The foreign media questioned that China players dressed as women were flouting the 80-year history of gender identification.

Original: SME SME technology story

In the women’s 400-meter final of the national track and field competition last month, Liao Mengxue and Tong Zenghuan, two female players who swept the gold and silver medals, caused a heated discussion inside and outside the international sports circle-these two female players really look like male players.

In addition to appearance, Liao Mengxue’s voice is slightly low and neutral. So the public opinion is full of doubts. Are China female track and field athletes men? South Korean media even shouted "China sports has no gender", expressing strong opposition.

Liao Mengxue (left) and Tong Zenghuan (right)

In fact, the Chinese Athletics Association has come forward to confirm that the two athletes are indeed women. Just in May this year, they also participated in the international track and field league. How could they pass the test of such a major event by dressing up as women? Questioning is self-defeating.

In fact, to ensure fair and just international sports events, gender identification has been improved with the application of biomedicine and other technologies, and the method is not as simple as taking off pants to check physical characteristics. How to identify people with abnormal sex? Which gender should transgender people enter the competition? Everything is scientific, rigorous, fair and elegant.

However, some unscrupulous media make hasty judgments only on the appearance of TV screens, which not only hurts the dignity of athletes themselves, but also determines the scientific reforms and efforts made by international sports organizations for gender identification in the past century.

When it comes to gender identification, the first way that comes to mind should be to observe the gender characteristics of the body, and the same is true of gender identification in the earliest sports events. The athletes are arranged naked in groups, so that the appraiser can observe their physical characteristics with the naked eye.

As early as the 1936 Olympic Games, there appeared the same gender questioning as Liao Mengxue and Tong Zenghuan. In the women’s 100-meter track and field competition, American Helen Stephens won the championship. The second place in this competition, Stella Walsh from Poland, was defeated by her, and she questioned Helen’s true gender. Stella asked the IAFF to verify Helen’s gender.

Helen Stephens

This is the first time that athletes have been tested for gender in international sports events. The Olympic Committee identified Helen by visual inspection, that is, let her undress and check her gender characteristics. It turns out that Helen is indeed a woman, and Stella’s doubts are not valid.

Surprisingly, however, the whistleblower Stella herself is "gender ambiguous". At that time, the Olympic Committee only made a gender test for Helen, and obviously would not pay attention to Stella who seemed to be on the right side. It was not until Stella’s death 44 years later that the complete truth surfaced.

Stella was unfortunately robbed and shot by robbers, but her autopsy was shocking. It turns out that Stella has a tiny but nonfunctional male organ; However, the sex chromosome types displayed by her cells are also problematic, some of them carry XY chromosomes, and some of them have only one X chromosome, which indicates that the embryonic cells divide incorrectly and lead to mosaic. Instead of appearing in the women’s arena, it should be Stella.

Stella Walsh (right) congratulates Helen Stephens (left) on her victory.

In the same year’s Olympic Games, another German high jumper, Dora Rajan, also had gender doubts. At that time, she finished fourth in the women’s high jump. Two years later, she set a new record for the women’s high jump in another competition, but a few days later, she was accidentally exposed to gender issues. On the train back to Germany, someone reported that she was a man dressed as a woman.

When the police intervened in the investigation, it was discovered that Dora was mistaken for a girl by the midwife when she was born, and her family raised Dora as a girl since childhood. The reason lies in the strange physical characteristics of Dora’s hermaphroditism, and the sexual organs in this case can’t play their sexual functions. So in fact, Dora is not a woman or a man. She is bisexual.

In Dora’s mind, she belongs to women. So she can only hide her physical characteristics, avoid being naked, and participate in the competition as a woman. Until the embarrassing gender identity was revealed, all the medals she won were confiscated and her name was deleted from the record.

High jumper Dora Rajan

A series of gender disputes made the sports community aware of the controversy, so in 1966, IAAF added gender identification steps, and two years later, the International Olympic Committee followed suit. The athletes lined up naked in front of the doctor, who roughly identified the sex by naked eye.

Although the method is intuitive and simple, it also arouses people’s psychological antipathy and is criticized as uncivilized and immoral. When complex situations arise, it is difficult to make a judgment in gender identification.

The essential difference between men and women lies in the different sex chromosomes. Male’s XY and female’s XX chromosomes determine the different sexual characteristics of human beings. So in 1967, IAAF introduced chromosome test to identify sex, and a year later, the International Olympic Committee adopted the same method.

Chromosome test is simple, just take some tissue smears from athletes’ mouths, and then check whether there is Pasteurella bodies in them with a microscope. Pasteurella bodies are mammalian somatic nuclei. Except for one X chromosome, the other X chromosomes are condensed to form chromatids with a diameter of about 1 micron. This is actually the phenomenon that most chromatin is not synchronized during the cell division cycle.

There is only one X chromosome in male, so there is no Pasteurella in male nucleus. Women have two X chromosomes, so there is a Pasteurella corpuscle. After staining the chromosomes, Pasteurella bodies will show a deeper color, and the observation will be obvious.

A female with chromosome XX contains a Pasteurella corpuscle in her nucleus.

However, in the year when chromosome testing was introduced, a Polish female athlete could not pass gender identification. Her chromosome results showed "no Pasteurella", which means that "she" was judged to be male.

