The Lesbian Hand Thing - Biology and Homosexuality

[3peanuts]

I don't like the idea our culture has of what is "for girls" and what is "for boys". Let's don't confuse sexual orientation with cultural stereotypes: who decided that a girl that plays "boysh" games is a tomboy, and that a boy playing with dolls is "strange", and if they turn out to be gay it's no surprise 'cause they played the wrong games?



If all the baby-girls were raised to become something different from "wife", "mommy" etc, I think nobody would ask themselves if the baby would turn out to be gay.



We have a fixed idea of what a man is and what a woman is: so we waste time and money to discover if lesbians are "less"-women because of hormones, or because of education, and we simply miss the point. There is no determined scheme for human gender and sexuality: different cultural role models lead to different ways to self-definition. What's a lesbian anyway?



A study that ignores cultural implications and analyses human sexual behaviour in terms of hormones and fingers, well I don't think is reliable: it's the same good old fashioned pre-feminist crap. Moreover, it's totally un-scientific: none of these studies applies the scientific method. And when science leaves its method to follow a hypothesis dictated by prejudice it gets very dangerous.



That's just me, btw.

"Cunning linguist" GG

Keynes was right

Edited by: 3peanuts at: 7/2/03 12:45 pm

[urnofosiris]

Quote:

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The London clinic was among the first centers in Europe to offer fertility treatment to lesbians and single women. In a study of 618 women treated at the clinic, Agrawal discovered that 38 percent of the lesbian women had PCOS, compared to 14 percent of the heterosexual women.



The cause of PCOS is unknown but an excess of androgens, or male hormones, has been linked with PCOS. Other research studies have linked hyperandrogenism to sexual orientation.

---

I have been unable to find a study that corroborates these findings, but I shall keep looking just in case. In the meantime, there are quite a few question marks that can be placed beside these conclusions and suggestions. How many of those 618 were lesbians? It does not say in this article and I cannot find the study. Maybe it hasn't been published yet. I can't check how statistically significant these findings are, but 618 is a low number and no doubt the number of lesbians among those 618 much lower, so low that most likely it isn't enough to base such a conclusion on, just enough to warrant more study perhaps.



As for the excess of androgens talk. That is inaccurate. PCOS is a complicated syndrome of unknown origin, genetics seems to be a factor, but a definite cause hasn't been found so far. However, an excess of androgens is a *result* of PCOS not the *cause* of it. Therefore even if PCOS has a higher prevalence among lesbians this in no way supports the assumption that lesbians have higher androgen levels and with that the implication that maybe higher androgen levels *cause* lesbianism, because these raised levels are the result of a medical condition. To my knowledge there is no scientific proof that gays or lesbians are biologically 'different' from their straight counterparts, at least not when it comes to hormones. There are some studies that might be onto something (non hormonal, non environmental), but more research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn.



Of course a lot of research is being done, ranging from reasonably sensible to things like studying fingerlength. I have said it before, I would wish they'd spend all that time, energy and money trying to find the hormone or the part of the brain that causes homophobia. As it is that does not seem to be a priority. If they ever do find proof that homosexuality has a biological basis then that could demolish one of the favourite homophobic arguments that being gay is unnatural or a choice etc. It might help fight some of the homophobia out there.



Then again, some people will never ever get over their homophobia and might try to use knowledge like that to prevent gay people from being born (I have a feeling abortion would be less of an issue to people like that when the fetus is gay) or try to find another cure, genetherapy, hormone replacement, or whatever else you can think of. Sure it messes with the natural order of things, but well being gay is so horrible the powers that be will look away just this once.



Bleh, I'm still not quite sure what to think of research like this. What I am sure about is that you have to be pretty careful before jumping to conclusions.



My feeling says there is a biological basis for homosexuality and transsexuality. After all we all know by now that this isn't a choice and you can't be 'cured' by psychotherapy. We are who we are regardless of how we were raised. You can't make someone gay and you can't make them not gay. I just do not believe it has anything to do with hormones or lesbians being more masculine than straight women or gay men being more feminine than straight men. There is no evidence for that, just a lot of assumptions and guesswork.



I should add that I actually don't want to believe that biology or genetics are the only things that make us who we are. I do like to think that there is more to life than us being DNA that can think about itself.

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Coffee, Food, Kisses and Gay Love........Get it while you are hot

[Gatito Grande]

Garfield, I think we agree on just about everything here: no single genetic cause, probably some biological (permenent, innate) factors, the need for way more replicated (and confirmed) studies.



The importance of the distinction between correlation and cause is essential . . . and it may also be lost in popular scientific (mis)understandings. The possibility of any correlating factor in (from conception to) pre-adolescents, is automatically linked to the testing that would uncover such factors. From there, it's just a hop, skip and homophobic jumps to hypothetical treatments (inc. abortion, if found in fetuses), whether effective or not. And they almost certainly wouldn't be, in any sure way---what they could do, is biologically f*ck up a lot of people, in much the same way that psychological/behavioral so-called "reparative therapies" do now. (And, as befits the overwhelming patriarchy of much of the planet, the damage would probably be far worse for genetic males who show the "wrong" signs, than for genetic females).



GG On the NPR radio program "This American Life", they did a program dedicated to the theme of testosterone, inc. doing a saliva-test for T-levels of the entire staff, male and female. The "winner" (highest levels)? The staff's lone gay guy! Out



Listen to this show here, it's fascinating.



www.thisamericanlife.org/ra/220.ram

[sprhrgrl]

Gatito Grande, if we started a genderqueer thread it'd be a good thing - nowhere I've found has one, although. On the strap-on.org forums, there's a thread called Making this place welcome for Bigender People, which has been taken as a place for people not of the general gender identites of the board. . . But the closest they've really come to. . . Anything. . . Is a slight migration to the rather inactive genderqueers.com board.



