As president of an organization with hundreds of members from around the world who are adults, children, and families living with diverse sex characteristics, I find this policy, and the interventions on young women that it leads to, distressing. For decades now, intersex adults have critiqued the medical necessity of cosmetically altering atypical genitals and the removing of healthy gonads—are sports officials aware of these challenges? Are they aware their policy promotes bodily shame, harms sexual satisfaction, and permanently takes away a women’s ability to have biological children? Athletes may have agreed to these irreversible procedures in order to compete, but were they fully informed of the potential harms? If my interactions with countless intersex women are any indication, I am deeply concerned that forcing unnecessary interventions on vulnerable women is a form of coercion. The powerful people behind this policy should revoke it.
Rapid Response:
Re: Sex, health, and athletes
As president of an organization with hundreds of members from around the world who are adults, children, and families living with diverse sex characteristics, I find this policy, and the interventions on young women that it leads to, distressing. For decades now, intersex adults have critiqued the medical necessity of cosmetically altering atypical genitals and the removing of healthy gonads—are sports officials aware of these challenges? Are they aware their policy promotes bodily shame, harms sexual satisfaction, and permanently takes away a women’s ability to have biological children? Athletes may have agreed to these irreversible procedures in order to compete, but were they fully informed of the potential harms? If my interactions with countless intersex women are any indication, I am deeply concerned that forcing unnecessary interventions on vulnerable women is a form of coercion. The powerful people behind this policy should revoke it.
Competing interests: No competing interests