In fact, she is indeed a woman, only suffering from a rare Turner syndrome. This is a chromosomal abnormality disease, and the X chromosome is partially or completely missing, resulting in a chromosome composition of 44+X instead of 44+XX of ordinary people. Therefore, under the microscope, there will naturally be no Pasteurella bodies. Finally, following the appraisal results, the female athlete was banned from participating in the Olympic Games and professional sports competitions for life.

People gradually found that there are more and more blind spots in chromosome detection. Except for women with Turner’s syndrome, there is no abnormal situation of Pasteurella, but the male sex chromosome with Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome is XXY, but a Pasteurella can be detected. Athletes with androgen insensitivity contain XY sex chromosomes, but they can’t secrete androgen normally, and they are also rejected from the competition.

In 1992, the International Olympic Committee introduced PCR (polymerase chain reaction) detection method, which is more microscopic than chromosome detection at the gene level.

There is a sex-determining regional gene, SRY gene, on the Y chromosome. Although this gene is usually located on the Y chromosome, it will be transferred to the X chromosome in rare cases. In this way, even a fetus with a sex chromosome of XX will develop into a male; Similarly, if the SRY gene on the Y chromosome fails, the fetus with XY sex chromosome will also develop into a woman. This bypasses the chromosome abnormality and directly judges its subsequent expression according to the gene situation.

A large number of copies can be amplified within one hour by taking a small amount of DNA from the tested person. At this time, sex identification is completed only by detecting whether there is SRY gene on the sex chromosome. Because of its low price, simple and reliable steps, PCR identification method later became the mainstream identification method.

Electrophoretic PCR products showed that the band size of SRY gene was 254bp.

Almost all gender identification is aimed at male players mixed with female players, and they are screened out, because there is no woman who wants to challenge male opponents and stage the drama of eggs hitting stones. However, it is unfair for men to participate in women’s competitions, mainly because of the huge difference in testosterone content between normal men and women.

Testosterone is the main male hormone, and 90% of testosterone in men is secreted by leydig cells, which promotes the development of secondary characteristics such as the maturity of male sexual organs.

The essence of testosterone is actually to promote the synthesis of protein, so testosterone can also promote the growth of muscles and strength and enhance the maturity of bones, which is a great advantage for athletes.

South Africa’s 800-meter runner Caster Semenya, a woman with high testosterone content, was asked to receive hormone therapy.

In fact, women can also secrete testosterone. Although there are no testicles, ovarian interstitial cells and adrenal glands can also secrete a small amount, which is only about 1/10 of that of men.

To some extent, in the arena, androgen has become the "strength value" of athletes, and the value range of men is obviously higher than that of women. Therefore, people strongly resist men’s participation in women’s competitions.

And hormone detection has also become an auxiliary method in gender identification. In fact, it is more important as an identification means to test whether athletes take hormone drugs.

Testosterone is also the goal that men strive for in the gym, which has the function of building muscles.

So far, almost every appraisal method in sports field has defects. Only by integrating various identification methods can the rate of misjudgment be reduced.

In the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, the "Sex Identification Experimental Center" was established, which combined clinical, sex hormone, gene and chromosome detection methods for sex identification. A comprehensive gender identification method provides a fairer basis for the current international competition.

In fact, it is impossible for male players disguised as women to mix into women’s competitions under strict appraisal methods, and it is the gender abnormal groups except men and women who are really in an embarrassing position. From the point of view of sports competition, they should also have the right to participate in the competition. After identifying the gender, how to place these athletes has become a difficult problem.

Bruce Jenner, a male athlete, later became a woman.

In the process of constantly changing gender identification methods, it is just the abnormal gender who is the most difficult to accurately determine the gender. Their gender is vague, and some people clearly believe that they are women, but they can’t participate in women’s competitions.

In 2003, the International Olympic Committee formulated a consensus on gender classification in Stockholm, which opened a door to this group.

The consensus stipulates that bisexual or transgender people are allowed to participate in Olympic events. The condition is that sex hormone therapy and transsexual surgery are needed two years before the competition. That is to say, before the game, you can make it clear that you are a man or a woman through surgery, so you can pass gender identification and participate in the competition.

In 2016, the International Olympic Committee once again reached a consensus that transgender athletes who are not qualified for women’s competitions do not have to undergo sex-change surgery, and they can choose to participate in men’s competitions. After the reform, the consensus is more humanized, which no longer opposes gender as a gender situation with only men and women, and is more tolerant of transgender people.

As long as there is competitive sports, there is people’s yearning for fairness, which has led to the change of gender identification for nearly a century. At the same time, science and technology are constantly developing, which provides a fairer appraisal measure for sports events.

From this point of view, the question about Chinese female athletes at the beginning of the article is even more out of thin air. Instead of spending energy to incite doubts, we should try to add fair scientific and technological guarantee to exciting sports events.

Under the increasingly refined identification means, the problems in identification are no longer plagued by both male and female dimensions. The criterion of gender determination in sports field is fair competition, but if masculine face, gender characteristics, chromosomes and hormones can’t determine gender, what is the criterion of gender?

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Original title: "The foreign media questioned China’s players pretending to be women, which is simply a contempt for the 80-year history of gender identification! 》

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