Photo/Illutration The Olympic rings are seen on the Eiffel Tower in Paris on July 20 ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. (REUTERS)

Eighty-eight years ago, a leading British track and field athlete was issued a certificate by a doctor stating, “This is to certify that Mr. Mark Weston, who has always been brought up as a female, is a male, and should continue life as such.”

Weston (1905-1978), who was assigned a female sex at birth, identified as male and underwent sex-reassignment surgeries in 1936.

He reportedly said the certificate was the closest thing he had to an accurate identity document.

“The Other Olympians” by Michael Waters, which was published last month in the United States and elsewhere, traces the history of sports and gender through extensive documents. By reading the book, I learned, for the first time, that athletes grappling with gender dysphoria existed nearly a century ago.

According to the book, the stories of Weston and others who publicly changed their genders were widely reported in the West and made the International Olympic Committee feel the urgent need to take action in response.

The book depicts how the IOC decided to introduce sex testing in subsequent Olympics and the process by which the IOC and sporting bodies formed their own definition of “femininity.”

The author criticizes these organizations’ attempts to draw a firm delineation between “male” and “female,” starting with bodily examinations and moving to chromosome tests and eventually to measuring levels of testosterone, a male sex hormone.

The author contends that sex testing does not exist to ensure “fairness” in sports competitions, but rather to lend credibility to the rigid separation between men’s and women’s sports and allows athletic organizations to push out transgender and other sexual minority athletes.

I thought everyone should be able to compete as they truly are, but I wondered how this principle can be reconciled with fairness. Then, the book made me realize that I was caught in thinking about the issue only through the lens of binary gender.

As for the upcoming Paris Olympics, some foreign athletes had to give up their participation due to the IOC’s definitions of male and female.

Amid a growing global trend toward placing importance on gender diversity, the traditional approach based on binary assumptions of sex in sports seems to be reaching its limits.

—The Asahi Shimbun, July 21

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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