I think there was something a year or three ago when they were talking about how they could manufacture sperm from any cell and this was exciting because then I could have babies with my girl. . . Bit I don't remember, exactly.



I agree with 3peanuts, a lot. I was in a womens' studies class where we had the sadly progressive discussion that whatever a woman wants to do should be feminine and whatever a man wants to do should be masculine. Thus, my predilection for truck fixing over. . . cooking or some other such traditionally feminine expectation. . . would be my feminine truck fixing skills. (there was dyslexia there that made the last word trixing. . .)

sprhrgrl.com

she's my everything

racism=sexism=homophobia

The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off. - Gloria Steinem

[Jennpurr]

Quote:

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Jenn, thank God! I was scared it was just me.

---

Nope... not just you!



There's this new girl at work... *ahem*... she has had me practically drooling over her hands! She has such beautiful hands! Does that make me a perv?



Jen

||My Fan Fiction and More!|| ||My Yahoo Group|| ||September 11th 2001 - An on-line Memorial||
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Have you forgotten all the people killed? Yes, some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field; Have you forgotten about our Pentagon? All the loved ones that we lost; And those left to carry on; Don't you tell me not to worry 'bout Bin Laden; Have you forgotten?" Darryl Worley, "Have You Forgotten?"

[Gatito Grande]

Jen, since you bailed me out in admiring Amber's armpits , I'm *more* than happy to do the same about your hand-worship (aka "no, you're not a perv---or you are, but that's a good thing!" )



GG Of all Lucy Lawless's beautiful qualities, one of her most underrated are her *extraordinarily* Mmmmmm! hands Out



See, even on this thread, GG can quit ranting, and return to the more important "tasks" of -ing and -ing!

[Jennpurr]

Hee... why thank you, GG.



Well, you want to talk yummy hands... just take a look at Amber's!!!











Jen

||My Fan Fiction and More!|| ||My Yahoo Group|| ||September 11th 2001 - An on-line Memorial||
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Have you forgotten all the people killed? Yes, some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field; Have you forgotten about our Pentagon? All the loved ones that we lost; And those left to carry on; Don't you tell me not to worry 'bout Bin Laden; Have you forgotten?" Darryl Worley, "Have You Forgotten?"

[slayer747]

the Hand Thing...



hmm. As for me, I am just you rtypical college girl who happens to be gay. However, everytime I go out for lunch or dinner with a new acquaintance (a classmate for example) I would notice her staring at my hands. I wonder why... Maybe they are just fascinated with the short nails and other movements that I cannot quite describe...

"part of forever is better than none"

Edited by: slayer747  at: 7/9/03 12:39 am

[Gatito Grande]

GG here, back w/ yet another one of those studies that purport (rightly or wrongly) to indicate the biological basis of homosexuality . . . again predicated on a innate trait that is "different" between lesbians and straight women, gay and straight men.



. . . and, also as usual (though not invariable), the figures (on the trait in question) indicate *surprise!* that lesbians more closely resemble straight males, and that gay men (slightly) more closely resemble straight females.



Anyway, here it is:

Quote:

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U.K. study: Sexuality is set before birth



A new U.K.-based study claims to prove that sexual orientation is decided before birth, being "hard-wired" into the human brain along with other key traits.



The report, a combination of work between the University of East London (UEL) and the Institute of Psychiatry, investigates sex differences in the startle response -- the eye-blink reaction to sudden loud noises.



The researchers announced on Friday in a press release that there may be a notable difference between homosexual and heterosexual subjects in terms of their brain circuitry. Since being startled is an involuntary reaction, rather than a product of environmental conditioning, researchers claim it is a strong indication that sexual orientation is determined before birth.



The research involved a technique known as prepulse inhibition (PPI), which measures the strength of response to loud noises.



Results showed clear differences between the groups, with lesbians showing a markedly stronger inhibition (a PPI of 33 percent) compared to straight women (just 13 percent).



Although the difference between heterosexual men and gay men is less extreme, 40 percent vs. 32 percent. respectively, researchers claim the difference is still significant.



"The startle response is pre-conscious and cannot be learned, " UEL's Dr. Qazi Rahman explained. "It is mediated by an ancient region of the brain called the limbic system which also controls sexual behavior."



Dr. Rahman added that the findings could have a large impact on the way sexuality is treated, both culturally and during health programs.

---

www.gay.com/news/article....03/10/03/4



GG Unstartled by the findings Out

[urnofosiris]

Whereas I do not doubt there is a biological basis, I am just amazed that anyone would think of studying something like the eyeblink reaction to loud noises.

-----------------------------



She's so anally retentive she wouldn't sit down for fear of sucking up the furniture.

--Patsy Stone

[Lamashtu]

Wow, that's pretty interesting. I never considered startle response; I wonder how they came up with that.



What will they think of next? Heh.

-Mina

Everything is miraculous. It is miraculous that one does not melt in one's bath. -Pablo Picasso

[xita]

Let me get this "straight." They are saying lesbians blink less than their heterosexual counterparts when exposed to sudden noises. And they are saying gay men blink MORE than their heterosexual counterparts when exposed to sudden noises.



Is that it?



I think I have a feeling where they came up with this one, one more of those masculine vs. feminine traits, here they are analyizing a traditional "girly" response to being startled. Blinking I guess was the only way to actually measure this.

- - - - - - - - - - -
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."

-Me & Bobby
McGee

[LesiROckGoddess]

as long as any lesbian is using her hands on me I'm happy

[sprhrgrl]

Remember how a few pages back we were talking about how you looked at your fingernails?



