"Beauty confronts us with the requirement that we place ourselves among...the redeemers, the leaders in the protection of life. Once you have seen the bush on fire, you are not going to get out of the assignment unless you close your eyes to the beauty.... [You] either have to close your eyes or go back to Egypt and set the people free." - Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, "Rising to the Challenge of Our Times"

Sunday, August 03, 2008

More than the sum of our chromosomes

My first thought as I read this NY Times op-ed, "The XY Games" was resentment for the sexism behind the requirement that female athletes have to prove they are sufficiently female. As the author of the article points out, merely testing for the presence of a Y chromosome is inconclusive. It seems like the difficulty and scandal in screening out all the performance enhancing drugs and blood doping makes trying to figure out for sure who's genetically male or female not so relevant. The Greeks had an Olympic gender test too lest any girls try to sneak in. Change is a long time coming. If an athlete who knows inside he's male wants the gold so bad that he's willing to sacrifice his male privilege on the altar, goddess bless him.

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