Gender Vs. Sex: Sexual Dymorphism In Sports

Improved Essays
Sexual dimorphism in species propagates a lot of phenotypic differences between sexes that concedes distinct strengths and weaknesses to different sexes. The result of this is more evident in sports than anything else. The physical strength of men allows them to perform better than women in most sports but the inherent ability of incredulous balance makes women formidable in gymnastics and water skating.

But as the perplexing science of genetics has revealed, genes and chromosomes can align in inconceivable number of ways and beget numerous paradigms which transcend mathematical permutations. This leads to the birth of men who can push the borders of ordinary human ability to distances beyond the cognitive ability of humans. At the same time,
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Sex
Gender and Sex can both mean the same in layman’s language but scientifically and psychologically there exist nuances that create a distinct difference. Sex is a biological distinction between a man and a woman while gender is the cultural difference. In other words, sex is whether someone is a male or a female scientifically, while gender is the sex that a person feels he/she belongs to. For instance a person who is biologically a male can feel that he is a female and hence his gender is female. But the confusion between the terms have lead to a lot of misconceptions and prejudices.

Both sex verification and gender verification are used for the process of verifying one’s sex/gender and this leads to the state of confusion where people are not sure whether sports authorities want someone to be biologically belonging to a particular sex or psychologically belonging to a certain sex. The presence of a psychiatrist in the panel of doctors who verify gender, compounds the confusion
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As aforementioned the fear of men competing in women’s sports initially forced female athletes to be tested to verify their gender. At the same time tests were carried to exclude intersex individuals who can neither be classified as males nor females. Most of the controversies arising due to gender tests are not from female athletes but are from intersex athletes. Since intersex individuals are naturally stronger than normal females, it is deemed that intersex individuals who exceed a certain level of “masculinity” to be exempted from women’s game, no matter what sex the athlete thinks she belongs to.

While the participation of intersex individuals may not have much impact in men’s sports as it would in women’s sports, feminists consider it a discrimination to gender test only female athletes. Even though there have been instances of fellow female athletes questioning another athlete’s gender, many believe that a female athlete should not be ostracized for a congenital

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