Another reading snippet:

she's my everything

Sweetie, I'm a fag. I been there. - Tara (Dead Things shooting script)

A muscle cramp? in your. . . pants? - Tara (Older & Far Away)

[Tempest Duer]

That's actually kind of pathetic, when you think about it...



But I'm glad there's a thread about hands. My girlfriend has such nice hands... *sigh*

Choosing not to decide is still a choice.

[hot monkey luv 66]

Hmm... I'm right handed, but I can do things ambidexturously... ... tee hee hee, also, my index fingers are longer than my ring fingers, and I look @ my nails the girly way, and they are constantly painted a light shade of whatever color matches the color scheme of my outfit and my toenails... does this make me really straight??? that sucks! LOL thats crazy!! tee hee hee ...if thats true, I really need to rethink my crush... hmm... she's girly too... and has really nice hands... ...maybe we're both straight?? lol! haha! jk ... but can you really tell by index and ring fingers? LOL

~~**Monkey Luv**~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tara:"Until I realized that was her yummy face"

WILLOW: "There's something between us. It-it wasn't something I was looking for. It's just powerful."

Edited by: Warduke at: 10/9/03 8:10 pm

[Tempest Duer]

Oh, really? That's cute. My ring fingers are longer than my index fingers... but all my fingers are short. Which is why I prefer to use my tongue for some things.

Choosing not to decide is still a choice.

[dynarb]

*SNORT*



Sorry about that, but the thing with looking at your fingernails I have discovered is pure nonsense.



Why? Try this. I went to a rabbit show, yes a rabbit show, and asked EVER SINGLE woman there that I could find how she looks at her fingernails. This included my mom, some very close friends I have known for years and many, many complete strangers.



Total women asked = 136

Total who turned their fingers in (folded their knuckes) = 120

Obviously this didn't work.



I even made a note as to which women were, in my eyes, femme, you know, the make up, the dress - of course, at a rabbit show it's kinda hard to tell. Carry them buggers around a few years and you dress in tshirts with lab coats and jeans for protection. So, of those I asked, there were 63 that passed as femme, only 3 of those turned their fingers inwards. How many had their nails done? As in acrylic? Only a dozen. None of them turned their fingers in.



I tried a different tactic. I work in a hospital. I didn't make note of the numbers of women I asked, but so far none have looked at their fingers splayed out.



So, fingers in fingers out, it doesn't tell you a thing.



Now the ring finger/index finger thing is genetic. One is recessive, the other not. I can't remember which is which, but it has nothing to do with sexual preferrence.



As for the blinking thing, heck if I know. Sounds weird.



'nuff said

Dyna

----------

Tara: You think you know. What's to come. What you are. You haven't even begun."

- Restless



Amber Benson Accolade

[faithy]

Sure take all the fun out of it. You just had to go and ruin my fun. As for hands, I think they are pretty. Eyes are next in line though. I love them. Expecially blue eyes. I find my self looking at women with blue eyes. Now of eyes the subject is hands. Yes long fingers are very pretty, with short nails. Mmm.. loving the thoughts being had right now. As for the thing about eye blinking, I thought if the person's (guy or girl) eyes reached faster than an average human then they were gay. At least thats what I heard.

[sprhrgrl]

The best part is how I started this thread to talk about how lesbians play with eachothers' hands a lot.



Which I hold that they do.



I was at my queer group meeting today and was playing with someone's hands, and she's not even my girl.

she's my everything

Sweetie, I'm a fag. I been there. - Tara (Dead Things shooting script)

A muscle cramp? in your. . . pants? - Tara (Older & Far Away)

[Gatito Grande]

The following long story isn't about lesbians (much less their hands). But it is about biology (and female masculinity) . . . and it's fascinating as all get out. Enjoy!

Quote:

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The rise and fall of gender testing





by Patricia Nell Warren

Outsports.com



In the late '90s, as the Olympic Games finally dropped its long-hated requirement for women's gender testing, the Gay Games stumbled into hot water with its own gender policies. First, the 1998 Amsterdam Games required competitors who had changed their birth gender to the opposite gender to provide medical proof of "completed gender transition." Organizers also decreed that mixed-sex couples (including transgendered persons who couldn't prove "transition" on paper) would not be allowed in the ballroom-dancing event. Then, the 2002 Sydney Games tried a different tack, by dividing competitions into two divisions: "male" or "female." Everybody, including transgendered and intersex athletes, had to choose a category to compete in, based on passport or birth certificate gender.

Writing for Independent Gay Forum, Stephen H. Miller argued: "You'd think this would be a no-brainer. After all, the reason that men compete against men, and women against women, is because the male body is, well, different from the female body, and same-sex competition ensures a level playing field, genderwise." Curiously, this was almost the same language that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had used to defend its gender testing for nearly four decades. Some GLBT athletes and activists bristled at both Gay Games' rules.



As the Gay Games wrestles with gender policy, the real reason why gender became an issue at the Olympic Games, back in the mid-1900s, is almost forgotten -- along with the two Soviet sisters whose "masculine" appearance pushed gender testing into place.





War and peace



After World War II, as the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics struggled to avoid total war, the two superpowers sought victories away from the battlefield -- often achieving their goals by the ruthless use of propaganda. General Eisenhower was still the U.S. president, and Stalin was still the Soviet premier. Which was better, democracy or communism? East or West? Each nation kept its spin doctors working to prove that it was better, wealthier, more powerful -- with nastier weapons and bigger harvests and harder-working, more patriotic citizens. The Soviets extolled their freedom from religion, while many Americans extolled their belief in God. Naturally, that fierce competition extended into international amateur sport. Each side interpreted the Olympic motto, "citius, altius, fortius," as meaning that its athletes would go "faster, higher, stronger."



