Sex / Gender verification policies in sport: intersexuality, doping, protocols and resolutions

Abstract

This article analyzes cases of intersex athletes who experienced the sieve of gender verification policies that sports organizations and committees implement as resolutions to determine the sex of athletes eligible to compete in a unique sports category. The search for verification and confirmation of the sex and gender of an athlete mobilizes many issues, such as performance, testosterone, doping and drugs on one hand, and markers of social difference on the other. More broadly, I try to understand how the validation and legitimacy of certain criteria to establish bodies as healthy, eligible, and capitalizable, strips many other subjects of their social life – in this case, of their professions and their sports performance capabilities. Finally, I consider how these athletes go through coercive reviews, invasive procedures and irreversible surgery to ensure intelligibilities and privileges of an alleged biomedical logic on sexual differentiation and on sports eligibility that discriminates more than promotes equality.