Leaky Bodies and the Stickiness of Testosterone in Women's Athletics

This article argues for a critical re-evaluation of anti-doping testing practices in international athletics, performed by The International Olympic Committee and World Athletics, as overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency. By carefully analysing anti-doping testing procedures and data taking, the conceptions of the body, with its multiplicity and sticky properties of testosterone become evident, revealing obscured connections between anti-doping and sex testing practices. Using a biopolitical framework, I trace the ways anxieties over gender, athletic ability, and race shape molecular level testing mechanisms, constructing and de-constructing the body in the process. This article draws on New Materialist theories and Feminist Science and Technology Studies scholarship, including: Anne Fausto-Sterling’s history of hormones; Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘sticking’; Annemarie Mol’s ‘the body multiple’; Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis’s work on testosterone; and Margrit Shildrick’s theory of ‘leaky bodies’ to argue that the racialised and gendered history of testosterone continue to linger on in the ways this hormone is tested and regulated in women’s athletics. This biopolitical system of surveillance in international sports is founded on an ideal of the body as autonomous, whole, and classifiable within a sexed binary. Yet, there is a distinct tension between this understanding of the body and the ways testing is executed, which relies on leaks, extractions, dissections, and manipulations of the athlete’s bodily substances to in order to discipline it into normalising categories of sex.

“I Have a Vision, Charlie Brown”

From the very beginning, Schulz was an advocate for strong, independent females. Characters like Lucy and Peppermint Patty refused to be defined or dominated by the boys, whether in social interactions, school, or sports. Lucy became a vocal supporter of women’s liberation. These characters became important popular symbols for the burgeoning feminist movement in Cold War America. Peppermint Patty and Marcie, because of their unique relationship, became powerful symbols for lesbian, bisexual, and queer women in a culture where they often felt unrepresented. Schulz took a direct role in endorsing and championing Title IX reforms for women’s athletics, lending his artwork to the national debate.

On Integrity and the Risk of Generational Loss: Narratives of Preservation and Threat Underlie Policies Restricting Natural Testosterone in Women Athletes

Though its claims to “leveling the playing field,” are dubious, sex verification remains part of elite women's athletics. One of its latest iterations, testing and treatment for “excessive testosterone,” is championed by sports governing bodies on the grounds of “preserving the integrity of female competition.” I examine this claim in light of the decade of scrutiny South African runner Caster Semenya has endured regarding her sex. Contextualizing Semenya's case historically and in light of current science reveals two imperatives driving sports governing bodies' hyperandrogenism policies: (1) promoting a historically and structurally bounded idea of how athletic female bodies should look; and (2) presenting the performance capacity of visually concordant athletic female physiques as the measure of female athleticism. Testing and treatment for “excessive testosterone,” applies science in service of hegemonic norms regarding physique, prowess, and heterosexual appeal. Hyperandrogenism testing preserves integrity of type, not integrity of competition.

The NCAA and Corporate Sponsorships

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Regents case meant that the NCAA lost control of the broadcast rights for NCAA football. Looking for ways to make up the lost revenue, NCAA executive director Walter Byers agreed to allow Host to sell corporate sponsors for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Gillette was the first company to sign on, followed by Valvoline. Before long, major corporations were spending millions of dollars to use the NCAA and Final Four logos to promote their products. David Novak’s Pizza Hut promotion proved to be the most successful of all. Other sponsorships included Hyatt, Kodak, Oldsmobile, Rawlings, and American Airlines. With millions of dollars of revenue coming from corporate sponsors, the NCAA’s new executive director Dick Schultz was looking for a way to promote women’s athletics. Host pitched the idea of a primary sponsor for women’s athletics, and Sara Lee CEO Paul Fulton agreed to join the cause. Sara Lee’s sponsorship helped expand the appeal of women’s intercollegiate athletics, and corporate sponsorships changed the fortunes of the NCAA and Host Communications Inc.

Czechoslovak Female Athletes at the International Scene During the Interwar Period between WWI and WWII

Between the two world wars, women athletics got emancipated, as both sport successes and the viewers’ interest contributed to the International Olympic Committee and International Amateur Athletic Federation topmen to accept women athletics. The representatives of the Czechoslovak Federation of Handball and Female Sports and other women sports contributed largely to the development and emancipation of women athletics, and were present at the foundation of the world federation. The women’s athletics popularity for European sport public rose mostly thanks to the stars of the track, throw, and jump disciplines at the international events. Women athletes from Poland and Czechoslovakia held up in the competition of big sporting powers, notwithstanding their much more humble training possibilities. This paper focused on the most successful Czechoslovak women athletes that were able to achieve interesting results at the biggest women athletics events and managed to change the historical world tables in athletics. Used sources included their period contemporary journals and magazines and some till now unpublished registry data.

The queen of the sports with the eyes of the women

The media plays a very important role in the gender socialization as in the sport selection also, in which the individual is born,. We want to introduce those disciplines through the development of more studies are in athletics not least, belonged to a man's privilege. The emergence of women in a variety of masculine competitions has enabled the track and field sport turned into both gender sport. The masculinity and feminity separation in sport is increasingly disappear and become neutral. In our study, we analyze the changes in women's athletics point of view of history, in some disciplines for women and the availability of representatives assessment of Hungary. We based on Methenys categorization in 1965, and Bem's study, written in 1974, and examined women's branch of track and field sports acknowledgment and acceptance focused on the masculine category.

Women’s Activism and Educational Institutions

Mobilized women have indelibly changed educational institutions, their activism creating equality in many spheres of higher education. This chapter draws on literature on women’s movements and movements within institutions to argue that women’s activists have successfully organized for educational accessibility and resources, the legal rights of women and girls in educational institutions, and the presence of women and incorporation of scholarship about women in the academy. I first address the history of women’s entry into U.S. educational institutions, and then activists’ successes and challenges with developing women’s studies, Title IX, and women’s athletics. I then turn to an examination of contemporary women’s student activism. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the broader connections between movements and institutions.

Sex Testing

In 1968, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) implemented sex testing for female athletes at that year's Games. When it became clear that testing regimes failed to delineate a sex divide, the IOC began to test for gender—a shift that allowed the organization to control the very idea of womanhood. This book explores sex testing in sport from the 1930s to the early 2000s. Focusing on assumptions and goals as well as means, the book examines how the IOC in particular insisted on a misguided binary notion of gender that privileged Western norms. Testing evolved into a tool to identify—and eliminate—athletes the IOC deemed too strong, too fast, or too successful. The book shows how this system punished gifted women while hindering the development of women's athletics for decades. It also reveals how the flawed notions behind testing—ideas often sexist, racist, or ridiculous—degraded the very idea of female athleticism.

Changing the Playbook

This book delves into the background and what-ifs surrounding seven defining moments that redefined college sports. These changes involved fundamental issues—race and gender, profit and power—that reflected societal tensions and, in many cases, remain pertinent today: the failed 1950 effort to pass a Sanity Code regulating payments to football players; the thorny racial integration of university sports programs; the boom in television money; the 1984 Supreme Court decision that settled who could control skyrocketing media revenues; Title IX's transformation of women's athletics; the cheating, eligibility, and recruitment scandals that tarnished college sports in the 1980s and 1990s; the ongoing controversy over paying student athletes a share of the enormous moneys harvested by schools and athletic departments. A thought-provoking journey into the whos and whys of college sports history, the book reveals how the turning points of yesterday and today will impact tomorrow.