' narratives: implications for practice
  • How big is your society?
  • Evidence-based medicine and Web 2.0: friend or foe?
Show more The Back Pages

Viewpoint

  • The NHS: have the rivets popped?
  • Bring Hippocrates to the people and save the NHS
  • Getting the swagger back into general practice
Show more Viewpoint

Related Articles

Cited By...

Intended for Healthcare Professionals

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7400
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2022 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242