Gender Failure Essay

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Recommended: Professional sports gender equality

This article discusses the current and and historical way that female identifying athletes have been allowed or barred from participating in their sport. It mainly focuses on the olympics with a focus on the runner named Caster Semenya. Semenya identifies as a woman, but because of the discriminatory history and current state of the division of male and female athletes she has been blocked from competing until recently. This is because she has intersex characteristics.
The history and treatment of these athletes are best summed up by quote that the “..rules still boiled down to measured manliness..”. The article correctly points out that the rules and divisions that have been created are based upon a reflection of manliness, and therefore …show more content…

While men do tend to perform differently than women in sports, the stories of the people in this article move beyond scientific observations and into the realm of the painful, and very real results of the gender binary. In Gender Failure two artists open up their hearts about the pain they have suffered for having “incorrect” anatomy, or feeling like they never fit into their gender. The artists write about the pain and fear they experienced throughout their lives that have resulted in them never undressing in front of others, or being asked extremely personal questions about their genitalia. The Caster Semenya article is very thorough, but does not talk about the emotional pain the athletes may have experienced. Unfortunately, it is an easy guess that it could have been very scarring and extremely painful. These athletes worked exceptionally hard for their entire lives, then were singled out, and told they are not allowed to participate because their physical appearance has to be a horrendous experience. Especially when the people who hold the power are basing their exclusions off of science that has very little evidence behind it. Hopefully, these women have not developed deep wounds like the ones shared in gender failure.
It is clear that these women are being failed. The men are not experiencing

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