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PART III Competing Bodies: Physiological, Biological and Psychological Issues Part III looks deep into the body to ask the most basic of questions: what is the difference between a female body and a male body? A question that at first glance appears obvious turns out to be surprisingly complicated, as shown by Alison Carlson’s history of sex tests required of female Olympic competitors and Ann Crittenden’s exploration of the narrowing gap between male and female athletic performance. By testing for chromosome patterns, a test designed to verify a woman’s genetic status as a female, the assumed dichotomy between XX females and XY males is refuted by findings that there are multiple chromosomal (and hormonal) patterns. Many scientists claim that there is no such thing as a clearcut definition that separates biological females from males, arguing that sex is socially determined, much as gender is (a topic explored in Part II). The Olympic sex tests, administered ostensibly to weed out any potential male “cheaters” passing as women—and thus not given to competitors in men’s events—in the end destabilizes the very notion of two separate and irrefutable biological sexes. The implicit question, then, is what difference does sex make in sports? Again, we find evidence of a range of answers: few Olympic spectators find it strange that men and women compete against each other in equestrian events, but the IOC is unlikely to introduce mixed-sex boxing anytime soon. For the vast majority of people with a female sex assignment who are raised as girls and who identify and compete as women, however, there are legitimate scienti fic questions to be asked about female bodies in competition. The relationship between sport and menstruation, for example, has long been a subject of scientific study, pseudo-scientific myth, and social controversy. Irene McCormick’s essay, “Understanding the Female Athlete Triad,” explains the important role menstruation plays in the health of adult women and how the intensive pursuit of high levels of fitness in a woman’s early years can affect her health in later life. Studies of the kinds and rates of athletic injuries found in women’s sports, and how they compare with those in men’s sports, have been an important addition to the fields 102 WOMEN AND SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES of physiology and kinesiology, as evidenced by Maureen Madden’s article on ACL injuries (which hobble female athletes far more often than male athletes). The short statistical article that classifies catastrophic injuries in female athletes by sport provides sobering evidence of what can happen when athletes—male or female —are not properly trained in safety techniques as their sport becomes more demanding. Cheerleading, long denied the honor of the title sport, has over the past twenty-five years evolved into an activity far beyond the waving of pompoms , as we can see both here and in Emily Badger’s related article in Part VII. The question of who deserves the title athlete arises as well when women with disabilities engage in sports and fitness training. Disabled women’s insistence that they are talented athletes equally entitled to compete suggests that commonplace notions of what makes an athletic body, or more generally an able or a disabled body, need reconsideration. In their article, “Women, Disability, and Sport and Physical Fitness Activity,” Elaine M. Blinde and Sarah G. McCallister show that their subjects make self-conscious decisions to engage in athletic activity for its psychological and physical benefits. No exploration of biological imperatives and athletic performance would be complete without a look at the ways in which the female body can be nudged toward physiological indicators of maleness and improved performance levels through the use of anabolic steroids. Although the most notorious case of steroid use in women’s athletic competition occurred at the 1976 Olympics, where the East German women’s swim team with the help of Oral-Turinabol claimed eleven gold medals and set astounding new records, any female athlete at any level of competition who wants to improve her performance dramatically is open to the steroid temptation. Weightlifter Tam Thompson’s account of her brush with anabolic steroid use, as chronicled by Terry Todd, neatly explains both the great rewards and the high price of steroid use. The latter portion of Part III focuses on positive and negative psychological dimensions of sport, ways that athletic competition can increase self-confidence and self-esteem or, quite the...

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