I’ll Climb That Hill In My Own Way: (Dis)Locating The Naturalized Body In Professional Cycling’s Banned Erythropoietin Use Between 1990-2010 (6/6)

Part 6: Conclusion (& Bibliography). The case study of erythropoietin in the Tour de France is intriguing precisely because it acts in ways not fully explored by feminist critique, yet it nevertheless continues to reify the perceived “natural” boundaries upon which gender- and race-based oppressions make their foundations.

Introduction | Background: Drug Testing and Gender Segregation | Case Study: The Transformation of the Natural Body in Cycling’s Epo Era | “Natural” is Discourse | The Discourses Surrounding Banned Performance-enhancing Techniques Perpetuate Gendered and Raced Narratives of Natural Difference | Conclusion | Bibliography

Conclusion

The case study of erythropoietin in the Tour de France is intriguing precisely because it acts in ways not fully explored by feminist critique, yet it nevertheless continues to reify the perceived “natural” boundaries upon which gender- and race-based oppressions make their foundations. Cycling’s evolving relationship with performance-enhancing drugs serves as a framing lens for this study, which intends to begin the process of filling a gap in how the academy understands the narratives surrounding contemporary medicalized sports cheating as a continuation of the gendering processes that began with gender verification and androgen tests.

Sports intend to produce and render visible purported natural difference through competition. The gender segregation in sports is one such realm in which assumptions of natural difference spill into the socialized construction and categorization of sexually dimorphic bodies. This segregation is predicated on two factors: 1) that there are two types of naturally different bodies that should be grouped along a binary opposition determined by genitalia; and 2) that male athletic ability surpasses female athletic ability to such an extent that competition between these two bodily categories is impossible or unfair. The nature or purpose of sexual segregation, then, is to uphold the concept of fairness from which inequality can be expressed in sporting terms. This, too, is the purpose of anti-doping campaigns and drug tests: to construct a stable site of equal opportunity from which to naturalize the inequality that thrives as a result.

In this sense, ideas of illicit performance enhancements contribute to concepts of the natural. That the natural is a discursive effect inscribed with rich social meanings, rather than simply an objective truth that governs human existence, in turn means that the disruption of these narratives is a disruption of the complex positionalities that become naturalized in the body. Certain performance enhancements are banned because they act too much in altering the body, undermining the equality of opportunity that allows sporting participation to render natural difference visible. This places social bodily norms as an extension of natural, and presumes that both must be preserved.

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Conclusion

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