The Indispensable History of 'Sex Testing' in Sports

[LostOne4Ever]

The Indispensable History of 'Sex Testing' in Sports
Waters keeps the book focused on the 1930s, with the history told in such a way that it's crystal clear how it's relevant today. The moral panic over trans people in sports continues not to be about sports.
Tucker Lieberman
14 May 2024
[…]

Skepticism of athletes' sex at the 1936 Olympics
The Other Olympians is an early history of how sports officials in the 1930s began verifying the sex of athletes. It focuses on the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin while Hitler was in power.

[…]
The anti-trans purpose of sex testing
If we took literally the accusation of Cis Man in Disguise, cis men athletes would be the villains of that tale. But that’s a superficial understanding. The trope isn’t meant to be taken literally (especially as it’s based on something that doesn't happen). And indeed, no one does take it literally.

The trope is meant to be used transphobically. In the 1930s, as Waters shows in great detail, sports officials—especially those who were Nazi sympathizers—wanted everyone to worry about trans men and intersex athletes. The possibility of a trans woman athlete doesn't seem to have occurred to them. Today, when someone recites the Cis Man in Disguise trope to us, they want us to superimpose that fictional narrative onto the reality of trans women.

[…]

More at link:

https://genderidentitytoday.com/other-olympians/

[LostOne4Ever]

1. I also want to include this passage from the article:

Today, the same fallacy is also used to ban trans people from public bathrooms. The trope starts as Cis Man in Disguise for the Motive of Cheating to win a women's athletic gold medal, and it mutates to Cis Man in Disguise for the Motive of Preying on unsuspecting women in a bathroom. This trope never makes literal sense because, if you put yourself in the mindset of a fictional cis male villain, you realize the steps he'd have to carry out for his plan would be elaborate and bizarre and the cost-benefit analysis wouldn't work out in his favor. The trope is only comprehensible as transphobia; it's a cruel joke meant to forcibly out and socially isolate trans, intersex, and queer people.

Why this history is important today

The moral panic over trans people in sports continues not to be about sports. As in the early 20th century, most of the people today who make noise over trans people allegedly spoiling women’s sports aren’t doing anything to appreciate or fund women’s sports nor to support or elevate women athletes. Instead, they say quite a lot about excluding trans people from society broadly. Their moral panic over trans people in sports is primarily about their perception of trans people and what they’d like to do to us. They show it to us all the time.

Kind of funny I find this at the same time trans athletes is getting debated in general:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218955116

[MutantAndProud]

2. Thanks for this

I always ascribed it to Nazi gender distortions, and figured there was actual history behind it. Having any separation by gender in sports removes the ability to just see who the best is one at a time or to each their own lane. It’s not trial by combat or contact sports after all. And anyone behaving badly should just be kicked out regardless. There are a lot of old echoes of that terrible period in history and the world powers’ desire for supermen. The dysmorphia is everywhere these days because they didn’t execute or keep under arrest the Nazi scientists.