Sporting Gender

The Tokyo Olympic Games are likely to feature the first transgender athlete, a topic that will be highly contentious during the competition. But transgender and intersex athletes such as Laurel Hubbard, Tifanny Abreu, and Caster Semenya didn't just turn up overnight. Both intersex and transgender athletes have been newsworthy stories for decades.
In Sporting Gender: The History, Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes, Joanna Harper provides an in-depth examination of why gender diverse athletes are so controversial. She not only delves into the history of these athletes and their personal stories, but also explains in a highly accessible manner the science behind their gender diversity and why the science is important for regulatory committees-and the general public-to consider when evaluating sports performance.
Sporting Gender gives the reader a perspective that is both broad in scope and yet detailed enough to grasp the nuances that are central in understanding the controversies over intersex and transgender athletes. Featuring personal investigations from the author, who has had first-person access to some of the most significant recent developments in this complex arena, this book provides fascinating insight into sex, gender, and sports.

Joanna Harper is a medical physicist who has written extensively on gender and sport. She has been an expert advisor to many international sports federations, including the International Olympic Committee, on matters relating to gender variance and sport. Harper was an expert witness for the IAAF at both the Semenya and Chand trials before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Harper has been racing at a relatively high level for over forty years-first in the men's category, and for the last twelve years in the women's category.

Foreword David Epstein Acknowledgments Introduction 1: "Prehistoric" Women's Sport 2: The Science of Intersex Conditions 3: Intersex Athletes in the 1930S 4: Postwar Sex Testing 5: Transgender 101 6: Early Transgender Athletes 7: Not the End of Sex Testing 8: Joanna's Story 9: Transgender and Intersex Athletes, 2004-2009 10: Caster Semenya 11: Transgender and Intersex Athletes, 2009-2014 12: The Post-Semenya Landscape 13: Dutee Chand 14: Dutee Chand versus the IAAF in the CAS 15: Transgender Athletes, 2013-2017 16: The 2016 IOC Transgender Guidelines 17: Aftermath of the CAS Decision in the Chand Case 18: Transgender Athletes, 2015-2018 19: Transgender Athletic Research Update 20: The Caster Semenya Trial Epilogue: One Last Story Recent Developments in Gender and Sports Notes Bibliography Index About the Author