Athletic Gender
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ATHLETIC GENDER
JOANNA HARPER*
I
INTRODUCTION
For most of humanity's existence, sport meant men's sport. From the ancient
Olympics up through the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, women faced
many cultural obstacles to sport success.' For instance, it was not until the 1928
Olympic Games that women were first allowed to participate in track and field,
the signature sport of the games.' And it was not until much later in the twentieth
century that women began to achieve some semblance of equality within the
sporting world through federal legislation.'
The creation of a separate category for female athletes inevitably leads to a
fundamental conundrum-precisely who should be allowed to compete in
women's sports?
To some, the answer to this question would seem self-evident, but in reality,
biology does not neatly divide human beings into two sexes. Accordingly, there
are two main groups of people who fall outside of the binary division that most
people have not historically considered: intersex and transgender people.
Intersex people-the term used by the Organisation Intersex International'
and other organizations run by and for intersex people-have chromosomal or
physical conditions that blur the line separating men from women. Intersex
conditions are often referred to as DSDs, an abbreviation that can stand for
Disorders of Sexual Development or Differences of Sexual Development.
Transgender people can be defined as those whose gender identity-an innate
sense of whether one is male, female or somewhere in between-differs from
Copyright D 2018 Joanna Harper.
This article is also available online at http://lcp.law.duke.edu/.
*Chief Medical Physicist, Providence Portland Medical Center, Portland, Oregon. I would like to thank
Doriane Coleman for inviting me to contribute this article.
1. Richard C. Bell, A History of Women in Sport Prior to Title IX SPORT J. (Mar. 14, 2008),
http://thesportjournal.org/article/a-history-of-women-in-sport-prior-to-title-ix/ [https://perma.cc/3AND-
4NL4].
2. DAVID J. EPSTEIN, THE SPORTS GENE: INSIDE THE SCIENCE OF EXTRAORDINARY ATHLETIC
PERFORMANCE 60 (2013).
3. See Title IX Legislative Chronology, WOMEN'S SPORTS FOUND. (Sept. 13, 2011),
https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocate/title-ix-issues/history-title-ix/history-title-ix
[https://perma.cc/S23N-36F8] (Title IX of the Education Amendments is enacted by Congress and is
signed into law by Richard Nixon... . Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program
or activity receiving any type of federal financial aid.).
4. Despite the fact that the Organisation Intersex International and other groups use the term
intersex, there is no universal agreement on the correct term for such people.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/lcp80&div=45&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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