(Un)Queering the Intersex Body in Elite Sports

In: Fascination of Queer
Author:
Annette C.G. Brömdal
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Historically the Intersex Body is not a new phenomenon in elite sports. Sex testing, femininity controls and gender verifications emerged when allegations surfaced that men and perhaps ‘hermaphrodites’ were participating in female only sporting events. The hetero-normative agenda and fear of ‘disruptive’ sex, gender and body in elite sports have thus questioned and disqualified athletes with intersex variations on the basis of them according ‘unfair’ competitive advantages. This chapter examines the scandal surrounding Caster Semenya, the ‘Golden Girl’ who had her sex and gender questioned after winning the 800m world championship in Berlin 2009, and the pathologising of athletes with intersex variations. Historically, sports medicine policies pathologise the ‘Intersex Body’ by interpreting their presence as disorders and abnormalities that can become orderly and normal through the power of science and medicine. If need be even with the help of a scalpel. The Semenya controversy thus represents much more than a world glimpsing into an athlete’s and a nation’s underpants. The controversy has raised many questions and produced anxieties linked to the binary sex, gender and body model in and around the culture of elite sports – what constitutes sex; what is feminine and what is masculine; how the female and the male athlete body should ideally look like; and whether the body constitute a part in the construction of sex and gender? This theoretical chapter is outlined in relation to disruptive sex, gender and body concepts where the pathologised ‘Other’ is advised to conform to the binary norms or remain as a ‘Deviant Other’. This chapter concludes that the ways in which athletes with intersex variations are depicted and managed need to be further challenged. The logic of the binary sex, gender and body model in and around the culture of elite sports also calls for urgent troubling.

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