Verifying the myth: olympic sex testing and the category “woman”

This paper interrogates the myth of a binary sex–gender system and its application to women through the practice of sex testing in international athletics. Sex testing—in which women athletes are evaluated to determine their suitability for competition as women—is premised upon the assumption that there are, and should be, two and only two forms of the human body—male and female. On the surface, it would appear that testing the sex of women competitors verifies the need for segregation and stratification of sex in athletic competition. Closer examination, however, reveals that the practice of sex testing actually makes visible both the constructedness of sex categories and the oppressiveness of their application.