Chapter 14 Section 1

Under the hazy sky, several female runners ran with their backs to the old factory.The movements of each player's hands and feet are powerful and full of rhythm.It seems that the results should be good.Zhe Lang always felt that even for long-distance runners, their speed far exceeds the speed of ordinary people sprinting with all their strength.It is not easy for them to run thousands or tens of thousands of meters without stopping at that speed. What Zhelang was looking for was their coach - Fumio Arisaka. The coach set his eyes on the digital computer, then looked at Zhelang, as if asking: How?His eyes were full of confidence, and he didn't think he would hear negative opinions at all.Of course, Zhe Lang didn't intend to spoil his mood either.

"Looks good. They're better than the last time I saw them." Arisaka nodded, reached into the inner side of the dark blue tracksuit, and scratched his armpits creakingly.He was not fat, but there was some flab around his neck.When he was a player, he was as thin as a pencil.That year, he gained attention in the Hakone Marathon Relay, but after entering the professional track and field team, his results stagnated.He is a player who is often injured. "By the way, what are you going to interview today? Didn't you just interview the marathon relay a while ago?" Arisaka asked Zhelang.

"Honestly, I have something to ask you. Didn't I mention the players from No. 1 High School to you before?" "Daiichi High School?" At this point, Arisaka had a recalled expression on his face. "Oh, Sue Yong?" "Well, Suenaga Mutsumi... I want to ask you about that player." "If you want to inquire about her, you'd better ask Mr. Nakahara, he knows better. But," Arisaka asked Zhelang, "are you going to interview that child?" "I want to meet her." "Well, I advise you that it's better not to see her."

The two had just stepped into the players' locker room when a short man in a short white trench coat walked towards Arisaka. "Mr. Arisaka, I put the muscle strength information you asked for earlier on the table." "Oh, thank you. By the way, Mr. Nishiwaki seems to need a doctor." "Oh, what's the matter?" The man smiled at Zhe Lang.He is the doctor of the track and field team, his name is Zhong Yuan, and he is also an associate professor of the university. "He wants to ask about Su Yong." "Haha." The smile disappeared from around Zhong Yuan's eyes.He sat on a bench beside him. "What do you want to ask about the boy?"

"Specifically, I heard that she is intersex, isn't it?" "Well, she has a disease of incomplete sexual differentiation, and her reproductive organs have the characteristics of both men and women." "Is she a woman on household registration?" "It's a female. Probably when she was born, the penis was unrecognizable. This kind of case is called true intersex, and the patient has both testicular and ovarian tissue. This kind of person often has difficulty distinguishing between male and female when they are babies." "Is that contestant really a hermaphrodite?"

"There's nothing true or false, I said it myself." Arisaka interjected. Arisaka said that he knew about the player named Sueyong Mumi this summer.The chance to get to know her was when a senior from her No. 1 High School track and field team approached Arisaka for consultation, asking if intersex athletes could participate in the women's competition. Suenaga Mumi had been living the same life as ordinary girls until she entered junior high school.She never questioned her body.But in the winter of the second year of middle school, she was admitted to the hospital because of a car accident.At that time, the attending physician discovered the secret of her body.

After her parents learned the truth, they still didn't want her to undergo surgery.The main reason seems to be that there is no particularly inconvenient impact at present, and economic problems may also be one of the reasons.Later, Suenaga Mutsumi went to high school as an ordinary girl and joined the track and field club. Soon, Mutsumi's body changed and gradually became masculine.At the same time, her track and field performance began to improve.The consultant of the track and field team was confused, because when she joined the track and field club, she revealed to the consultant that she was a hermaphrodite.

"Because he has testicles, he will secrete male hormones, just like female athletes taking doping. In fact, that child named Sueyong also has muscles that girls can't have. I think the reason why she can It is probably because of this reason that the astonishing record was set." Zhong Yuan explained. "Although she didn't leave an official record, her consultant said she once ran 5,000 meters in less than 15 minutes." Arisaka's answer made Zhelang's eyes widen. "Isn't this a Japanese record?" "I heard that she once ran 3,000 meters in less than nine minutes."

"That's amazing too." Zhe Lang raised his voice. "But if the gender is checked, it should be determined that she is not a woman?" Hearing Zhe Lang's question, Zhong Yuan shook his head and said, "No, the gender check should determine that she is a woman." "Ah, is it?" "There are many inspection methods. Recently, a method of multiplying DNA is used, which is called PCR method. It is basically the same as before. It is to check the sex chromosomes. You should have heard that males are XY type, and females are XX type, right? " "yes."

"The latest method, which was adopted from the Barcelona Olympics, will find people with Y chromosomes. But true intersex people do not have Y chromosomes, so even if they are checked, they will pass the test as women." "In that case, wouldn't there be no problem with that child named Sue Yong?" "In fact, there will be no problems in the inspection. There have been precedents for such players to appear in the past." "Maybe they appear often now." Arisaka said, "In foreign countries, there are often some players who are highly doubtful and openly appear on the stage."

"As long as they can pass the gender check, outsiders have no reason to make a fuss about their appearance." "Then it's fine for Contestant Yong to do the same." Zhe Lang said tentatively. "The problem is that it's morally unjustifiable." Nakahara said, "Intersex is a congenital disease. She has the ability that women do not have due to the disease. Don't you think there is a problem with this kind of player playing?" "You mean it's not fair?" "This is also one of them. However, before talking about fairness and unfairness, shouldn't we first consider the perception of people around us? Some people think that since you are sick, you should give priority to treatment. Players should play with the goal of setting a record." "But if the people around you don't know..." "That's right, if no one knows, maybe it's okay. But we know. I often think it's fine if we don't know." Arisaka smiled wryly. "It would be nice if she kept it from us. In this way, we can snare her without hesitation. But since we know, we can't do that." Arisaka said it in a joking tone, but there was some truth in it. "What about the rules?" "There are no official rules. Perhaps it is more appropriate to say that there is no way to formulate rules. As I said just now, the current gender inspection cannot detect true intersex people, so players can only declare on their own initiative." Zhong Yuan's explanation did not solve Zhe Lang's suspense. "Then, what if the intersex player wants to play?" "It is impossible for us not to allow her to play, but the Japan Athletics Federation should not let her play." "The reason?" "It will make the record meaningless. What if that player breaks the Japanese record? Will it really be a new Japanese record for women?" Zhe Lang was unable to answer, he understood the crux of the problem. "I think she's a good player," Arisaka said. "I think she'd be a great player even if she didn't have that special body. However, even if she wanted to compete, someone would have to intervene." .There's never going to be any good going against athletics. At the end of the day, it's up to us to talk players out of it. And then it doesn't make any sense. Because we can't sign players who can't play." This is a natural statement as a coach of a professional track and field team.Zhe Lang nodded. "Then Eiji gave up track and field. When she entered the high school track and field team, she also felt that she could not participate. She was purely interested. She set a Japanese record just out of interest," Arisaka scratched his head. "She really isn't a woman." When returning home from Taiming Industry, Tetsumin was on the tram thinking about the contestant Sue Inaga Mumi.The reason why he wanted to know about her was because of Mei Yue's confession. "Gender identity disorder" and "intersex" are the same beyond gender, even if they are different physically and mentally.What worries Zhe Lang is how to treat such a person? It's not that Zhe Lang doesn't understand the reason why intersex players cannot be accepted in women's sports. They have physical strength comparable to men, and it is indeed difficult to compare with ordinary female players. However, aren't they women?They are women on household registration, and they themselves have the self-consciousness of being women, but they are not treated as women. Isn't this unreasonable? Doping is of course a despicable act.But true intersex contestants can secrete male hormones, which is just their own special ability.And the matter of sports, on a certain level, isn't it a battle of special abilities?For example, there is such a saying in the field of track and field - sprinters are not cultivated, but born with.This means that the quality of being an ace runner is determined by genes from birth.The reason why a group of black athletes can compete for the 100-meter gold medal in the Olympics and World Series also shows that this is the case.They obviously have more special abilities than other races. However, the distinction between men and women in the sports world has created conflicts in other ways besides the way it treats intersex people. Dr. Zhongyuan said that some cases pointed out that some contestants appeared to be female in everyone's eyes, and their household registration was written as female. "The test is basically limited to investigating whether the subject has a Y chromosome. But in fact, some women also have a Y chromosome. Although they can undoubtedly be said to be female, at least in sports, they are not physically strong. advantage over the average woman." Zhongyuan continued, there are two types, one is suffering from testicular feminization.The receptors for androgens are absent in the cells of patients with this disease.Therefore, even if the testicles secrete more male hormones, the body will not be masculine.In other words, despite having testicles and having XY chromosomes, the body is completely female. The other is a patient with gonadal dysgenesis.This is a condition in which the testicles shrink early in the womb so they cannot produce male hormones.Patients with this disease have XY chromosomes, and they should develop into a male body, but due to the lack of male hormones, they become a female body. Because the chromosomes in both cases were XY, they failed the sex test.And they are obviously female in appearance, and society recognizes them as female.Not only that, but I also don't feel any repulsion towards being a woman. "At present, these two diseases are widely known. As long as they are checked and certified by a doctor, they can already qualify for the competition. However, even if patients with this disease have set an excellent record in the past, they still cannot participate in large-scale competitions that require gender checks." Zhe Lang thought, really unreasonable. "This is simply nonsense. Besides, even if there are measures to deal with this kind of players, they will still be viewed in a different light, and it can even be said that human rights issues have been involved. Simply put, gender inspection means that as long as there is a large amount of A person who secretes and is affected by male hormones is not a woman. This can indeed make a clear distinction. But can gender really be distinguished in this way? The real intersex contestant is the result of the opposite opinion of this argument. " So what should we do?Zhe Lang couldn't be satisfied with Zhong Yuan's answer. "I personally think that we should completely change the idea that men and women are different. Because the boundary between men and women is blurred, if you forcefully draw the boundary line, many contradictions will naturally arise. If you have to draw a certain boundary line, you must make it clear and explain this. A way to draw lines and draw lines that divide men and women." Zhe Lang thinks about Mei Yue's situation.She considers herself a man, so if she wants to join a sports club, of course she would want to join the men's team.That's not impossible, since gender checks are only for female players.However, Mizuki should have no chance of winning if she plays against a male player.If you want to play under fair conditions, you can only register under the women's team in the end. Zhe Lang thought, as Zhong Yuan said, it may be extremely difficult to distinguish between men and women, and it is not limited to the sports world. Zhe Lang hopes to gradually end this player forever.Zhong Yuan said: "If there is a chance, I will ask you again."