A Feel For Women
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday August 8, 1996
Hard as it may be for sports lovers to comprehend, there are those among us who find the Olympics about as interesting as a blocked nose. We don't care whether Chad's synchronised swimming team is suspected of using performance-enhancing mascaras after suddenly doubling its triple-front tub times. We don't give a tinker's cuss whether prosthetic quads and skin-tight daks should be outlawed in the weightlifting fraternity. And what business is it of ours if Big Mikey Diamond once did time behind the counter of the Fish 'n' Shoot gun shop in Goulburn?
However, even passionate anti-sportswomen such as myself, even those of us who weren't converted by the saucy skins on display in black + white magazine's sealed Atlanta Dream edition, must stand up and be counted on the sore point of gender testing.
Since 1968, our wacky Olympians have had to undergo chromosomal tests in order to prove their most intimate credentials - usually via the celebrated Buccal oral smear (also a hot favourite in suburban partner-swapping circles).
The International Amateur Athletic Federation ditched the smear in 1990 after a number of hilarious stuff-ups, such as the thigh-slapping time a Spanish competitor who had previously given birth tested male. The official technique is now to have a bit of a perve during urine collections, but the International Olympic Committee still requires rigorous sex testing which can take - get this - several days to obtain a result.
Needless to say, despite the fact that we live in a post- feminist society in which Australian women can now earn a big 83 per cent of the average male weekly wage, it is clear that the "gender test" is really an Olympian euphemism for the "are you a chick test".
Call me a sportless bimboid, but any woman caught participating in deceptive transvestism in order to compete against blokes in sporting events should be made to sit an "are you stuffed in the head test", not a chromosomal smear. (Not that they wouldn't have equal chances of winning. But what do stick-on back hairs tell you about the soundness of a pole vaulter's mental state?)
Clearly, what's required is a new method of rooting out the men from the women. Something fast and non-staining that turns up a simple pink for yes or blue for no in the privacy of your own bathroom/locker room/public stadium.
After all, there are plenty of non-Olympic situations where an easy-to-use, over-the-counter sex test would come in handy. Dates. Applications for quiz show assistants. Newtown's Lesbian Space Project. Bikini beauty pageants. Not to mention the chance to put an end to the niggling personal doubts so many of us experience about our gender direction.
So. Where to start? One obvious choice would be to extend the IAAF's "quick visual" to a "quick visual, plus quick feel". But, while finding skilled testers would be easy enough, the method is hardly scientifically sound and could result in a number of unsporting incidents and lewd delays.
Compulsory streaking during the opening ceremonies? Wolf-whistle tests outside building sites? Psychological quizzes? [Food is a) my enemy, b) only slightly less dangerous than the thing Ripley gave birth to in Alien III, or, c) something you buy chicks in exchange for a rug dance.]
Uh-uh. The only way to know for sure about those girls with the ultra-broad shoulders in the Chinese ballroom dance team, the only guaranteed way to sort the men from the women is to say: Right, then. You reckon you're a chick? Let's see you live the rest of your life as one. Let's see how you deal with the mood swings and the underarm waxes and the bad come-on lines from other blokes and the dumb little cars and the irregular menstrual cycles and the constant pressure to maintain alert breasts.
Sound impractical? Sound time consuming? Wrong. The fake women won't last five minutes. The mere thought of that 17 per cent wage cut will flush them back to their own locker rooms before you can say, "I always thought gender was a social construct, anyway".
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald
