Al Arabiya reported that eight members of the Iranian Women's Soccer team are not actually woman and having been playing on the national team without a sex change operation. Some of those cited played their entire career as men but only revealed their gender on their last day of duty. Seven players were terminated because of this controversy.
This is not the first time that the Iranian women's team has been over-inclusive in their team make up. In 2014, when the Iranian governing soccer body started gender testing, it was revealed that four players on the women's national team were men awaiting sex change operations.
The Iranian womens' soccer team is renowned for wearing a modified hijab when they are on the pitch. FIFA banned the Iranian Womens' team in 2011 as the international body deemed the headscarf unsafe. Perhaps. But headwear certainly helped hide these sporting Tootsies.
Ironically, the Iranian Women's soccer team has experienced troubled fielding legitimate women soccer stars abroad. Last month, standout player Niloufar Ardalan was stopped from traveling to Malaysia for a match by her husband who wanted his wife to follow sharia law by staying home and caring for her child.
Aside from the jocular grotequeries of the Iranian Womens' Soccer team farce, this brings up several ancillary meta-issues. President Obama made an Executive Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran over Nuclear Arms. Many questioned provisions which allow the Iranians to self inspect, citing their history of cheating. The multiple malfeasance by the Iranian Womens' soccer team does nothing to dissuade this perception of Persian prevarications.
Secondly, the number of Iranian Womens' Soccer players who are supposedly having sex change operation calls into question transgender issues. While operations may mutilate genitlia to mimic the female body features, does it really change someone's genetics. In the wake of Bruce "Call Me Cait" Jenner's rollout, questioning this scientific fact can bring a civil discussion to blows.
Last year, MMA fighter Tamikka Brents reacted to her Technical Knock Out by transgendered athlete Fallon Fox (ne Boyd Burton). Brents opined:
I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because she was born a man or not because I’m not a doctor. I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right. Her grip was different, I could usually move around in the clinch against other females but couldn’t move at all in Fox’s clinch…
Some say this is just sour grapes after being TKO'ed. Perhaps. But does a sex change operation change a person's skeletal and muscular structure? Of course not. This XY advantage becomes more evident in combat sports like Mixed Martial Arts, boxing and wrestling.
Lately, the political news has been abuzz over politically incorrect comments made by Republican Presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson about how he could never support an unreserved Islamist for President. Liberals lambasted the proud non-politician candidate as being a racist (which incorrectly presupposes that Islam is a race). But the crux of the matter is that an Islamist adheres to sharia, a holistic religious, cultural and political legal system which supersedes any existing secular law.
Part of sharia allows for taqiyya, deception to advance one's aims by cheating. It is sad to wonder if the Iranian "Womens'" Soccer team had to cheat to try to win, but the hijabs seem to do more than protect a woman's female honor on the field. What a Farsi (sic)!
