Stefanie wrote:

Olympic host Beijing has set up a sex determination lab to test female Olympic athletes suspected to be males, state media reported Sunday. Experts at the lab, located at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, will evaluate dubious cases based on their external appearance and take blood samples testing sex hormones, genes and chromosomes, Xinhua news agency said.

Sex testing has been routine at the Olympics and other sports events for decades, triggered by fears that male athletes sought to cheat by posing as women. Indian athlete Santhi Soundarajan was stripped of an Asian Games silver medal in 2006 after failing a gender verification test.

I'm trying to imagine walking through a hospital and seeing a big "Olympic Sex Determination Lab" sign over a door. The Futurama episode Bend Her comes to mind.

Per Wikipedia:

Sex determination tests typically involve evaluation by gynecologists, endocrinologists, psychologists, and internal medicine specialist.

Controversies:
The practice has come under fire from those that feel that the testing is humiliating, socially insensitive, and not entirely accurate or effective anyway. The testing is especially difficult and problematic in the case of people who could be considered intersexual. The genetic tests provide potentially inaccurate results and discriminate against women with disorders of sexual development. Genetic anomalies can allow a person to have a male genetic make-up but be physiologically female.

Current status:
Sex testing has been done as recently as the Atlanta Olympic games in 1996, but is no longer practiced, having been officially stopped by the International Olympic Committee in 1999. This followed a resolution passed at the 1996 International Olympic Committee (IOC) World Conference on Women and Health "to discontinue the current process of gender verification during the Olympic Games."

The International Association of Athletics Federations too stopped conducting the tests in 1991. However the Olympic Council of Asia continues the practice.

New rules permit transsexual athletes to compete in the Olympics after having completed sex reassignment surgery, being legally recognized as a member of the target sex, and having undergone two years of hormonal therapy.

Getting my "parts" cut off, new parts created, and years of hormone therapy to win a medal as a female athlete certainly doesn't sound mentally stable... at least to me...

dc0de wrote:
Getting my "parts" cut off, new parts created, and years of hormone therapy to win a medal as a female athlete certainly doesn't sound mentally stable... at least to me...

Yeah, it would be pretty screwed up for a non-transsexual to fake a condition and go through that (to any degree) as a means of cheating. Then again, some athletes take dangerous steroids for years, knowing their health will decline at some point, as a result.

Maybe in the past (or even currently), some countries thought they could recruit M-to-F transsexuals as ringers in female Olympic events, but I really don't know whether that's a widespread problem. As far as I'm concerned, the real issue is what to do about legitimate transsexuals and intersexuals who happen to be athletes and aren't trying to fool anyone... and I'm still not sure where I stand on that issue. I'm all for promoting sensitivity and awareness of the fact that not everyone neatly fits into XX and XY categories, but not at the expense of common sense and fair competition.

From what I've read of Soundarajan's case, she's probably intersexual. If so, it seems a bit heavy-handed to automatically disqualify anyone who's not perfectly XX because of a genetic abnormality. There are varying degrees of intersexualism, and in many cases, there wouldn't be a clear physical advantage for an athlete. I suppose it's possible that, in some cases, it could even be a disadvantage, depending on the specifics of the condition, chemical imbalances, etc. Some intersexuals aren't even aware of their conditions until they undergo testing.

As for transsexual athletes, while undergoing two or more years of hormone therapy (with or without SRS) does bring about drastic physiological changes, it can't completely undo all of the effects of puberty. Assuming that one began hormone therapy as an adult, a typical M-to-F transsexual athlete might still have a physical advantage (size and/or strength) over a typical XX female athlete, all other factors being equal. On the other hand, for those who began transitioning prior to or during puberty (another controversial issue), it might not be a factor at all.

The point of segregating the sexes in athletic competition is to ensure that we're always comparing oranges to oranges. It's the same reason that steroid use is prohibited in major sports. A level playing field must be maintained in order to keep the competition fair, both for the participants and the spectators. So, if we want to be completely fair to all parties, we'd have to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether one's being intersexual or transsexual gives one an unfair advantage. In other words, we'd need to determine whether a particular athlete is sufficiently non-female before banning that person, and that gets very subjective, depending on whether a person is intersexual or transsexual, the age at which a person began transitioning, etc. But, do we really want to be telling individuals "You're not woman enough"?

Trying to be completely fair to everyone might do more harm than good. The easy (yet non-inclusive) way out is to ban all transsexuals and intersexuals from Olympic competition, which appears to be what's happening this year in China. Conversely, we could allow anyone who is legally designated as female in her home country to compete as a female athlete, but that potentially opens the door to cheating, and/or objections from "XX" female athletes. Maybe there simply isn't a good solution to this issue.

Update: The Gender Trap
Emine Saner, The Guardian
Wednesday, July 30, 2008

For more than a year, officials in Beijing have been designing a special laboratory to determine the sex of any athletes taking part in this year's Olympic games. "Suspected athletes will be evaluated from their external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination," says Professor Tian Qinjie. The tests will not be conducted on every female athlete, but will be required if serious doubts have been raised about an individual competitor - invariably one competing in the women's events. "The aim is to protect fairness at the games while also protecting the rights of people with abnormal sexual development," he says.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced sex testing in 1968 at the Olympic games in Mexico City, after the masculine appearance of some competitors, many pumped up by anabolic steroids, had started to raise questions about the gender of athletes in female events. Unsurprisingly, gender-determination tests were seen as degrading, with female competitors having to submit to humiliating and invasive physical examinations by a series of doctors. Later, the IOC decided to use a supposedly more sophisticated genetic test, based on chromosomes. Women usually have two X chromosomes; men an X and a Y chromosome. So, according to the rules of the test, only those athletes with two X chromosomes could be classed as women. However, many geneticists criticised the tests, saying that sex is not as simple as X and Y chromosomes and is not always simple to ascertain.

It is thought that around one in 1,000 babies are born with an "intersex" condition, the general term for people with chromosomal abnormalities. It may be physically obvious from birth - babies may have ambiguous reproductive organs, for instance - or it may remain unknown to people all their lives. At the Atlanta games in 1996, eight female athletes failed sex tests but were all cleared on appeal; seven were found to have an "intersex" condition. As a result, by the time of the Sydney games in 2000, the IOC had abolished universal sex testing but, as will happen in Beijing, some women still had to prove they really were women.

Transsexuals, who have had a sex change from male to female, can compete in women's events in the Olympics, as long they wait two years after the operation.

The following are some of the more famous instances when female athletes were caught in the gender trap.

The article goes on to describe the cases of Santhi Soundarajan, Edinanci Silva, Dora Ratjen, Stella Walsh, and Heidi Krieger.