Female athletes having to prove they're female

My Sunday viewing was the Olympic Closing Ceremony in Paris. It wasn’t as cool as the Opening Ceremony and didn’t hold my attention as much, but it was still good. It started with saving a bit of the Olympic flame in a lantern, then extinguishing the cauldron, then one person walking away with the lantern. That person was a French swimmer who had won four gold medals. The reason for moving the small bit of flame was because the ceremony was at the stadium and the cauldron was at Tuileries Gardens a few miles away. Shortly after the Opening Ceremony I heard the Olympic Flame wasn’t actually a flame. It was bright orange lights and lots of steam. It was done this way as part of the effort to make these games the most green and as green as possible. The focus turned to the stadium. The national flags and the athletes entered. During that time there were platforms in the center of the playing field that were in bizarre shapes. Those shapes made a bit more sense when the show started and shapes were individually outlined in lights. Ah, they were stylized shapes of continents. The show as about rediscovering the Olympics as five huge rings were pulled out of the continents. Gymnasts climbed over them and wheeled them to a central area. Then they were lifted up to form the five rings of the Olympics. Pretty cool. During that a grand piano and player were lifted up. The piano was hoisted up not to keep the body horizontal, but to hold it vertical, with the keys closest to the ground. To play it the pianist raised their arms upward. Yeah, quite cool! In that position the pianist accompanied a singer standing on one of the rings. Then came a rock band with various additional singers. Not my style of music, though most of the athletes and crowd got into it. And finally, the formalities. The Olympic Flag was lowered and passed from the mayor of Paris to the mayor of Los Angeles. Tom Cruise (he’s on the far side of middle age now, I wasn’t sure it was him) swooped in to fly the flag to Los Angeles where he parachuted out of the plane to a welcoming ceremony. I doubt all that was seen back in Paris. Was it for NBC viewers? Back in Paris the lantern and it’s small flame were brought in and representatives from five continents jointly blew it out. As for the prime time presentation on TV: NBC seems bad at synchronizing audio and video. The two seemed a bit off most of the evening. And a great number of commercials were political. I muted them and paid little attention. On Friday and Saturday I watched a little bit of the break dance (breaking) competition during prime time. I first watched on CBC (Canadian). They showed only the gold medal battle. I switched to NBC and they showed only the same. Oh well. SemDem of the Daily Kos community showed a photo of JD Vance in drag – wig and dress – taken at Yale Law School in 2012. SemDem includes some verification that the photo is real and is Vance. After noting that Vance has been among the most vile Republicans bashing the LGBTQ community, SemDen concluded:

If J.D. wants to put on makeup and wear a dress, I say let him. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s going to be a hard sell when he tries to say that other men who do the same are somehow a threat.

NPR did an eleven minute segment of the Canadian podcast series Tested. This is one of a few segments of the series that NPR has aired. The subject is the testing that female athletes endure to prove they’re female. The testing is done to eliminate women said to have an unfair advantage because of such things as high testosterone. Host Rose Eveleth looks at that statement. Isn’t advantage what sports are all about? Who is faster or stronger? Let’s look at advantages. There’s time to train and travel to competition. There’s money to afford coaches, training facilities, clothing, equipment, and that travel. Add to that mentality, determination, and focus. Then there are body advantages. Michael Phelps had a long torso and short legs, perfect for swimming. Tall people are better at basketball. There is a gene mutation that makes red blood cells better at carrying oxygen. Another mutation gives a slight advantage at sprinting. Eveleth lists another nine mutations that help with this or that. Why is the sporting world fine with some biological advantages but cries foul with others? The difference is sports are not divided by speed of blood oxygenation, but they are divided by sex. Next question: How much of an advantage do some of these sex-related differences give? We don’t know. No scientific studies have been done. Well, there was a study in 2017 that said higher testosterone levels correlated to performance in only some events, the middle distance track events. Yeah, that’s weird. It didn’t say how much advantage comes with higher levels. So other researchers looked at the data and declared it to be a mess. Even so, World Athletics used that problematic study to require women in these middle distance events to lower their testosterone to qualify to compete.