Four female athletes were required to undergo "partial clitorectomies" and gonadectomies (removal of gonads) as a result of the current gender-policing polices of major sports governing bodies, according to an article published this week in the British Medical Journal.
The article, co-written by Stanford bioethicist Katrina Karkazis, PhD, raises concerns that new policies that use testosterone testing to determine eligibility for elite female athletes accused of having “male-like attributes” have resulted in unnecessary interventions that are both "invasive and irreversible." The paper was timed to coincide with an editorial that she and Barnard College's Rebecca Jordan-Young, PhD, wrote for the New York Times, which was previously discussed here.
Karkazis told me that both the journal article and the editorial were written in response to a case study published last year in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism by physicians who conducted the medical procedures on the four female athletes. The athletes, ages 18-21 and all from developing countries, had tested high for naturally occurring testosterone levels. Their identities remain confidential, but the physicians who performed the surgeries and wrote the report acknowledged that there was no medical need for the procedures, which have been used as treatments for intersex conditions. Karkazis and colleagues argue that not only is there no medical benefit to such procedures, they also make no difference to athletic ability. From the journal article:
Clitoridectomy is not medically indicated, does not relate to real or perceived athletic “advantage,” and is beyond the policies’ mandate. Moreover, this technique is long eschewed because it has poor cosmetic outcomes and damages sexual sensation and function. Clitoral surgery should have no role in interventions undertaken for athletes’ eligibility or health.
Karkazis and her colleagues go on to refute the logic of using testosterone level testing in women as grounds for exclusion from competition as having no scientific grounds, and quote sports officials as saying that female athletes with unusually high naturally occurring testosterone levels have no more competitive advantage that other elite athletes. Karkazis and Jordan-Young wrote in the Times:
Sports officials (the report does not identify their governing-body affiliation) sent the young women to a medical center in France, where they were put through examinations that included blood tests, genital inspections, magnetic resonance imaging, X-rays and psychosexual history... Since the athletes were all born as girls but also had internal testes that produce unusually high levels of testosterone for a woman, doctors proposed removing the women’s gonads and partially removing their clitorises. All four agreed to undergo both procedures; a year later, they were allowed to return to competition.
Quite simply, these young female athletes were required to have drastic, unnecessary and irreversible medical interventions if they wished to continue in their sports.
Previously: Arguing against sex testing in athletes, Is the International Olympic Committee's policy governing sex verification fair? and Researchers challenge proposed testosterone testing in select female Olympic athletes
