Who are you?
I posed this question to myself and tried to answer it. The response was something like this- female, Indian, Kashimiri, ex-corporate executive now an entrepreneur…..Other things like age and characteristics followed. I then did a dip stick survey. I asked a few people the question: Who are you? Explain to an alien.
Their responses were interesting. Some people halted at defining their professions if they had changed track or were on a sabbatical. Others fumbled over their religion if they had parents from different religions. But no one doubted themselves at the first descriptor: their gender.
Most of us live in a convenient space where people are neatly divided under two, completely separate genders. While we know the issues of belonging to our gender, we have never given a thought to how it must be to have our gender under a scanner.
This is something Dutee Chand, 18, has been dealing with. And has had the biggest shocks of her life connected to. This June, she won two gold medals at the Junior Athletics Championships. She was set to compete in the IAAF and Commonwealth Games when on July 12 her world began to crumble. The doctor at the Sports Authority of India called her, conducted some tests over three days and told her, without giving any explanation, that she couldn’t compete. She first thought she may not have cleared the drugs tests. But she knew she had never taken any drugs.
What she didn’t know is that she had a condition medically known as hyperandrogenism. Due to this, she produces more of testosterone, the ‘male’ hormone, than the average woman. So she was barred from competing as a woman.
It would feel strange if your gender identity was questioned, even more if you were not allowed to do your work due to it. Interestingly, in science there isn’t even one marker that conclusively separates male from female. Every woman produces male hormones, men produce female hormones. The gender as we recognise is a blend of many factors in many nuances. Let’s say, there’s no litmus test for defining a person’s gender. Most of us fall in the range where we ‘appear’ like men or women to everyone else. But in sports this is put under the scanner quite intrusively.
Does an unclear, gender-specific appearance of a person make us judge them beyond their work and behaviour?
Do leave behind your answer.
I posed this question to myself and tried to answer it. The response was something like this- female, Indian, Kashimiri, ex-corporate executive now an entrepreneur…..Other things like age and characteristics followed. I then did a dip stick survey. I asked a few people the question: Who are you? Explain to an alien.
Their responses were interesting. Some people halted at defining their professions if they had changed track or were on a sabbatical. Others fumbled over their religion if they had parents from different religions. But no one doubted themselves at the first descriptor: their gender.
Most of us live in a convenient space where people are neatly divided under two, completely separate genders. While we know the issues of belonging to our gender, we have never given a thought to how it must be to have our gender under a scanner.
This is something Dutee Chand, 18, has been dealing with. And has had the biggest shocks of her life connected to. This June, she won two gold medals at the Junior Athletics Championships. She was set to compete in the IAAF and Commonwealth Games when on July 12 her world began to crumble. The doctor at the Sports Authority of India called her, conducted some tests over three days and told her, without giving any explanation, that she couldn’t compete. She first thought she may not have cleared the drugs tests. But she knew she had never taken any drugs.
What she didn’t know is that she had a condition medically known as hyperandrogenism. Due to this, she produces more of testosterone, the ‘male’ hormone, than the average woman. So she was barred from competing as a woman.
It would feel strange if your gender identity was questioned, even more if you were not allowed to do your work due to it. Interestingly, in science there isn’t even one marker that conclusively separates male from female. Every woman produces male hormones, men produce female hormones. The gender as we recognise is a blend of many factors in many nuances. Let’s say, there’s no litmus test for defining a person’s gender. Most of us fall in the range where we ‘appear’ like men or women to everyone else. But in sports this is put under the scanner quite intrusively.
Does an unclear, gender-specific appearance of a person make us judge them beyond their work and behaviour?
Do leave behind your answer.
This is an interesting topic to discuss. How much ever we may say, we do base our understanding- if not judgment- of a a person on his appearance. While we react to features to varying degrees, a reaction to 'male looking' woman or a 'female-looking' man is definitely there. This post gives a lot of food for thought.
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