Gender testing was a by-product of Cold War propagandism. Based on the discovery of DNA in the early '50s, gene technology came into the sports scene during 40 long years of global jitters, when the world felt it was teetering on the brink of nuclear war. The era also spawned new military technology -- the B-52 bomber, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the nuclear submarine, the space race. In the United States, demand for gender testing came out of the same superheated conservative climate that produced the McCarthy hearings, which aimed to root communists and homosexuals out of our society. In many Americans' minds, there was a link between "not being a real American" and "not being a real woman or man."



It wasn't till 1952 that the U.S.S.R. decided to join in postwar Olympic competition. Still rebuilding out of wartime rubble, the Soviets patched together their first world-class team for the Helsinki Summer Games. Convinced that their athletes must be kept closeted from "decadent Western influences," the U.S.S.R. -- as well as "satellite nations" of the Eastern European communist bloc -- drew the Iron Curtain right through the Olympic Village, insisting upon their own separate housing. While many athletes accepted the political rigors of communist life (partly because they believed in communism, partly because sports gave them a life of elitist privilege), some athletes could have been looking at international competition as an opportunity to defect. Communist leaders couldn't risk this -- it made them look bad. The KGB (secret police) kept a close watch on their athletes. Over the years, dozens did defect anyway -- runners, chess players, figure skaters and others, including our own Martina Navratilova, from Czechoslovakia in 1975.



So fierce was that first clash in Helsinki that more than 100 world records were shattered. The race was on, and both Soviet and U.S. athletes were under agonizing pressure to prove their system's superiority by piling up medals. Right away, the Soviets showed that they had some exceptional female talent, especially in the throwing events. While Americans and Western Europeans dominated the sprints as they usually did, the U.S.S.R.'s Nina Romashkova took gold in the discus, while Galina Zybina won gold in the shot put, setting a world record of 15.28 meters.



But the final score on Helsinki gold was United States 40, U.S.S.R 22. Americans rejoiced. Democracy's superiority had been proven -- for now, anyway.



At the next Summer Olympics, in Melbourne, the atmosphere was even uglier. Soviet tanks had rolled into satellite Hungary to crush a rebellion against communist rule. The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland protested by pulling out of the games. Forty percent of the Hungarian team defected to the West rather than go home to territory occupied by Soviet troops. Eager to beat "the reds" again, the United States stayed at the games. This time, the Soviets turned the tables. Final score on golds: U.S.S.R. 37, United States 32.



Many American athletes and politicians went into shock. Some made excuses. After all, they said, U.S. amateur athletes trained themselves on a shoestring. They couldn't be paid if they wanted to keep their amateur standing. Communism made a mockery of amateurism, they asserted, by bankrolling its athletes -- giving them state support and expensive training, making them essentially professionals. Logically, these complaints should have gotten the communists blackballed from Olympic competition. But nobody wanted to push things that far.



In Melbourne, moreover, Soviet women continued their takeover of field events that require sheer strength. How could this be happening? Insisting that the "decadent" West oppressed women, the communist world had liberated women in a way the West still declined to do. Under communism, religion-based law banning divorce, adultery and abortion had vanished. America, where abortion and adultery were still crimes and divorce still difficult, found this shocking. Soviet women were legally equal to men. Many women worked side by side with men in factories, agriculture, medicine, science, government -- even the military. Unencumbered by "decadent Western" notions that femininity meant being as beautiful, sexy and soft as a movie star, a Soviet woman could glory in her physical strength, her muscles, her sweat and her manual skills, in a way that many American women were reluctant to do. Most importantly, some Soviet women were "Stakhanovites," the term for superachievers among workers. Like medal-winning athletes, Stakhanovites were held up as heroes of the Soviet Union. The young, female Soviet athletes now showing up at the Olympics had been born into that system. Even though they may secretly have desired more political freedom, their bodies, minds, emotions and spirits had still been formed by that system.



The average American, however, lived in a system where religious beliefs -- that "women are weaker," that "women shouldn't do men's work" -- still had their own powerful influence. Conservative Americans dismissed Soviet women as unladylike, ungodly, unglamorous and unappealing. In their view, what the Soviets called "women's freedom" was a sham because it wasn't democratic freedom. U.S. sportswomen were kept painfully on the defensive about proving their femininity. As late as the 1990s, leading American women athletes would still feel compelled to make statements like, "I don't think being an athlete is unfeminine; I think of it as a kind of grace" (Jackie Joyner-Kersee). The word "graceful" became a favorite U.S. buzzword for the feminine stereotype in American sportswomen, from 1930s figure skater Sonja Henie to 1960s runner Wilma Rudolph. The word was even generously applied to the occasional communist female who met American beauty standards! Soviet gold-medal gymnast Olga Korbut, for instance, became a Western celebrity for her amazing "grace."



So, at the dawn of the Cold War, imagine America's dismay when our women athletes started running up against ungraceful communist women who put a fierce Stakhanovite spirit into their efforts. Trackside buzz was loud about how "masculine" some of these Soviet women looked, and what an unfair advantage their muscles gave them. The United States, with its biblical streak, its hard line between masculinity and femininity, was fertile ground for this buzz. Over the years, a few Olympic women with "masculine qualities" had already raised eyebrows. According to SportsJones, one angry fan wrote the IOC to complain about Stella Walsh, a gold-medal sprinter at the 1932 Los Angeles Games. He fumed: "Her deep bass voice, her height and 10-and-a-half-inch shoes surely proclaim her a borderline case, if there ever was one. ... Rules should be made to keep the competitive games for normal feminine girls, and not monstrosities."



