Case of Mistaken Identity : Costa Mesa cops think female bodybuilders don’t look like women

A new instrument of sexism--”the visual search”--was introduced in Costa Mesa recently after two women were stopped by police outside a women’s bathroom at a Pacific Amphitheatre concert.

The women were body-builders and apparently didn’t fit some peoples’ idea of femaleness.

Responding to a complaint that men might be in a women’s restroom, police officers stopped the two women. One reportedly accused the women of being transsexuals and asked them to prove their gender. Lori Sencer, 28, produced a driver’s license, but 20-year-old Bridget Morton didn’t have one. A female security officer was located and ordered to take Morton to a private location and watch while she unzipped her jeans. The security officer visually verified that Morgan was a woman.

The officers left the scene, but that wasn’t the end of the incident. The women say they plan to file a claim against the city for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. Their lawyer hoped any settlement would necessarily include the city’s promise that police officers undergo sensitivity training on women’s issues.

The Costa Mesa incident follows another in Lewisville, Tex. There a father asked a referee to verify that three young girls on a soccer team playing against his daughter’s team were indeed female.

Both incidents are troubling examples of gender stereotyping.

Sports sociologist Don Sabo correctly observes that in the United States the body has become “contested terrain” in the gender wars. That is, when women attempt to step outside male-defined boundaries of beauty or body types--such as by participating in bodybuilding--they can expect to suffer.

Among high school students, for example, ridicule of those who don’t fit the dominant stereotype is used as a tool to enforce conformity.

But police officers should be above such adolescent mentalities. The Costa Mesa officers involved in the “visual search” incident owe the two women an apology.