New record
On 17 May, 2021, it was announced that Valentina Petrillo is set to create a world record as the first, and so far only, male to participate in a female sports competition with male documents.
The software programmer and divorced father, who identifies as a woman and has not undergone cosmetic ‘gender’ surgery, is among the athletes chosen to compete in the European Paralympic Athletics Championship in Poland from June 1 to June 5. Seven athletes, including Petrillo, will compete on the Italian Team for Bydgoszcz 2021 in the women’s category, and 16 in the men’s.
The 47-year-old’s goal is to qualify for the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics.
Petrillo, who has a degenerative eye condition, skyrocketed to international fame in 2020 when the runner was recognized as the first male to compete in the women’s Paralympics, a series of international multi-sport events for athletes with a range of disabilities.
Before declaring a female identity in 2019, Petrillo competed with other men as Fabrizio, the name that still appears on the athlete’s legal documents. Petrillo won 11 national men’s titles between 2016 and 2018.
Seems legit.
It’s worth noting that Petrillo is not a woman in any way other than personal declaration. He is not legally a woman, his government documentation says “male”. So the athletic authorities don’t even care about that.
Maybe that’s good, maybe there will be less pressure to demand changes to legal documents? No, probably not; none of that should happen, neither changes to documents nor men in women’s sports.
SCENE: Trackside, at a major sports stadium, filled to capacity. As the preparations for a race are underway, two SPORTS AUTHORITIES are standing around, blankly observing the unfolding events. Though they’re holding clipboards, have stopwatches, ID badges, etc., they seem strangely detached and uninvolved in the proceedings.
AUTHORITY #1: Oh look, there’s a bloke lining up for the Women’s 400m
AUTHORITY #2: Dear me! That does seem a bit odd. Queer even. What is to be done?
A1: I don’t know. Do you think that’s okay?
A2: It must be, otherwise someone would have stopped him. He does have one of those official number thingies on. They don’t just hand those out to anyone!
A1: Yes, of course. Silly me! Perfectly all right then. I was worried there for a moment. Whew! That’s a load off!
A2: Yes, indeed!
A1: So that means we’re fine with the guy on the horse, and the other on the motorcycle then?
A2: Is the motorcycle pink?
A1: Yes.
A2: We’re good.
A1: Right, then! Right! Yes. They’ve come this far, who are we to stop them? Sport isa right.
A2: Exactly! Who are we indeed! Not our place to pass judgement or interfere with any of this. They’ve got their number thingies. What more can you ask? Fair is fair. (claps with excitement) This should be fun!
A1: Oh, wait, here’s your pistol! (handing over starting gun).
A2: Ooops, almost forgot! Thanks!
A1: Not at all, don’t mention it!
A2: ON YOUR MARKS!
Meanwhile, an actual woman gymnast is penalized for doing things that no other woman has ever done.
https://www.salon.com/2021/05/26/simone-biles-yurchenko-double-pike-gymnastics-scoring/
So where a usually mediocre male will attempt to muscle in (see what I did there?) on women’s sports in order to become to be a winner; now we have an actual _winning_ male in women’s sports. I can just imagine the challenge involved!
Re #3
Odd that the article chose to compare Biles to Michael Phelps (who is male, and who has some identified natural advantages over other males) and Caster Semenya (who has an intersex condition, and who has in effect been declared male). I don’t understand what possible natural advantages anyone is suggesting Biles might have, other than “she’s so good, she must have some natural advantages”. I don’t agree with the comparison to Semenya, whose case figures in the exclusion of males from female sports as well as in the procedures for testing for “male-ness” and performance-enhancing drug use.
Sackbut, agreed. And the other thing I thought about is that so many people are unconcerned about the advantages of male-bodied pretend women competing, but they think this woman…who is a woman…has an unfair advantage because she’s talented? Seriously?
Hmm. I wonder about the overlap between those who are supportive of men competing as women and those who are critical of Biles on “unfair advantage” grounds. My inclination is to suspect that the overlap is small; who knows, maybe a bunch of misogynistic people are in both groups.
Odd that the organizers are fine with somebody who is physically a man being a woman because she says so; yet require a medical exam to assign people to the correct class – or perhaps they’re also going to replace that with the much simpler (and cheaper) option of just asking how disabled an athlete feels.
What happened to all those testosterone-level limits that supposedly guaranteed that males wouldn’t bring their advantage with them into women’s sports?
Re #9, good question. Petrillo appears to have undergone some hormone treatments, but I haven’t read anything about testosterone level testing in his case.
Hormone testing is the most recent (just over a decade old) method of sex verification in women’s sports. (Hormone testing to detect added testosterone used as a performance-enhancing drug has been around somewhat longer, since the 1990s.) It’s, er, interesting that it has been turned into a test of whether a male athlete is sufficiently handicapped (in the horse-racing sense) to be allowed to compete against women.
I am curious about the different handling of a woman using performance-enhancing testosterone injections versus a man who wishes to compete against women. Are women being held to stricter standards than men regarding testosterone levels? Do the PED tests use some kind of individual baseline or other method to detect exogenous versus endogenous testosterone?