A Gene Test for the Women's Line

What's happening

The International Olympic Committee announced on March 26 that women's events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will be restricted to athletes who test negative for the SRY gene, the genetic marker that triggers male development. The policy requires a one-time screening via saliva or blood for all women athletes. IOC president Kirsty Coventry called the decision "led by medical experts" and said biological males competing in women's events would be neither fair nor safe.

The rule bars transgender women and most athletes with differences in sexual development. Caster Semenya said the policy was born "from political pressure." Andrew Sinclair, who discovered the SRY gene, cautioned it "does not tell you how SRY is functioning, whether a testis has formed, whether testosterone is produced." The IOC used genetic testing from the 1960s through the 1990s before abandoning it after false positives.

What the text says

Psalm 139:13-1613For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb.14I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well.15My frame wasn't hidden from you, when I was made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth.16Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.

The psalmist describes the formation of a human being with the language of craft. "You knit me together" uses the Hebrew sakak, a weaving term. The body is not accidental tissue. It is constructed with intention, "intricately woven in the lowest parts of the earth," a phrase that imagines the womb as a hidden workshop where God does careful, deliberate work.

What makes this passage remarkable is its simultaneous insistence on two truths. The body is specific, particular, made with intention. And the person inside the body is known by God before the body is finished. "Your eyes saw my body, yet being imperfect" (golem, an unformed substance, the only time this word appears in the Hebrew Bible). The person exists before the body is complete. Identity precedes biology in the psalm's own sequence.

This creates a tension the IOC policy cannot resolve. The body is real and purposeful. The person who inhabits it exceeds any single genetic marker. The psalm holds both without choosing.

The reflection

The IOC chose a gene. One marker, tested once, to draw a line that has eluded institutions for decades. The simplicity is appealing. The psalm suggests it is not sufficient. Scripture insists the body is crafted with purpose and that the person inside it is known before the craft is complete.

Fairness in competition matters, and bodies carry real differences. What the psalm adds is a layer the test cannot reach: the human being is always more than the sum of their biology, and the one who made them knows the difference.