Trannies Make the Olympics

The International Olympic Committee ruled that post-operative transsexuals can compete in the Olympics, provided a long set of criteria have been met. This is a really interesting issue-- and transsexuals have been trying to get people to recognize them as a group deserving of equal rights, instead of the butt of jokes, for many years. In grad school, one of my favorite books was Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein.

One of the issues brought up by the news story above was that women who were formerly men might have an advantage in a sports competition over "natural born" women. I hadn't thought of that one, and I wonder if it would be really a consideration at all. Do the hormones that transsexuals take to become female change their body chemistry enough that they would have corresponding changes in physical strength? Transsexuals are not men in drag-- they have significant changes in their bodies, and many of them looked very slight and petite for men in the first place (part of their reasons for changing is often that they feel they were born in the wrong body.)

This isn't intended as a jokey entry-- I'm actually sort of interested in how this will play out. Would team members know a woman used to be a man? Are there a bunch of transsexual athletes out there? Obviously, if the committee had to make a rule on it, there's at least one who has been agitating to compete. Do people with more expertise on the human body out there than me have opinions on this? Biology, folks? Seriously. Tell me what you think.

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On a less serious note, later today I'm going to drop off all the film for events in the last month that I've promised to post pictures for. I'm going to get a "photo disc" for them since my scanner is also currently out of commission. So any good ones I'll post here soon. But I do have a ton of work to do this week-- I need to publish my women writers zine (my goddess of a Co-editor has been working an amazing amount to get us 30-something book reviews for this issue.) And this weekend I'm going to my niece's high school graduation in Mississippi. And at some point today, I need to figure out the code to put up the old comments system. I hate getting "anonymous" posts-- I want to KNOW my fans. :) So I'm going to be busier than a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest today.

Let the butt kicking begin!!