For more than a year, officials in Beijing have been designing a special laboratory to determine the sex of any athletes taking part in this year's Olympic games. "Suspected athletes will be evaluated from their external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination," says Professor Tian Qinjie. The tests will not be conducted on every female athlete, but will be required if serious doubts have been raised about an individual competitor - invariably one competing in the women's events. "The aim is to protect fairness at the games while also protecting the rights of people with abnormal sexual development," he says.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced sex testing in 1968 at the Olympic games in Mexico City, after the masculine appearance of some competitors, many pumped up by anabolic steroids, had started to raise questions about the gender of athletes in female events. Unsurprisingly, gender-determination tests were seen as degrading, with female competitors having to submit to humiliating and invasive physical examinations by a series of doctors. Later, the IOC decided to use a supposedly more sophisticated genetic test, based on chromosomes.

This whole business of determining what is and what isn't a female athlete to me is fairly cut and dried. It calls to mind that story from earlier in the year where Oprah had a pregnant man on her show. Like I said at the time, the technical term for a man with a vagina is a "woman." I'm no doctor, but I don't need a medical textbook to determine gender, I only need a dictionary. I mean, you can sport facial hair, wear men's clothes and call yourself a man, but that doesn't make you one. Hell I can shave my head, put on a Red Sox #20 jersey and call myself "Youk," but that doesn't mean Francona's going to hand me a first baseman's mitt and pencil me in the lineup.

And you can say "Well what about the guys who get sex change operations and compete as women? How's that fair?" Because anyone who shows that level of dedication and willingness to sacrifice deserves an Olympic medal. It's not like Cartman pretending he's retarded so he could compete in the Special Olympics. Any guy who'll put it all on the line, so to speak, deserves to win. (Thanks to bonga for the story.)

As a bonus, here are some of the gender bending Olympians mentioned in the article. Judge for yourselves:

Heidi Krieger:

Santhi Soundarajan:

Edinanci Silva:

Dora Ratjen: