the Female Body GOVERNING

Beyond X-X and X-Y 279
somes indicated that they were unused by the cell, and hence were
inactive. Researchers had been concerned with the double dosage of
the X chromosome in females’ cells because use having an additional
chromosome had been recognized to cause Down’s syndrome. The
observation that the extra X chromosome was inactive explained why
it did not cause a major defect. Gradually the physical entity of the
“second” X chromosome became termed the Barr body.” This apparently
static and inactive construct became the identifying determination of
a genetic female, which lent “sex” new scientifi c credibility and social
legitimacy.
The Barr-body test, which was used to detect the presence of the
second, inactive X chromosome in the Olympic Games, is an example
of what Dean (2004) terms technologies of governmentality. Dean
differentiates between the technologies of agency, in this case the
structure that lent support to the separation of the Olympic Games into
female and male sports. This type of technology “enhances and improves
our capacities for participation, agreement and action . . . and allows
the formation of more or less durable identities, agencies and will”
(p. 173). The creation of the female athlete as an identity rested on the
generally held assumptions that women were slower, weaker, and could
not compete on an equal basis with male athletes. The Barr-body test
acts as a technology of performance, “which made possible the indirect
regulation and surveillance of these entities” (p. 173), and it did so by
shaping the notion women could be separated from men on the basis
of their inactive biologically.
Governing female athletes based on their cells was rooted in the
principle that mammalian females only required one functioning
X chromosome. This defi ned human females in terms of their inactive
and nonfunctioning genetic unit. However, this assessment strategy
proved diffi cult because several women had undiagnosed intersex conditions,
and they became publicly stigmatized by the tests as not “real”
women. Under pressure, the testing changed to defi ne as female those
who did not possess a gene called Sex Region on the Y chromosome
(SRY), which, as will be detailed later, leads to the formation of the
testis. This, too, defi ned female as a lack of a gene. Recently this has
been abandoned due to the high rates of “false positives” and the argument
that sport clothing and offi cially monitored drug tests decrease
the likelihood of “illegally passing” as a female (Simpson, Ljungqvist,
Chapelle, et al., 1993). Rather than having sex governed by a routine
sex test and awarding of a “certifi cate of sex,” the culturally imposed
elements of the everyday activity of female athletes, their clothing, and
drug testing, are seen as suffi cient to regulate their participation.