Patrick Campbell
Many of the articles we have read this semester discuss the effect that gender plays in the construction of society. Anne Fausto Sterling believes that sex is socially constructed. Although the anatomy of a human is easily determined by visual means, Sterling believes that a persons gender is a socially determined matter. She presents her case by using her example of sexual testing in the Olympics. Although these people use medical testing to determine a person’s sex, I feel that believing more advance testing is needed to determine a person’s gender is a bit radical (if someone is a male or a female, they have known their whole life).
I may be seen as ignorant, however, I strictly believe that there is only two sexes (male or female), despite the few cases of gender challenged individuals such as transvestites. Although I have this belief of only two sexes the case involving the Spanish athlete Maria Patino really threw me for a loop. However, the banning of this athlete from competition was extremely immoral. I say this because, following he expulsion from female competition, what is she able to do next? This type of discriminatory competition is what has structure today’s society into the way it is now, patriarchal and very controlling of women. The fact that she has testes does not affect her muscular make up or her feminine build, she is still competing as a women. Therefore, this type of testing should be banned in athletic competition because as we see it can transform into a life destroyed. Furthermore, the destruction of someone’s life over the fact that modern day science can identify such minute differences amongst people which were not around during the onset of Olympic competition.
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