Featured events


7-9 September 2012
Brussels Games
Brussels

Brussels Gay Sports will offer a weekend of fun and fairplay in the capital of Europe, with volleyball, swimming, badminton, and tennis, as well as fitness and hiking.

Learn more HERE.
26-28 October 2012
QueergamesBern
Bern, Switzerland

The success of the first edition of the QueergamesBern proved the need for an LGBT multisport event in Switzerland. This year will be even bigger, with badminton, bowling, running, walking, floorball.

Learn more HERE.
17-20 January 2013
Sin City Shootout
Las Vegas
The 7th Sin City Shootout will feature softball, ice hockey, tennis, wrestling, basketball, dodgeball, bodybuilding and basketball.

Learn more HERE.

13-16 June 2013
IGLFA Euro Cup
Dublin
After this year's edition in Budapest at the EuroGames, the IGLFA Euro Cup heads to Dublin for 2013, hosted by the Dublin Devils and the Dublin Phoenix Tigers.

Learn more HERE.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Play the Game: Day 3, part 1

Find the Play the Game 2011 website with more information, photos, video, program, etc. HERE.

"Spornification" (photo Play the Game)
On day 3 of the conference, I followed the morning track on gender. The first session, on "the gender challenge to sport" opened with a study on the movement "from sexualization of sport to spornofication". The speakers analyzed the need for ever more provocative images of athletes. Of interest to us was the ever increasing explicit appeal of male athletes' bodies to gay men.

Next, Tine Rindum Teilmann, a member of the IOC's Women in Sport Commission and chair of the IPC Women in Sport Commission, spoke on efforts to engage sports federations in concrete steps to improve the place of women in positions of power in these institutions.

Annette Hoffmann
Finally, concrete examples of action in sport were given with the case of the legal attack on the discriminatory exclusion of women from ski jumping at the Vancouver Olympics. And in another look at Vancouver, an analysis was made of violence against women associated with ice hockey, whose culture is closely associated with team and violence.

View Part 1 and Part 2



Arne Ljungqvist
The second session concerned the "intersex challenge to sport", a subject with huge consequences for athletes. Arne Ljungqvist, Chairman of the IOC Medical Commission asked: "Is there a need for a third sex in sport?" His answer was "no".Ljungqvist is responsible for the end to "gender verification" in the IAAF and the IOC.
Georg M. Facius who followed Ljungqvist violently accused him of reinstating gender verification with the new IOC policy on intersex athletes, a claim that Ljungqvist denies, saying that the question is one not of gender verification, but of confirming eligibility of athletes to compete in women's divisions.
Kidd, Facius, Ljungqvist 
Bruce Kidd, an academic and former Olympic athlete, proposed an alternative to current biochemical-based thinking in the form of gender self-declaration.

View HERE.





Martin Hardie (photo Play the Games)
In the afternoon, I attended a session on doping, the highlight of which was a look at "Doping and surveillance - privacy rights vs. fair play practices" byNils Zurawski. He is astonished that in a society so concerned with privacy rights, the surveillance creep associated with anti-doping efforts goes almost without comment.

Other talks looked at cycling, with talks by Martin Hardie and Christophe Brissonneau with Bertrand Fincoeur.



Brissonneau and Fincoeur
A particular shocking story was told by Steven Selthoffer on the case of Claudia Pechstein.

View HERE.

Before this session, WADA was the focus of a special session, which can be viewed here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

A later session on tech doping can be viewed HERE.

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