Eyebrows were also raised at a few early intersex cases -- European athletes who first competed as women, then had reassignment surgery -- including two relay runners and one skiing champion. For a long time, rumor also insisted that some countries sent biological men to compete in women's events in disguise. So far, according to SportsJones, "There [had been] been only one documented case. ... In 1936, a German athlete named Hermann Ratjen bound up his genitals and, calling himself 'Dora,' competed in the high jump. He came in fourth, beaten by three actual, uterus-bearing girls." But during the Cold War, the paranoia about men in disguise went into overdrive. Many Americans believed that those super-achieving Soviet women athletes were really males.





The notorious sister act



Enter Tamara Natanovna Press and her sister, Irina. They were Ukrainian Jews born in Kharkov, a region famed for rolling prairies rich in wheat and sugar beets. They and their family were among the few Jews left alive in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the World War II Nazi atrocities. In 1960, the two young women arrived in Rome with 608 other females for the Summer Games. As they marched into the stadium under the red flag, they were the Kremlin's latest Cold War weapons -- just as if they were new ballistic missiles being paraded by the Soviet army in Moscow's Red Square. Tamara had already won discus gold and shot put bronze at the 1958 European Championships. She was 23 years old, looking at all the news cameras with a shy expression on her freckled face. Irina was 21.



Despite all the propaganda clank at the games, vast changes loomed across the world. In the United States, Eisenhower conservatism was waning, and a liberal Catholic Democrat named John F. JFK was about to be elected president. The '60s would shortly explode into freedom seeking and authority flouting on every front, with students and ethnic minorities rioting in practically every Western country. Racial freedom, sexual freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to experiment with drugs -- all were demanded. Behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union's own citizens were beginning to demand more of these same freedoms, and the country was undergoing a powerful "thaw." New premier Nikita Krushchev was doing a balancing act, trying to keep peaceful coexistence with the United States abroad, while trying to keep "the thaw" from going too far at home.



In their way, the Press sisters would be part of the coming changes -- human reality arriving to challenge entrenched ideology on both sides. They were big, muscular, plain women, complete with Adam's apples. SportsJones comments: "To say that [they] looked a little butch would be like noticing the World Trade Center looked a little tall." Both had some facial hair. Tamara had thick, muscular thighs like a weight lifter and a powerful torso, with just the barest suggestion of breasts showing through her singlet. As spectators watched the two women go into action, waves of buzz ran through the stands. Instantly the Press sisters were pegged as the latest "monstrosities." Tamara, the older and bigger of the two, provoked the most curiosity and outrage. As she walked onto the field for her first event, she must have felt this scrutiny intensely -- along with the enormous responsibility riding on her broad shoulders to prove that her country was better.



According to HickokSports.com, Rome was a triumph for the U.S.S.R. "The Soviet Union dominated women's track and field, aside from the sprints. Led by sisters Tamara and Irina Press, they won six of the other seven events. ... The 800-meter run, restored to the program for the first time since 1924, was won by Soviet Lyudmila Shevtsova in world record time." The two "monstrosities" swept the entire division. Irina placed in the top six in all events, and won the 80-meter hurdles. Tamara Press blasted her way to gold in the shot put and silver in the discus.



Women's throwing events were slowly, reluctantly being accepted into the Olympic program. Because they involved strength and weaponlike items, they'd been viewed for a long time as "unladylike" and "unfeminine." Women's discus was added in 1928, javelin in 1932. In 1948, approval of the shot put was possibly inspired by women's vigorous contributions in World War II, both in the military and civilian sectors. But the shot, as a sport started by British soldiers who threw cannonballs around for fun, demanded greater explosive strength than either the javelin or discus. Therefore, some people still considered it inappropriate for females. The biggest no-no of all -- the women's hammer throw -- would not be allowed until the Sydney games in 2000.



Adding insult to injury, the Rome Olympics were the first seen on television. Though there was no global satellite coverage yet, Eurovision did offer live broadcasts to its customer countries, while CBS rushed its dailies to New York and aired them from there. TV had a huge impact on Americans' sensibilities about Olympic athletes. Patriotic Americans had to sit on their sofas and watch helplessly as "state-supported atheist unfeminine commies" were beating the panties off "god-fearing American ladies." Especially those two amazons, Tamara and Irina Press. What had the world come to?



Final score on Rome medals: U.S.S.R. 43, United States 34.



Right away, the grumbling and rumors went to orange-alert level. Not only were the Press sisters backed by millions of Soviet rubles, but no "normal" women could perform like they did. They must have had some kind of unfair advantage. There was buzz about drug use. Though the IOC had not yet outlawed doping, some athletes on both sides were already pumping their performance with amphetamines, anabolic steroids and the like. Indeed, many in sports were OK with men bulking up on steroids -- after all, when they did, they looked no different than the popular, overly muscled comic book heroes of the day: Superman, Captain Marvel, the Hulk. Allegations had it that communist women, notably the Press sisters, were being forced by their governments to use a lot of steroids. It was not OK for women to look and act like Superman.



But most of the buzz about the Press sisters focused obsessively on their gender. They couldn't possibly be real women. "Real women" were what the most popular American athletes looked like; for instance, the "graceful" Wilma Rudolph, whose three gold medals in track gave Americans one of their few happy moments in Rome. The Presses had to be men in women's clothes. The IOC should demand to look inside the sisters' shorts to see if the right sex organs were there.



Four years later, at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, tensions went even higher. Yes, the United States did recoup on medals, scoring 36 golds, compared to 30 for the U.S.S.R. But that awful Tamara Press deprived the States of another win in the shot put, plus a second gold in discus. Her awful sister grabbed the gold in the first women's pentathlon in history.



