![]() Olympic sports have chosen to set a limit on testosterone to distinguish the two. Many female athletes have found the tests to be invasive and triggering for those who had eating disorders or were predisposed to them.Ĭhand’s situation has highlighted one of the most perplexing issues facing sports and society: that there is no indisputable way to draw a line between male and female when most competitions have only two categories - one for men and the other for women. Pressure to Cut Body Fat: Collegiate athletic departments across the country require student-athletes to measure their body composition.At North Carolina State, Coach Laurie Henes is winning with a different approach. ‘We Have Fun All the Time’: Women’s college running programs can be rife with toxicity.That’s only now become a reality thanks to grass-roots efforts and hard-charging surfers. ![]() Waves of Gender Equality: In 2002, “Blue Crush” depicted women competing at a major competition at Hawaii’s Pipeline.It also made the United States an incubator for women’s national teams worldwide. Title IX’s Effect on the World: A federal law opened doors for millions of American women.But Chand says she is willing to handle the scrutiny that has come with her public stand. It has taken a lot of courage for Chand to stand up for herself other athletes with her condition have quietly consented to surgery or left sports altogether. “I feel like this is the same kind of primitive, unethical rule. “It’s like in some societies, they used to cut off the hand of people caught stealing,” Chand said of the idea of medically altering her body. Aside from hormone-suppressing drugs or an operation, her alternative is to hang up her spikes. The sprinter Oscar Pistorius successfully navigated the courts to run in the 2012 London Olympics on his prosthetic legs, and another amputee, the German long jumper Markus Rehm, is hoping to follow in Pistorius’s carbon-fiber footsteps.īut Chand’s case is potentially more troubling than those of Rehm and Pistorius because she is competing with the body she was born with, a purity the I.A.A.F. In 2009, the South African runner Caster Semenya was barred and then reinstated, but only after she was forced to undergo humiliating gender testing. The International Olympic Committee has a similar rule that stipulates the organization’s criteria for determining eligibility to participate in women’s competitions.Ĭhand’s case is not the first to contest traditional ideas about identity, ability and competitive fairness in sports. Last month, she filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, challenging guidelines put in place in 2011 by the I.A.A.F. In a landmark move, Chand is fighting her ban. “I feel that it’s wrong to have to change your body for sport participation,” she said last month, in Hindi, through an interpreter. She can do that by either taking hormone-suppressing drugs or having surgery to limit how much testosterone her body produces. She has a condition called hyperandrogenism, and her body produces natural levels of testosterone so high that they place her in the male range in the eyes of international track and field.įollowing a rule by the International Association of Athletics Federations, track’s governing body, the Athletics Federation of India will allow Chand to return to competition only if she lowers her testosterone level beneath the male range. Last summer, Chand, India’s 100-meter champion in the 18-and-under category, was barred from competing against women. She believes that the body she was born with - every chromosome, cell and organ - makes her the woman she is.īut to compete internationally as a female sprinter, that is not enough. As a young teenager, she was dismayed that her body lacked curves, but now, at 18, she loves that, too. ![]() She loves her long, dark hair, which is often pulled back into a tight ponytail, and the toned biceps she likes to show off with tank tops. ![]() Dutee Chand loves her body just the way it is. ![]()
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