Showing posts with label Gender Testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gender Testing. Show all posts

8.25.2009

Runner has Too Much Testosterone

The South African runner who is being publicly subjected to gender testing by the international athletic federation has apparently been found to have three times the amount of testosterone in her body that "normal" women have..

You can read more here....
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John E. Carter, Doo Wop Legend...R.I.P.
The first concert that I was allowed to attend without parents was down at the Taft Theater, circa 1963-64, and featured The Dells and The Four Seasons. It wasn't Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at that time, although he was a member of the group... it was just the Four Seasons.

They were the hottest two groups around, along with the Manhattans, who were also on the bill that night. And while I loved all the groups, I was there to hear The Dells do "Oh What a Night" and "Stay in My Corner."

Mr Carter had that distinctive falsetto...unduplicated to this day. His voice is a part of the some the better memories of my life. I still play this music when I wax nostalgic for the old days..

Rest in Peace Mr. Carter. He was 75.


8.21.2009

Friday Rap

Gender Testing...Not as Simple as Dropping Your Pants....

Like most, I have been following the story of the South African runner who is on the female track team, but some say is actually a man.

They base their opinion on her size, muscularity and low voice.

Caster Semenya is in fact going through gender testing. The results will come in several weeks.

And we will learn what, exactly?

We will probably learn that Caster suffers from some hormonal or chromosomal variance, meaning most parts of her body react in female ways, while other parts react in male ways.

That would make her something of an intersexual, meaning between sexes...a little of this... a little of that...

It happens more often than people realize and this is what Olympic gender testing has basically discovered over the years. Gender testing has been around for a long time, although the Olympic governing body did away with it officially in 1999.

At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, 8 women were challenged for their lack of femaleness, prior to their various competitions. Six of them had hormonal deviations that they'd been born with and two of them had chromosomal deviations that they'd also had since birth.

The problem, if it is such, usually happens in the womb. All of the women were cleared and competed as females.

Gender testing was instituted to make sure the playing field was level for women, in other words to insure that men didn't try to compete with them in drag, so to speak.

However, all it has done is to reveal that there are many variations on the boys or girls theme in real life....

For instance, instead of men always being XY chromosome entities...sometimes they are XXY or XX with a lot of testosterone. Women can be XXY, too, or XY, or XX with lots of male hormone..

It happens.

As Caster Semenya's father said...”she's always been my little girl..”