Tamara's fabled strength and grim expression prompted Western male athletes to give her a wide berth. Recently, on a Yahoo sports newsgroup, one correspondent remembered: "A young American shot-putter who had qualified to travel with the U.S. team to Europe and Russia for some international meets wandered into the assigned weight lifting gym one day and started lifting weights. Tamara Press entered the weight room and started lifting weights far, far heavier than the young American was capable of lifting. So he thought it best to get the heck out of the gym and go do some throwing from the ring."





Personal perspective



During the '60s, I was in my mid-20s, still deep in the closet. I was trying to be a "real American woman" myself, meaning I dutifully wore my favorite shade of lipstick and chic little Chanel suits to the Reader's Digest office where I worked. In 1957, I had married an emigre Ukrainian writer. My close association with refugees from communism, especially Ukrainian writers and artists who survived the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, would move Reader's Digest to put me on some book and article projects about the Cold War. Naturally, I watched the 1960 and 1964 Olympics on grainy black-and-white TV, and became fascinated with the Press sisters. There were hair-raising images of Tamara's volcanic strength, her sweaty face contorting and hair flying as she launched the iron shot like a human catapult. She became the first woman ever to hurl it farther than 18 meters.



Though I was staunchly pro-democracy, my heart went out to the Press sisters. They made me remember my high school days, when I was the hulking tomboy who picked fistfights with other students to try and stop the teasing. I wondered how Tamara, especially, saw herself. In that firestorm of attention and controversy, with some spectators cheering her wildly and others booing and hissing, how did she keep her focus, her confidence? Was that why she looked so inward and grim on the TV screen?



My emigré friends were fiercely anti-communist, rooting for the U.S. team in front of their TV sets, but they also took great partisan pride in the Press sisters' exploits, initiating their own hot discussions about the Presses. Were they men, or great big lesbyanky? Who cared? Ukrainians and Russians were historic enemies. So every time nasha Tamara ("our Tamara" or nasha Irina won a medal, they were trampling Russians under their track shoes. That was chudovo (beautiful).



By now Tamara and Irina had won five golds, one silver and a fistful of world records. The grumblers went to red alert. It was time to remove "monstrosities" from the scene. Pressures were quietly applied by Western countries, notably the United States. The IOC announced that gender verification would be required of every woman competitor. The test made its first appearance in 1966 at the European Championships. In its first and most primitive form, it was a physical exam. The women had to stand naked before a panel of doctors and submit to having their bodies and genitals fingered. There had to be a real vagina and no penis. Some women felt horribly degraded by the ritual grope, and said so. Their countries complained to the IOC.



In 1968, reacting to this criticism, the IOC hastened to substitute a new, less invasive technique at the Mexico City Summer Games. The buccal smear made it possible to examine a woman's sex chromosomes under a microscope, using cells swabbed from the inside of her mouth. If female gender was "verified" in the form of two X chromosomes, the woman got a certificate that let her compete. If anything different was seen, the ax fell. The IOC allowed her to pretend sudden injury or illness, and go home quietly. But her future in international competition was over -- the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games and others were adopting the test.



However, the truth about gender definition, and how sports authorities could enforce it, was not so black and white. Gender testers would find themselves confronted with real, living people, not ideology.





X's and Y's



"People come in bewildering sexual varieties," says Brown University professor Anne Fausto-Sterling in a Science World article. Humans are born with 46 chromosomes, in 23 pairs. The two chromosomes that determine the child's gender are the X (female) and Y (male). Most women are XX, while most men are XY. In those days, it was assumed that the mere presence of a Y chromosome absolutely determined male gender. However, new scientific research was showing that, in an estimated few among thousands of births, there can be an amazing range of variations. Some people are born with a single sex chromosome -- they are 45X or 45Y. Others are born with a third sex chromosome -- 47XXY or 47XYY or 47XXX.



These and other variations were now throwing wrenches into the machinery of Olympic gender testing. The gender testers would find no biological men competing as women. What they did find, often, were women with XXY chromosomes, whose genetic makeup included a factor for testosterone resistance -- yet these women had a perfectly "normal" female appearance, with no extra muscle mass that might give unfair advantage. The gender testers had to flunk them, anyway. Testers also encountered strongly built, masculine-looking women, like sprinter Maria Matula, who proved to be a standard XX and passed the test again and again. Plus, they encountered women with intersex genitalia. Some had a bit of Y chromosome attached to an X; others were "normal" XXs whose genital development may have affected by hormonal imbalance or even fetal damage. Facial hair on a woman could be the result of chromosomal variation, or of a simple imbalance between estrogen and testosterone. According to Fausto-Sterling, "Chromosomes, hormones, the internal sex structures, the gonads and the external genitalia all vary more than most people realize."



Later, in 1997, Stanford Today would put it another way, saying, "The very science that enables sex testing is demonstrating that simple definitions are no longer biologically sound. ... Try as they might, researchers are having trouble stuffing human biology into two distinct boxes labeled 'male' and 'female.'"



But back in 1968, at the Mexico City Olympics, few people were listening to any scientific caveats. After all, the reason for gender testing was political: Win the Cold War any way you can.



Mexico City went down in history as the Olympics where Mexican troops fired on demonstrating students, killing 267 and wounding 1,000. It also went down in history for black runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who made the Black Power salute on the victory stand to protest racism in the United States. Women's growing protests of the gender test were drowned out by the blood and thunder of bigger events.



