All posts by Debbie

32 Centuries Together: The Hasanlu Lovers

We support a ceasefire in Palestine.

Two skeletons close together; th eone on the left is on its side, mouth and chin snuggled into the neck of the one on the right, lying on its back.

Debbie says:

Last month I came across this picture of the Hasanlu Lovers, two skeletons buried somewhere around 800 BC and excavated in 1973 in the West Azerbaijan province of Iran. The skeleton on the right, on his back, is indisputably male. The skeleton on the left, on his side, was originally considered to be female, despite a somewhat more female-shaped pelvis, and a male-shaped head. The video below makes a strong case that the pelvis may not be as female as originally analyzed and raises the oh-so-common question of whether the original identification was heterosexually biased. More recently, DNA testing has confirmed that both skeletons are, at the very least, genotypically male–i.e., they have XY chromosomes.

The Hasanlu lovers almost certainly died together when the citadel they were in was stormed. Their position has been termed “the oldest kiss in history.” I find it especially pleasing that this kiss was almost certainly between two men — though it’s also possible to think of the person on the left as what we now call “intersex,” which would perhaps be even more pleasing.

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Debbie has deleted her Twitter account. Follow her on Mastodon.

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Testosterone, Testing, and Terrible Decisions

We support a ceasefire in Palestine.

Imane Khelif

Laurie and Debbie say:

The testosterone police have been around in sports for many decades, and they are always most toxically active around the Olympics. This year, the athlete they wanted to make into a victim was Imane Khelif. Greg Beacham, writing for the AP Wire, says:

Khelif was assigned female at birth and it says so on her passport, which is the International Olympic Committee’s threshold for eligibility for boxing because of the rift between the sport’s governing body and the IOC.

Khelif is a formidable athlete with respected fighting skills, contending in top international events — including major amateur boxing tournaments over the past six years, such as the Tokyo Olympics. She’s won a few regional gold medals.

Her gender has only been questioned by an extremely dubious Russian sports policing body, which even the gender-obsessed International Olympic Committee despises. Nonetheless, her gold medal became a viral source of controversy with “experts” like J.K. Rowling and Megyn Kelly feeling fully qualified to dispute Khelif’s win and to describe her as “trans,” which is both inaccurate and dangerous, as being trans is illegal in Algeria.

Castor Semenya looking victorioous after a race
Castor Semenya

We have been writing about testosterone in sports since 2016, particularly here, here, and here. These articles generally focus on Dutee Chand (from India) and Castor Semenya (from South Africa). Here’s the brilliant Elizabeth Adetiba writing about Semenya in 2020:

Based on the tones of disgust used to discuss her physicality, one might think that Semenya is the only runner to ever possess a body that so greatly differed from everyone else’s in the field. It seems the sports world has forgotten the peculiarities of Ira Murchison’s stocky, 5’4 frame, which earned him both the nickname “Human Sputnik” and an Olympic gold medal in the 4×100. Or that world record-holder Usain Bolt was taller with longer legs than any of his competitors.

Unlike those men, Semenya’s body is often deemed unwanted and out of place, most notoriously by her sport’s governing body.

To be clear, none of Khelif, Semenya, Chand, and most of the other athletes in these stories are transgender. All of them are “women,” by which we mean that they were assigned female at birth, that they have always thought of themselves as women, that their birth certificates, their families, and their countries all see them as women. Only the mostly male, mostly white arbiters of the Olympics and other sports have the temerity and cruelty to question these simple identifications.

Christine Mboma, from Namibia, is one of the newer additions to the ranks of Semenya and Chand.

In 2021, the 18-year-old set an unratified world under-20 and African senior record of 48.54 s in the 400 metres, which made her the seventh-fastest woman of all time at the event. The mark was established in June, while Mboma had previously twice broken a world U20 record in April of that year.

Prior to the Tokyo Games, World Athletics had announced that Mboma and fellow Namibian sprinter Beatrice Masilingi would not be allowed to compete under the female classification in events between 400 metres and one mile due to its regulations on testosterone levels for athletes with XY disorders of sex development.

That unreasonable limitation was later extended to preventing Mboma from running at all unless she took testosterone reducing drugs, which she has elected to do rather than lose the discipline she loves.

An interesting contrast here is the late 1990s story of “male” athlete Chris Boardman.

In 1998 Tour de France, when the Tour began in Dublin, Ireland, Boardman won the prologue, but this time crashed out of the race on stage 2. In 1998 he was diagnosed with osteopenia due to low testosterone levels. Treatment to prevent a worsening of his condition would have required him to take testosterone, which is banned under anti-doping rules. The UCI refused to allow Boardman an exemption on medical grounds. Faced with either retiring to allow treatment for his osteoporosis, or continuing to cycle without taking testosterone, Boardman chose to continue in cycling untreated for a further two years, hoping to finish his career on a high note at the 2000 Summer Olympics.

Most of the victims of the ridiculous testosterone rulings are Black and Brown women, which makes Boardman’s case particularly interesting. Khelif, Semenya, Mboma, and so many others are punished for having naturally high testosterone. Boardman was punished for having naturally low testosterone. Just as Mboma has been forced to choose between taking medication she does not need or giving up running, Boardman was forced to choose between foregoing medicine he did need or giving up cycling.

Chris Boardman

The entire process is free of facts and data, and is simply powerful petty people exerting control over people who can do things the arbiters can’t do, like win medals. In an ideal world, testosterone levels would simply not be a factor in athletic competition, and everyone would acknowledge that there are no bright lines around gender and people should compete against the group most suited to their skill level. Until we reach that ideal world, however, we advocate for setting a single level of testosterone for people of all genders, and making no differentiation between unnaturally high testosterone in “women” and “men.”

For more on the whole sordid history and complex picture of gender in sports, check out our articles linked above, and also the CBC podcast series Tested, which brought Mboma to our attention. And thanks to Stef Schwartz for the Boardman story, which helps clarify just how inutterably stupid and cruel the entire testosterone-level standard game is.

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Debbie has deleted her Twitter account. Follow her on Mastodon.

Follow Laurie’s Pandemic Shadows photos on Instagram.

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