 "Fighting for the Body with which she Was Born")
Dutee Chand loves her body just the way it is. She loves her long, dark hair and the toned biceps. As a young teenager, she was dismayed that her body lacked curves, but now, at 18, she loves that, too. She believes that the body she was born with - every chromosome, cell and organ - makes her the woman she is. But to compete internationally as a female sprinter, that is not enough.
Last summer, Chand, India's 100-metre champion in the 18-and-under category, was barred from competing against women. She has a condition called hyperandrogenism, and her body produces levels of testosterone so high that they place her in the male range in the eyes of international track and field.
Her response? No way. "I feel that it's wrong to have to change your body for sport participation," she said last month. "I'm not changing for anyone."
In a landmark move, Chand is fighting her ban. Last month, she filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, challenging guidelines put in place in 2011 by the International Association of Athletics Federations, or IAAF. The International Olympic Committee has a similar rule that stipulates the organisation's criteria for determining eligibility to participate in women's competitions.
Chand's case is not the first to contest traditional ideas about identity, ability and competitive fairness in sports. In 2009, the South African runner Caster Semenya was barred and then reinstated, but only after she was forced to undergo humiliating gender testing. But Chand's case is potentially more troubling. Aside from hormone-suppressing drugs or an operation, her alternative is to hang up her spikes.
"It's like when they used to cut off the hand of people caught stealing," Chand says of the idea of medically altering her body. It has taken a lot of courage for Chand to stand up for herself; other athletes with her condition have quietly consented to surgery or left sports altogether. But Chand says she is willing to handle the scrutiny that has come with her public stand. "I cried for three straight days after reading what people were saying about me," she says, regarding what she saw being debated on Internet forums. "They were saying, 'Dutee: Boy or girl?' and I thought, how can you say those things? I have always been a girl."
Chand's situation has highlighted one of the most perplexing issues facing sports and society: that there is no indisputable way to draw a line between male and female when most competitions have only two categories - one for men and the other for women. Olympic sports have chosen to set a limit on testosterone to distinguish the two. Unfortunately, that standard leaves a woman like Chand on the outside looking in.
Arne Ljungqvist, the longtime chairman of IOC's medical commission, said a hyperandrogenism policy was necessary because Olympic sports have an overrepresentation of athletes with both male and female anatomical characteristics. One recent study on women competing at the 2011 track and field world championships found that seven in 1,000 elite track and field athletes had hyperandrogenism and some blend of male and female anatomical characteristics. That's 140 times more than expected in the general population.
"People who say, 'This is nothing; we don't need this rule,' don't know sports or are at some distance from sport," Ljungqvist says. IOC chose testosterone as a way to differentiate men from women because it is known to increase strength and muscle mass, and to help bodies recover from workouts.
The study from the 2011 world championships says testosterone levels for women in the 99th percentile were 3.08 nanomoles per litre, which is markedly lower than the 10 nanomoles per litre that IAAF has set as the lower end for the male range. Chand's testosterone crosses that lower limit for men. But her supporters say testosterone should not be used as a gauge, because there has been no scientific proof that it alone conveys an athletic advantage, especially when that testosterone is naturally produced. Critics say that such proof is impossible because giving athletes testosterone to study its effects would be unethical.
Chand has a simpler take. "If you make an elephant run, can that elephant run fast, even though he has a lot of strength?" she said. "Not necessarily. It's all about training."
The case is likely to take months to decide. Chand will remain in limbo, worried that her childhood dream will permanently derail. The daughter of weavers who make about Rs 500 a week, Chand was about four when she started tagging along with her elder sister, one of her six siblings, for workouts on a local track. By the time she was 10, she was living three hours from home and training in a national programme, thrilled that she could send her prize money to her family. With her financial help, her parents eventually moved out of their two-room, no-toilet mud hut into a four-room house.
She was an Olympic hopeful on India's roster for the Commonwealth Games in July when she was pulled from the team at the last minute. The Sports Authority of India, or SAI, at the request of the Athletics Federation of India, arranged for her to be given medical exams. Doctors poked and prodded her, took her blood, visually examined her body and sent her for a magnetic resonance imaging exam, so they could get a clear picture of her insides. "I was told that something wasn't right in my body, and that it might keep me from playing sports," she says.
A newspaper reporter called Payoshni Mitra, a researcher and activist on gender and sports, for comment about the case. Mitra tracked down Chand's contact information and took an eight-hour train ride to visit her and explain what was happening to her. Mitra urged Chand not to consent to drugs or surgery too soon, and suggested she appeal her case. "The sports officials who make these rules have no idea who they are stopping from competing," Mitra says.
Katrina Karkazis, a senior research scholar in bioethics at Stanford, has been working with Mitra on Chand's case. With other supporters of Chand, they persuaded SAI to back Chand's appeal. Most important, they have probably spared Chand untold pain.
Others have not been as fortunate. Four female athletes at the 2012 London Olympics were flagged under the high testosterone rule. Those athletes, who were 18 to 21 and from rural regions in developing countries, were whisked to a clinic in France for evaluations. All were found to have a mix of male and female anatomical features and ended up having surgery to remove their testes.
A study published last year reported that those athletes also had medical procedures that had nothing to do with lowering their testosterone levels for sports: a reduction to the size of their clitorises, feminising plastic surgery and estrogen replacement therapy.
"We don't know what was said to these women, maybe, 'You're not a woman until you have all of this done.'" She adds, "At least this time we got to the athlete before any interventions were done, and we've spared one person from that colonial mentality."
Ljungqvist says he was shocked to hear of the cases because surgical intervention is not in the hyperandrogenism policy rules. This is why all sides should welcome a hearing conducted by an independent body like the Court of Arbitration for Sport. At the very least, the hyperandrogenism policy will be debated openly in court, before other athletes find themselves entangled in the rule and its potentially agonising consequences.
But the court also needs to determine if there is a place for athletes like Chand in Olympic sports. And whatever the answer is, can it ever be fair?
Chand is not concerned with the politics of it all. Her coaches back home have been encouraging her to agree to have surgery so that she can return to competition. She says she always answers: "Why surgery? I'm not sick!" She says she was drawn to athletic competition because it offered a good option to getting married and having a family. "When girls play a sport, they are treated equally, so society becomes more equal," she says.
If her appeal to the sports arbitration court is rejected, Chand will pursue coaching, she says, because she loves the sport so much. But she is not giving up yet. Two weeks ago, Mitra showed Chand the documentary, Too Fast to Be a Woman?, about Semenya. Chand was overwhelmed. "Look, I'm not alone," she says. "There are other people like me."
Last summer, Chand, India's 100-metre champion in the 18-and-under category, was barred from competing against women. She has a condition called hyperandrogenism, and her body produces levels of testosterone so high that they place her in the male range in the eyes of international track and field.
Her response? No way. "I feel that it's wrong to have to change your body for sport participation," she said last month. "I'm not changing for anyone."
In a landmark move, Chand is fighting her ban. Last month, she filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, challenging guidelines put in place in 2011 by the International Association of Athletics Federations, or IAAF. The International Olympic Committee has a similar rule that stipulates the organisation's criteria for determining eligibility to participate in women's competitions.
Chand's case is not the first to contest traditional ideas about identity, ability and competitive fairness in sports. In 2009, the South African runner Caster Semenya was barred and then reinstated, but only after she was forced to undergo humiliating gender testing. But Chand's case is potentially more troubling. Aside from hormone-suppressing drugs or an operation, her alternative is to hang up her spikes.
"It's like when they used to cut off the hand of people caught stealing," Chand says of the idea of medically altering her body. It has taken a lot of courage for Chand to stand up for herself; other athletes with her condition have quietly consented to surgery or left sports altogether. But Chand says she is willing to handle the scrutiny that has come with her public stand. "I cried for three straight days after reading what people were saying about me," she says, regarding what she saw being debated on Internet forums. "They were saying, 'Dutee: Boy or girl?' and I thought, how can you say those things? I have always been a girl."
Chand's situation has highlighted one of the most perplexing issues facing sports and society: that there is no indisputable way to draw a line between male and female when most competitions have only two categories - one for men and the other for women. Olympic sports have chosen to set a limit on testosterone to distinguish the two. Unfortunately, that standard leaves a woman like Chand on the outside looking in.
Arne Ljungqvist, the longtime chairman of IOC's medical commission, said a hyperandrogenism policy was necessary because Olympic sports have an overrepresentation of athletes with both male and female anatomical characteristics. One recent study on women competing at the 2011 track and field world championships found that seven in 1,000 elite track and field athletes had hyperandrogenism and some blend of male and female anatomical characteristics. That's 140 times more than expected in the general population.