Everybody buzzed about the Press sisters not being on the Soviet team this time. Tamara and Irina had quietly retired from international competition before the 1966 European Championships. The story was that they were taking care of their ailing mother back home. Had the Kremlin kept the two women home because they wouldn't pass the test? No one knew for sure. But champions of femininity gloated -- judging by the medals numbers, the mere threat of a test was surely having a deterrent effect. In 1960, Soviet women had won eight golds in track and field; this time, not a single track and field women's gold went behind the Iron Curtain. The shot put was won by a West German, Margitta Gummel. When the competition ended, the gold medal score was U.S. 45, U.S.S.R. 29. Score one more for democracy. And score a big one for "real women."



Though some still alleged that the Press sisters had been on steroids, this -- if true -- wouldn't have prevented them from competing in Mexico City. The IOC wouldn't ban steroids, or start testing for them, for another nine years.



The Presses may have vanished from the Olympics, but Tamara got one last laugh. In 1965, at a European meet, she had set one last world shot put record: 18.59 meters. The record stood for three years, until it was broken by another Soviet woman. Tamara's final achievement seemed like a sweaty and powerful middle finger raised in defiance at the West, as she and her sister retreated into proletarian obscurity in their native country. Whatever their physical, genetic or gender realities had been would remain a mystery.



Despite athletes' growing opposition to gender testing, the IOC continued to require it. Thirteen women "failed" the test between 1972 and 1984. Was there a clear body of emerging evidence that being "chromosomally unacceptable" conferred any extra power to win medals? No. Yet women's careers were destroyed if they failed the test. Polish sprinter Ewa Klubukowska, who had a "normal" female phenotype but proved to be an XXY, was barred from international competition, stripped of all her past medals and saw her world record scratched off the books. Yet, years later, she was a normal enough woman to have a baby naturally. Spanish hurdler Maria Patino also turned up with an XY. She was so outraged at being exiled from international competition that she carried on a fiery legal campaign against the IOC for three years, until she finally got reinstated. But the rule stayed in place for everybody else.



In the mid-1970s, the buccal/sex-chromatin test was deemed unreliable and replaced by an updated DNA test. Yet testing turned up no cases of men competing as women. Athletes' bodies were more visible to the public anyway -- they had junked loose-fitting tracksuits in favor of tight, colorful and aerodynamic spandex outfits. With drug testing now in place, women had to give urine samples under direct observation. So it was laughable to think that a male "ringer" could slip through so many layers of scrutiny. Through the '80s, as sports got more enlightened about women's abilities, women's training improved and strenuous events like the marathon were added to the women's program, it became clear that masculine-type muscle was not necessarily an advantage. Slender, feminine Joan Benoit's winning marathon time in 1984 was faster than any men's winning marathon times before 1956 -- a signal achievement, given that women marathoners were still discovering how fast they could run 26.2 miles.



And what of the male Olympians who might be XXY, or XYY? Male XXYs often have a slender, more feminine physique, which might give them an unfair advantage in sports like gymnastics and equestrian events. Some studies suggested that XYY men were more aggressive, which might confer an unfair advantage as well. But men were not gender tested. Any variants were allowed to compete unmolested.



Myron Genel, M.D., was one expert who became convinced that gender testing was a joke. In 1990, he and others accepted an IAAF invitation to a workshop on "femininity verification." Later, Genel wrote in Medscape Women's Health, "Our group concluded that laboratory-based sex determination should be discontinued. ... The purported rationale is to detect male imposters who would have an unfair competitive advantage. In point of fact, genuine imposters have not been uncovered; however, gender-verification procedures have resulted in substantial harm to a number of unassailable women athletes born with relatively rare genetic abnormalities that affect development of the gonads or the expression of secondary sexual characteristics."



In 1992, as a result of this study, the IAAF defied the IOC and stopped gender testing. The Commonwealth Games and various sports federations followed suit, as did the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical bodies. But the testing juggernaut rumbled heedlessly on. At the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, a cumbersome DNA screening process for 3,387 women athletes proved to be vastly expensive. Eight women were red-flagged, then further scrutinized and discussed -- and, finally, allowed to compete.



Finally, in 1999, even the IOC's own athletic commission went to the executive board and demanded that testing stop. Testing was suspended on a trial basis for the Sydney and Salt Lake City games. But the IOC hasn't abandoned the old ideology. It reserves the right to reapply the much-discredited test in any individual case that is brought to their attention. Meanwhile, on the U.S. political front, gender realities continue to be ignored by many conservatives -- as in Texas, where the Fourth Court of Appeals ruled in 1999 that only couples with standard XY and XX chromosomes could be married.





What happened to them?



Today, gender controversy still makes headlines, though the arena of controversy has shifted to the GLBT sports world. Here, officials and organizers must repeat the painful Olympic effort to get a handle on gender policy that athletes are willing to accept.



Meanwhile, it's hard to find any current mention of the Press sisters, who prompted the launch of testing so long ago. They're in the record books, of course. Tamara is listed on Track and Field News' all-time world rankings for the women's shot put. She holds nine world records in shot put and discus. Olympic historian David Wallechinsky considers Irina the greater of the two for her dominance in a broader range of events and her 16 world records.



But the Press sisters' impact can hardly be measured by the number of medals they won. For that reason, they are evidently the target of lingering bias and vindictiveness -- and have become strangely invisible in the media. They may have gotten their due Soviet-hero honors when they returned home with their medals, but outside the U.S.S.R., they never made it onto any "great sportswomen" lists that I found. Most of the scanty current material on them dwells on the old controversy. In 1998, David Wallechinsky, publishing his encyclopedia work about the Olympics, felt sure the Presses were men. On that Yahoo sports newsgroup I mentioned, former U.S. athlete Karen Huff recalled seeing the two sisters at several joint United States-U.S.S.R. meets. She said, "When our teams would eat together in the cafeteria at Stanford, Tamara would eat alone. It was sad. Does anyone know what happened to Tamara and Irena?"



