Korean Mean Girls Demand Top Women's Soccer Player Take Gender Test

By Erin Gloria Ryan  |  November 8, 2013 | 8:10pm
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South Korean ladies’ soccer dynamo Park Eun-Seon is good at her sport. Real good. Like, man good. At least, according to a cabal of her fellow women’s soccer league players, who have threatened to stop playing unless the league subjects Park to a humiliating gender test and releases the results to the public.

The problem, it seems, stems from the fact that in recent years, Park went from being pretty OK at soccer to being one of the best soccer players in the league. Last season, she was the league’s top scorer, with 19 goals in 22 games. She’s also larger than the average Korean woman — standing 5’9″ and weighing 163 lbs.

Of course, none of this means that Park Eu-Seon is SUDDENLY A MAN, nor does it justify her leaguemates’ incredibly childish threatened boycott.

In in a Facebook post, Park pointed out that she’s undergone gender tests before, that she’s embarrassed by other athletes’ accusations, and that she’s a woman. This is what she wrote, according to CNN:

My heart aches and it is humiliating.
I’ve been through gender tests many times and competed in the World Cup and the Olympics.
I know these people are trying to destroy me … In the past, I would have thrown my hands up and left, but I’ve worked so hard to get to this point, and I will not give up so easily.

Luckily, South Korea’s sports governing body isn’t into subjecting a female athlete to a gender test because some other athletes are worried that she’s too good at sports. It said in a statement,

Park’s gender was tested by Korean Football Association in 2004 when she was selected to national team for Athens Olympics.
The demand from coaches from six different clubs to test the gender of Park again is double jeopardy.
This is betraying the fundamental human rights of a player which should be protected at all means.

This is a far better outcome to gender questioning fuckery than what happened in the case of South African sprinter Caster Semenya, who just a few years ago was forced to sit out of competition for 11 months while she waited for the results of a “gender test.” Test results showed that she did, in fact, qualify to compete in women’s track.

[CNN]

 
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