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Old 03-20-2009, 04:47 PM   #1
mikeyyuiok

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Oct 2005
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502
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Default S. Gronert: Hermaphrodite in the WTA
(I did a search and could not see that this story has ever been posted here. If it has, my apologies for repeating)

Tennis Controversy: Female Player (with Male Past)
By Mary Kearl

Who does a person born with both male and female sex organs, but who identifies as one gender, compete against in sex-segregated sporting events?

Sarah Gronert, a 22-year-old tennis pro from Germany who was born with both male and female genitalia, has chosen to compete against women, and that has some in the tennis community up in arms. "There is no girl who can hit serves like that, not even Venus Williams," says the coach of an opponent Gronert recently beat. The coach, Schlomo Tzoref, also claims, "This is not a woman, it's a man." Is Tzoref just a disgruntled coach, trying to stir up controversy, or is there any validity to his claim? What makes a man a man, and what makes a woman a woman -- and how does being either affect one's ability to win?

The Olympics has one answer; the WTA has another; across the board at national and international levels there seems to be a free-for-all in deciding how to allow players who do not fit into the binary division of traditionally defined female and male to compete. Meanwhile, science has its own explanations and advice for the sports community.

Does Gronert Have an Unfair Advantage?
The Biology of Being Born in Between Male and Female

"It sounds like this person, from a medical standpoint, would have an intersex condition, where you have an identifiable genetic hormonal problem," says Jack Turko, M.D., endocrinologist at the Department of Endocrinology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and director of Dartmouth College's Health Services Center. "If she had both male and female genitalia, that's describing a hermaphrodite -- which is a rare condition. More likely her genitalia didn't look male and didn't look female. Without knowing what the person had and without knowing what operations the person had," it is hard to say how she would be affected and what advantage she would have, if any.

Turko explains that Gronert may have had one of about 20 or 30 different interesex conditions, each of which may have different levels of testosterone and require different procedures.

"Depending on which specific condition the person has, the person may have male hormones, which could lead to elevated testosterone levels and muscle mass. Of course, there are a lot of women who lift weights and have a lot of muscle mass, and a lot of men who don't," Dr. Turko explains. For example, if she’d been born a true hermaphrodite, with "an ovary on one side and testicle on one side and opted to remove the testicle, afterwards the testosterone no longer would be elevated," Dr. Turko says.

Rest of story: http://www.aolhealth.com/condition-c...ex-conditions/
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