As yet, I've found no information on what the Press sisters did with their post-Olympics lives. Whatever it was, they kept a low profile. This is understandable: Any attention to them would inevitably bring all those old painful questions back to their front door. The 1995 Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, which documented 8,500 Jews still alive and living in former Soviet territory, lists the Press sisters, along with a few of their family members. Tamara would be 66 today, and Irina 64.



A final word on their careers is offered by Jews in Sports online: "Doubts and questions still linger regarding whether the Press sisters had been injected with male hormones by Soviet officials, or as some assert, were actually men. Either way, their records and accomplishments remain on the books. ... Combined, Tamara and Irina set an incredible 23 world records."



Yes, the real agenda of gender testing was definitely not to ensure fair play at the Olympics. The gender test outlived the Cold War by only a few years. In 1991, the U.S.S.R. was finally overwhelmed from within by political, economic and ethnic problems, and collapsed into an array of struggling independent republics. Communism toppled in the satellite countries as well. Though the Cold War is gone today, some post-Soviet hostility still courses through the Olympic Games, where controversy now centers more on doping and judging. At Salt Lake City in 2002, all that brouhaha around the figure skating gold medal -- with the Russians accusing Western judges of anti-Russian bias -- owed much to the distant past.



Ironically, gender testing never gave the U.S. the hoped-for advantage in the women's throwing events. Over the years, females from communist countries consistently grabbed the shot put golds. Though these countries are no longer "red," their women continue to medal frequently in the event. At the Sydney Summer Games in 2000, Yanina Korolchik of Belarus won gold in the shot put, with silver going to Russia's Larisa Peleshenko. According to Track and Field News, the U.S.S.R. remains the highest-scoring nation in history in this event.



Do such achievements still happen today because these women have an unfair genetic advantage? Not likely. Do they happen because these women use performance-enhancing drugs? Well, many athletes today, including Americans, use a state-of-the-art array of performance enhancers, despite IOC efforts to stamp out doping. But it's more likely that these women have the final edge because they are still less fettered by "conventional femininity." Indeed, their dominance in the shot put is now a tradition, in the same way that the U.S. traditionally excels in sprints.



Meanwhile, a Cold War ideology of "masculine-looking female bad guys" managed to masquerade as sports science for 32 years. Gender testing could have come straight out of a Tom Clancy novel -- if Clancy had ever written about sports.

---

www.gay.com/health/fitness/?sernum=2037



GG X? Y? Y not? Out

[Tempest Duer]

Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I could write about five term papers on the subject.

Choosing not to decide is still a choice.

[BigGayBear]

Damnit, since I read this thread, I've become overly aware of all things handy... I keep noticing hands... everywhere.. EVERYBODY HAS HANDS YOU KNOW. Ok. Right. I'm odd. But seriously. Like, the holding hand thing, and the hand movements, and such like. Hands are good mmkay. And you know when you say a word too much, it becomes a non word. Too many Hands.



I'm stopping there.



Al. And her hands.

[Tempest Duer]

Yes yes indeed. Hands hands everywhere. Hand. Hand. Hand is a funny word. Hand.



Okay, I'll stop now.

I believe in the madness called "now."

[undertheirspell]

I didn't realize how much I looked at another person's hands until I started reading the thread . . . and now I am painfully aware.

Gina



----------

"The only thing that matters is just following your heart and eventually you'll get it right." ~~~ In This Diary, By - The Ataris

[Yelowsub]

I love to play with my signifigant other's fingers. It has always just seemed so sweet. When my boyfriend falls asleep before me I'll just play with his hand. But he's big on hands too. But how can I put this...well we're still in the very sweet part of our relationship, which is to say that hands for us is still just hand holding. But I love it! But I am still guilty of imaging woman's hands ::cough::

Edited by: Yelowsub at: 11/3/03 1:06 am

[DaddyCatALSO]

Haven't paid much attention to this thread but today read the original article on finger lengths. My index and ring fingers look to be the same.

Guess what I found out about back in the 70s after watching an _All in the Family_ episode. I can do that "put your hands on the chair, put your head against the wall, pick up the chair, and try to straighten up" trick. Maybe I'm not doing it right? Or maybe my skeleton is just a little out of the normal range in a couple ways and none of these "things" really mean very much? I lean towards the latter.



Wondering about a fic I'm planning where Willow is being put thru a series of tests by ancient gods with plans of their own. These beings take control of Tara and Anya and use them as mouthpieces; they can't say anything or make any *obvious* gestures which aren't being fed to them. As a twist, the godlings cast an illusion disguising Tara and Anya as each other. But at soem point I have willow realize what's happening by some tiny details of body language and hand movements. The story tiself isn't dependent per se on this but I make it a major point. Does it sound like a good turn or should I drop this detail?

[Tempest Duer]

That could be incredibly difficult, but it sounds like it's definitely worth a try. Body language can be a fascinating thing.

I believe in the madness called "now."

[DaddyCatALSO]

thanks for the encouraging words Tempest Duer, and also for making me realize, before I do this not only do I ahve to research quest mythology, but body language too. Oh well if I can't put together something like this I have no hope of putting together a fantasy novel so it would behoove me to try. And I've gotten this thread way off...last word from me on this subject I think.

[Spikeizmine87]

I think it is oh so cute to play with your signifacant others hands. Us lesibans DO do this quite often. I think its very sweet, when i see cute gay couples do it, they are usually digging on eachother, being all cute with the hand holding and the way they are looking into eachothers eyes, you can tell they just love each other...ah jealous now.

-Rose



I loves me AMber!