In March, Anaya Bangar, underwent gender affirming surgery. The former Mumbai Under-19 cricketer, who played with the likes of Sarfaraz Khan, will now head to Australia to play Community Cricket. By @pdevendra indianexpress.com/article/sp…

The overlooked consequence of WTA's new sex testing policy. The WTA has introduced mandatory genetic testing for every player seeking to compete on the women's professional tour. The policy has largely been discussed through the lens of transgender participation in sport. But the athletes most likely to receive an unexpected result may not be transgender women. They may be women who have always lived and competed as women, but unknowingly have an intersex variation. Under the new policy, players must complete a one-off test for the SRY gene, usually through a cheek swab or blood sample. The SRY gene is normally found on the Y chromosome and plays a central role in male sex development. A positive result triggers further medical assessment before a player's eligibility is determined. @Peter_Fitz Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi ⏩ Former Australian doubles world No.1 Rennae Stubbs questioned what problem the policy was intended to address. "There aren't any," Stubbs said of transgender women competing on the professional tour during The Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast. "There are currently no known transgender women competing in professional tennis." Stubbs also rejected the suggestion that men would transition simply to gain an advantage in women's sport. "No man is deciding at 18 or 20 years of age, 'You know what? I think I can win Wimbledon if I just become a woman, I'm going to start taking oestrogen and do all these things to get myself a Wimbledon title'," she said."It just doesn't happen." She also revealed she underwent sex verification before representing Australia at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. "We actually got given a card to basically say, 'Oh yeah, you're a woman, you have the genes of a female, therefore you can participate'," Stubbs said. "I thought it was such an invasion of my own privacy back then. "Why the WTA needs to venture into this category of controversy is just bizarre to me." Sport has done this before. Mandatory sex verification is not new. International sporting bodies introduced widespread testing of women during the 1960s, initially through physical examinations and later through chromosome screening. The testing was presented as a way to stop men from entering women's competition. History shows something quite different happened. Medical reviews found that rather than identifying men masquerading as women, the programmes instead identified women with previously unknown variations in their sex characteristics, while also producing false positives and disputed findings that fuelled growing scientific criticism. For many athletes, the consequences were profound. Some had careers disrupted or ended, while many had deeply private medical information exposed to public scrutiny.  Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño was ruled ineligible after chromosome testing identified a Y chromosome in the 1980s. She later revealed she had androgen insensitivity syndrome, meaning her body could not respond typically to the hormones associated with male development. Martínez-Patiño successfully challenged the decision and returned to competition, but only after losing years of her career and having deeply private medical information made public. The experiences of athletes such as Martínez-Patiño helped prompt scientists, doctors and sporting officials to question whether chromosome screening was scientifically justified or ethically appropriate. The International Olympic Committee abandoned universal chromosome screening in 1999 following sustained criticism from researchers, clinicians and athletes. Now, more than 25 years later, broad genetic screening is returning to elite women's sport. Source: The First Serve share.google/EGW7IF2suSjrx4Q…

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