...______________sexpolice

Both the scientific and social interpretations are increasingly complicated and controversial. The International Olympic Committee has found itself at the center of the uncertainty. The first shock came when Hermann Ratjen, who ran as Dora Ratjen for Germany in the 1930s, confessed in 1957 that he had disguised himself at the request of the Nazi Youth Movement. So in 1966, as the opportunities for women to compete expanded rapidly, a panel of judges began checking female athletes for vaginal openings, overlarge clitorises, a penis or testicles. By 1968, chromosome testing replaced these "nude parades," and in 1992, a more sophisticated instrument to hunt for the SRY gene was adopted. But as the technology advanced, so did the confusion.

Five women out of 2,406 tested "male" in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Eight women in the 1996 Atlanta games didn't pass as females. In February, the Athletes' Commission of the International Olympics Committee urged its parent organization to do away with sex analysis entirely and rely instead on observed urination during drug testing to pinpoint any likely imposters.

Anatomy, gonads, hormones, genes, rearing, identity and even the presumptions of others all play into a person's sex. "To select only one, the genetic sex, out of a large number of sex-determining factors and analyze for that one is scientifically incorrect," says Arne Ljungqvist, head of the International Amateur Athletics Federation doping commission.

Both women and men in sports have begun to accept a broader definition of what a "woman" is, accepting those with chromosomal variations and sometimes even testes. Intersex activists hope pediatric specialists also will quit worrying about what those jock straps contain -- and indeed, some already have.

William Reiner, who started out as a urologic surgeon, went back to school after witnessing the misery of children living with the results of sex-correction surgery. Now a child psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University, he says the most important sex organ is the brain. Reiner doesn't buy any theories about a range in biological sex; in fact he thinks it's quite binary. All the more reason to step back from aggressive enforcement, he says. Sure, go ahead and assign sex at birth, he suggests, but in the final analysis boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and they know what they are better than any parent or doctor.

Some surgeries are medically necessary, and many seem to turn out just fine. Reiner hopes to sort out some of the mysteries by following the lives of 700 children born with atypical genitals, 40 of whom had their sex reassigned at birth. "The kids are going to tell us the answers," he says. Cheryl Chase thinks she knows some already. She founded the network that grew into the Intersex Society of North America, a clan of 1,400 whose anatomy doesn't fit the binary ideal. Born with both ovarian and testicular tissue, Cheryl started out life as Charlie. But doctors decided later that since she was potentially fertile and had a short penis, she'd be better off as a girl. Her parents changed her name, threw away photographs and birthday cards and had her clitoris removed when she was 18 months old. Her ovotestis came out at age 8. She was in her 20s and living as a lesbian in the 1970s when she dug up the truth about her birth and life as a boy -- making her feel like an imposter in her own community. And for her, like many others who had surgery on their genitals, the missing parts and scarring made sex more likely to bring pain than pleasure.

The Intersex Society doesn't oppose assigning gender at birth. Instead it -- and now some medical specialists -- urges parents and doctors to refrain from surgery and be open to a change in sex identity later.

But Chase, for one, isn't waiting for culture to come to terms with biology. "I'm focused on practical changes that come quickly, not pie in the sky," Chase says. "I would much rather keep my clitoris and have orgasms than have a box to check off."

Helena Harmon-Smith, Patrick's mother, says she wants children like her son to be allowed their own decisions -- and more than anything, to be recognized as real. "My son was one of the lucky few -- because he is technically both. He can be boy or girl," she says. She will never forgive Patrick's doctor for making the choice for him.

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