Reply to comment

i had also heard about this athlete (not about the makeover part, that's an interesting twist that, like you said, reeks of conformity politics), and the situation seems to be a good real world application of all our abstract talk of doing away with gender categories. when i originally heard about the situation, i was stumped, and i have to admit, even as we have been talking in class about the relevent issues, i remain as stumped as before, if not more so. as an athlete of many sports, over the years i have actually tried to figure this out to no avail - i like competing against and being on teams with women, however, i have often found myself feeling excluded that i don't get to play with the guys. realistically, if we did away with all gender groupings for competitive activities, we would be all inclusive and competing as 'humans' with no other distinction (except perhaps age? unless we try to do away with all categories...). however, after looking at performance records for most sports, the men's speed/score/weight/time/etc does tend to be better than the women's, which is why we made women's sports separate in the first place (?). so we have different categories, but where do we draw the line? genetics, appearance, social gender...each of these has problems of their own. basically, i still don't know, but its interesting that this public global discussion parallels what we are discussing in class.