International Law

Ich Bin (finally) Ein Beijinger

By Stan

I haven’t been all that excited about the Olympics thus far, at least from a blogger’s perspective. Half of the stories are about the air quality, the rest are navel gazing articles written about the treatment of journalists (written by journalists). Boring.

This article makes it all worthwhile. I am now officially ecstatic that the Games are being held here in Beijing, just so I can blog about this:

Olympic host Beijing has set up a sex determination lab to test female Olympic athletes suspected to be males, state media reported Sunday.

Experts at the lab, located at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, will evaluate dubious cases based on their external appearance and take blood samples testing sex hormones, genes and chromosomes, Xinhua News Agency said.

Sex testing has been routine at the Olympics and other sports events for decades, triggered by fears that male athletes sought to cheat by posing as women.

Indian athlete Santhi Soundarajan was stripped of an Asian Games silver medal in 2006 after failing a gender verification test.

You can’t make this shit up.

By the way, why is it that they only test for the presence of she-males? They don’t think that a chick would try to pass herself off as a dude? Strikes me as a bit sexist.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on July 28, 2008 (boomark / email).