Was Eddie "Gwen" Araujo a 'He,' or 'She?
Associated Press, December 21, 2002
http://santafenewmexican.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=6432744&BRD=2144&PAG=461&dept_id=367954&rfi=6

Was Eddie "Gwen" Araujo a 'He,' or 'She?
Associated Press

The murder of Eddie "Gwen" Araujo Jr. has raised a question of grammar with serious implications for transgender people - should the slain teen who lived as a girl be referred to as he or she?

News media, including The Associated Press, initially used the masculine pronoun. AP had taken its lead from Araujo's family members, who called their child a "he."

Transgender activists saw the masculine pronoun as disrespectful - saying it was clear that Araujo, who adopted the name Gwen after singer Gwen Stefani of the alternative rock group No Doubt, would have wanted to be referred to as a girl.

Others argued that allowing people to essentially self-declare their gender without undergoing a physical change is too subjective an approach to grammar.

After gathering more information from Araujo's family, The AP decided to switch to the feminine pronoun when referring to the slain teenager from Newark, Calif.

The AP stylebook doesn't have an entry for "transgender," but does address the issue in part under "sex changes:"

"Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics (by hormone therapy, body modification, or surgery) of the opposite sex and present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly."

Araujo presented herself consistently as female - wearing women's clothing, makeup and long hair. Araujo also intended to have sex-changesurgery, according to her mother, Sylvia Guerrero, who had promised the teen she would file a name-change petition after that was accomplished.

"He was going to be a 'she' and so we can go by 'she' out of respect to her," Guerrero told The AP.

Switching the habit of a lifetime has been tough for Araujo's mother. Although Guerrero tried hard to use "Gwen" when they were out in public - partly for her child's safety - she said she sometimes slipped up, much to her teen's chagrin.

"It's not that I'm disrespecting you. I respect you very much," she remembers telling the teen. "It's hard for a mom to call you 'Gwen' when I've called you 'Eddie.' It's like a habit."

Transgender athletes pose new questions about competition
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/mike_fish/news/2003/06/24/fish_dumaresq/

A level playing field?
Transgender athletes pose new questions about competition
Posted: Tuesday June 24, 2003 4:34 PM

The engaging, feminine voice on the phone belongs to a pro downhill mountain bike racer. A 33-year-old who rode away with the Canada Cup Series last year and whose goal this summer is to make some noise at the World Championships in Switzerland.

Michelle Dumaresq, one of the top Canadian mountain bikers, grew up in Vancouver, B.C., playing rugby and ice hockey. Seven years ago, the former steelworker underwent life-changing surgery -- a three-hour sex change operation.

This kind of news might make some callers scream to the high heavens and slam down the phone. Sport is supposed to be about men competing against men and women against women. Now here we have a former guy riding with the ladies -- and eager to talk about it.

But even if we were so inclined, we can't hang up. Hey, we made the call. And Dumaresq, in the course of a 45-minute interview, is doing a great job telling her story and enlightening us on transgender issues. And she?s onto an ethical dilemma that we?re going to have to deal with in these enlightened times, even if sports leaders prefer ignoring it.

Dumaresq talks of a small underground of transgender athletes who?ve reached out to her, calling to share their experiences or to seek her insight. None are Olympic level, but some could be in the future. At least one is playing college basketball. And sports federations, including USA Track and Field, acknowledge having quietly looked into the transgender issue after fielding complaints from other athletes.

Dumaresq is quick to set the record straight. She only took up mountain biking two years ago and didn?t go through her ordeal to gain a sporting advantage.

"Some people say, 'Oh, you raced as a male and couldn't cut it, so you decided to get a sex change and all this garbage," she said. "That is not the case. Nobody would ever change his or her physical sex, because it is forever. It's one thing to take performance-enhancing drugs. This is a permanent, completely life-changing decision.

"I decided at 18 to change my gender. I've known I am a female since I was five."

What do the competitors who have been female from birth say? Well, the rumblings from Canadian riders, which initially took the form of a petition drive seeking her ouster, have died down in her second year on the circuit. Like it or not, the national cycling association has had to stick by her, largely because Dumaresq also went through the legal process to have her birth certificate and driver?s license changed to read: female.

Yet there's still debate over whether the former Michael Dumaresq enjoys an advantage of perhaps larger bones, more testosterone, larger lung capacity and greater muscle mass than the average female racer. Dumaresq counters -- and some medical people back her up -- that eight years of hormone therapy have offset any previous edge, cutting away considerably at muscle mass and testosterone levels.

The before and after picture is fascinating to ponder. Just imagine a heavy steroid user going cold turkey, deflating in front of your eyes.

As a man, Dumaresq was six feet and weighed 210 pounds. She now stands 5 feet 9 and weighs 180 pounds, claiming her blood testosterone level of two nanomoles per liter is well within the range of an average women.

Sports federations, frankly, want no part of this gender business, despite the fact that there may be other Michelles competing under cover, some even unknowingly.

In 1967, Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was ruled ineligible after sex testing determined she had "ambiguous genitalia" -- although not ambiguous enough to prevent her from giving birth to a child some time later. Another notable Polish sprinter, Stella Walsh, captured the 100-meter gold medal at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Years later, after she was killed accidentally as a bystander in a robbery, an autopsy revealed Walsh had an XY chromosomal makeup normally associated with males.

In the mid 1960s, to address rumors suggesting that men in some cases were competing as women or that at the very least some eastern European athletes were being fed male hormones, sex testing became a part of international sports. By 1999, however, just before the Sydney Olympics, the International Olympic Committee discontinued mandatory sex testing.

So where does Dumaresq and the transgender athlete fit into the equation today? When we asked the Canadian Olympic Committee, officials said they didn't have a "specific written policy." Nor does the IOC, where a top official described the issue as "tricky situations."

That was the universal response physiology professor David Martin heard when he and USATF legal counsel Jill Pilgrim researched "Far from the Finish Line: Transsexualism and Athletic Competition," an enlightening article in last month's Fordham Law Review Journal.

"As we know there is a men's division and a women's division and that is the way life is, but that is not quite the way biology is," said Martin, one of the country?s leading distance running experts. "There are people whose brains say one thing and their body is another. So when they decide to switch sexes, as we look at them anatomically, then this provides an interesting dilemma. Because if you have male on your driver?s license and you become female, then how do you fit in terms of competing in sports?"

Martin has suggested in the past that there be some ruling on the books. Either adopt the sex at birth philosophy or the gender ID philosophy, perhaps on a sport-by-sport basis. Or perhaps require that transgender athletes compete in their birth sex until a specific number of months or even years after their sex-change surgery.

To date, nobody has touched the subject. That's a mistake. It might be more prudent to deal with the uncomfortable issue head on, out of the blinding spotlight, than to risk being hit with it when the Olympic Games arrive in Athens, Beijing or some other foreign stop.

As Michael-turned-Michelle reminds us, "I have been e-mailed by women all over the world who are already competing in Olympic-level sports. None of them have taken it as far as I have yet, but they are just about there."

So don?t wait for the Games to begin.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Fish, click here.

Supreme Court strikes down Texas sodomy law
Supreme Court strikes down Texas sodomy law
Thursday, June 26, 2003 Posted: 2000 GMT ( 4:00 AM HKT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Supreme Court Thursday struck down a Texas state law banning private consensual sex between adults of the same sex in a decision gay rights groups hailed as historic.

The 6-3 decision by the court reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

Legal analysts said it enshrines for the first time a broad constitutional right to sexual privacy, and its impact would reach beyond Texas and 12 other states with similar sodomy laws applied against the gay and lesbian community, and into mainstream America.

"The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court's majority. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Religious conservatives quickly criticized the decision, and in a sharply worded dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the court "has taken sides in the culture war."

As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law, according to The Associated Press. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts, the AP reported.

Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four -- Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri -- prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Thursday's ruling apparently invalidates those laws, as well. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the decision appeared to strike down most laws governing private sexual conduct, but he said laws governing marriage would be unaffected. (Full story)

Laws that might be most vulnerable would be ones that govern fornication and adultery, said Diana Hassel, associate professor of law at the Roger Williams University. And while Hassel said "only a handful" of states remain with such laws, Thursday's Supreme Court ruling establishes a benchmark in privacy that had not existed.

"This is going to carve out protection for private sexual behavior," Hassel said. "As long as it's between consenting adults, this ruling would appear to cover it."

Case stemmed from mistaken arrest

Left to right: Michael Summers of Bend, Oregon, Rev. Rob Schenck, and pastor Ken Wilde pray outside the Supreme Court in Washington Thursday.

Thursday's ruling stemmed from the 1998 arrest of two Houston men, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, under a 28-year-old Texas law making same-sex intercourse a crime. The court found that law and others like it violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

"This is giant leap forward to a day where we are no longer branded as criminals and where that is no longer accepted by the most powerful court in the country," said Ruth Harlow, of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, who represented the two men.

Lawrence told reporters Thursday that he and Garner were happy with the outcome, but "never chose to be public figures or to take on this fight."

"Not only does this ruling let us get on with our lives, but it opens the door for gay people all over the country to be treated equally," he said.

In his dissent, Scalia -- joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas -- said the court "has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."

"Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda though normal democratic means," Scalia wrote. But with Thursday's decision, he wrote, the court is "departing from its role in assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed."

Court reversed 1986 ruling

The Supreme Court was widely criticized 17 years ago when it upheld an anti-sodomy law similar to the Texas law, Bowers v. Hardwick. The ruling became a rallying point for gay activists. Justice Kennedy concluded that decision "was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today," Kennedy wrote.

Harlow said striking down the Bowers decision could lead to other decisions favorable to gays in family law and employment discrimination cases.

Robert Knight, a spokesman for the conservative Culture and Family Institute, said Thursday's ruling would have "very real consequences."

Knight warned that it would undermine the legal foundation of marriage, lead to more deaths among gay men from sexually transmitted diseases and lead to schoolchildren being taught "that homosexual sodomy is he same as marital sex."

"This is social engineering by a court. It will have very bad effects on the idea of our republican form of government," Knight said. "If a government like Texas cannot legislate on public health, safety and morals, what can it legislate about?"

And the Rev. Rob Schenck, co-founder of the National Clergy Council, called it "a lamentable outcome."

The case is Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, case no. 02-0102.



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