"People who say, 'This is nothing; we don't need this rule,' don't know sports or are at some distance from sport," Ljungqvist says. IOC chose testosterone as a way to differentiate men from women because it is known to increase strength and muscle mass, and to help bodies recover from workouts.
The study from the 2011 world championships says testosterone levels for women in the 99th percentile were 3.08 nanomoles per litre, which is markedly lower than the 10 nanomoles per litre that IAAF has set as the lower end for the male range. Chand's testosterone crosses that lower limit for men. But her supporters say testosterone should not be used as a gauge, because there has been no scientific proof that it alone conveys an athletic advantage, especially when that testosterone is naturally produced. Critics say that such proof is impossible because giving athletes testosterone to study its effects would be unethical.
Chand has a simpler take. "If you make an elephant run, can that elephant run fast, even though he has a lot of strength?" she said. "Not necessarily. It's all about training."
The case is likely to take months to decide. Chand will remain in limbo, worried that her childhood dream will permanently derail. The daughter of weavers who make about Rs 500 a week, Chand was about four when she started tagging along with her elder sister, one of her six siblings, for workouts on a local track. By the time she was 10, she was living three hours from home and training in a national programme, thrilled that she could send her prize money to her family. With her financial help, her parents eventually moved out of their two-room, no-toilet mud hut into a four-room house.
She was an Olympic hopeful on India's roster for the Commonwealth Games in July when she was pulled from the team at the last minute. The Sports Authority of India, or SAI, at the request of the Athletics Federation of India, arranged for her to be given medical exams. Doctors poked and prodded her, took her blood, visually examined her body and sent her for a magnetic resonance imaging exam, so they could get a clear picture of her insides. "I was told that something wasn't right in my body, and that it might keep me from playing sports," she says.
A newspaper reporter called Payoshni Mitra, a researcher and activist on gender and sports, for comment about the case. Mitra tracked down Chand's contact information and took an eight-hour train ride to visit her and explain what was happening to her. Mitra urged Chand not to consent to drugs or surgery too soon, and suggested she appeal her case. "The sports officials who make these rules have no idea who they are stopping from competing," Mitra says.
Katrina Karkazis, a senior research scholar in bioethics at Stanford, has been working with Mitra on Chand's case. With other supporters of Chand, they persuaded SAI to back Chand's appeal. Most important, they have probably spared Chand untold pain.
Others have not been as fortunate. Four female athletes at the 2012 London Olympics were flagged under the high testosterone rule. Those athletes, who were 18 to 21 and from rural regions in developing countries, were whisked to a clinic in France for evaluations. All were found to have a mix of male and female anatomical features and ended up having surgery to remove their testes.
A study published last year reported that those athletes also had medical procedures that had nothing to do with lowering their testosterone levels for sports: a reduction to the size of their clitorises, feminising plastic surgery and estrogen replacement therapy.
"We don't know what was said to these women, maybe, 'You're not a woman until you have all of this done.'" She adds, "At least this time we got to the athlete before any interventions were done, and we've spared one person from that colonial mentality."
Ljungqvist says he was shocked to hear of the cases because surgical intervention is not in the hyperandrogenism policy rules. This is why all sides should welcome a hearing conducted by an independent body like the Court of Arbitration for Sport. At the very least, the hyperandrogenism policy will be debated openly in court, before other athletes find themselves entangled in the rule and its potentially agonising consequences.
But the court also needs to determine if there is a place for athletes like Chand in Olympic sports. And whatever the answer is, can it ever be fair?
Chand is not concerned with the politics of it all. Her coaches back home have been encouraging her to agree to have surgery so that she can return to competition. She says she always answers: "Why surgery? I'm not sick!" She says she was drawn to athletic competition because it offered a good option to getting married and having a family. "When girls play a sport, they are treated equally, so society becomes more equal," she says.
If her appeal to the sports arbitration court is rejected, Chand will pursue coaching, she says, because she loves the sport so much. But she is not giving up yet. Two weeks ago, Mitra showed Chand the documentary, Too Fast to Be a Woman?, about Semenya. Chand was overwhelmed. "Look, I'm not alone," she says. "There are other people like me."
© 2014 The New York Times