Rebecca Jordan-Young, author of the excellent book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (Harvard UP, 2010), has -- along with co-author Katrina Karkazis -- articles in the Guardian and in New Scientist on the IOC's terrible new sex test policy. (An open-access article in the Am J Bioethics is here; [UPDATE: an excellent point from the article: "It [the policy] also shows that female athletes have always been under suspicion, and women with intersex traits have often been scapegoats for broad anxiety about the gender contradiction inherent in the very concept of an elite female athlete."])
A key point of their argument is that women with high testosterone levels (there's a lot to talk about in that term "high" but let's leave that alone for now) do not necessarily outperform women with lower testosterone levels. They just look different. So, time for another photo essay, in the form of a quiz. Which of the women below provoked an international affair about sex testing? Which is the fastest? Photos and answers below the fold.
1. Maria Mutola: PR 1.55.19 (Olympic champion 2000; World champion 1993, 2001, 2003)
2. Caster Semenya: PR 1.55.45 (World champion 2009). See here for an excellent discussion.
3. Pamela Jelimo: PR 1.54.01 (Olympic champion 2008)
So Semenya is the slowest of the three, though she's the one who needed to be tested!
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