For as long as women have excelled at sports in the modern era, their gender and sexuality have faced fierce scrutiny, historians say. - NBCOUT
During the Cold War era of the 1960s, Soviet track and field stars Irina and Tamara Press together set at least 22 world records, a feat that triggered slews of “negative commentary” from the media, in which the sisters were “constantly compared to male athletes,” said Lindsay Parks Pieper, an associate professor of sport management at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia and the author of “Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women’s Sports.
Caster Semenya competes in the women's 1500-meter final at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games on April 10, 2018.Semenya, in particular, came under a media storm over her muscular build.
“This fight is not just about me, it’s about taking a stand and fighting for dignity, equality and the human rights of women in sport,”Although normal testosterone levels can vary widely among men , only female athletes are subjected to such tests. Pieper said sports in the U.S. have traditionally served as a space for men to cultivate and prove masculinity and that high-performing male athletes have never been viewed as suspicious, regardless of their performances.
By the 1980s, sports journalists had begun fixating on tennis star Martina Navratilova’s muscular physique, often describing her as “bionic,” with some even claiming she should be competing in the men’s tournaments, Cahn said. “I think the fear was that women would claim space in women’s sports and would try to compete and would someday compete as equals or near equals” to men, she said. “And so, homophobia was a weapon just to dismiss women and to denigrate women athletes.”“Coaches, largely in the ’80s, would accuse other coaches of being lesbian as a negative characteristic to kind of scare athletes to come to their schools, to come onto their team,” she said.
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