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Although the National Collegiate Athletic Association has already barred transgender women from playing in women’s sports, Texas’ attorney general has accused the group of using loopholes to allow such competition.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking for a temporary injunction that either orders the screenings or requires that the NCAA and its affiliates immediately stop using the terms “women,” “female,” or “girl” to market any of its women’s sports teams or competitions.
… The civil rights group Human Rights Watch, which released a comprehensive report on sex testing in international sports in 2020, says these tests “violate fundamental rights to privacy and dignity,” and that sport governing bodies that implement them create “environments that coerce some women into invasive and unnecessary medical interventions as a condition to compete in certain events.”
… Although Texas’ attorney general does not provide many details of what sex-screening student athletes should look like, the lawsuit suggests screening for the SRY gene as one potential avenue. The SRY gene, which is found on the Y chromosome and is responsible for triggering testes development, requires a laboratory setting to analyze a blood or saliva sample.
However, as BBC Sport reported last year, human genetic variations are so varied that some experts say it’s not possible to establish that everyone with a Y chromosome was born male, and everyone without a Y chromosome was born female.
Comprehensive testing — which includes analyzing the SRY gene and hormone levels — is expensive, requires niche experts and causes ethical concerns, one expert told the BBC.
“This assessment can be humiliating. It includes measurements of the most intimate parts of anatomy, like the size of your breast and your clitoris, the depth of your voice, the extent of your body hair,” Alun Williams, who researches genetic factors related to sport performance at the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport, told the BBC at the time. …”
Is Paxton volunteering to pay the billions of dollars it will cost to test every woman in every sport?