Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Committee's Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the 2004 Athens Summer Games

Sport exists on the premise that males and females are radically different. (Barnes, 2004) Thus sex gradually became an object of great suspicion; the general and disquieting meaning that pervades our conduct and our existence, in spite of ourselves; the point of weakness where evil portents reach through to us; the fragment of darkness that we each carry with us: a general signification, a universal secret, an omnipresent cause, a fear that never ends. (Foucault, 1978: 69) In May 2004 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) implemented a policy enabling transsexual athletes to compete at the summer Olympic Games in Athens. The IOC Medical Commission proposed that transsexual athletes who had Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) before puberty shall be admitted to compe-tition; that all other transsexuals must be post-operative (SRS including external genitalia and gonadectomy); must have legal and governmental recognition o