They’ve Gone Off on Gender Bender

Down here in Ad-Lanta, where a whole city has been plastered with more advertisements than a stock-car driver’s hood, the big breaking news stories Tuesday all involved people who play that Olympic sport of fame and lore, tennis.

One of them was Steffi Graf, another was Pete Sampras, and the third was a Presbyterian minister who had a sex change.

Graf and Sampras, the golden girl and boy of pro tennis, pulled out of the Olympic Games. (And before anybody fires off a nasty letter, no, I’m sorry, but I refuse to refer to anyone of any age as a golden woman or golden man.)

I am sorry to see Steffi and Pete go, particularly because this career move could cost each of them nickels, perhaps even dimes.

Then there was Erin Swenson, who is not involved with the Olympics in any way, but had Atlanta’s attention nonetheless. Swenson, 48, was granted permission to play in Tuesday night’s city finals of the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Assn. tournament in the Senior League women’s division, even though she became a woman just last March.

Not all Atlantans were happy about this, among them senior women. But after two decades as an ordained Presbyterian clergyman, Swenson divorced his wife of 27 years, became a psychotherapist specializing in gender identity and took up women’s tennis, as many a former man has done.

Lawn tennis president Scott Vinson said he sympathized with senior women’s complaints, but he personally called up Swenson to ask her two questions: “One, did you have the surgery? And two, do you have a driver’s license that says you’re a female?”

Excellent questions both, I thought.

As an inquiring reporter, I wonder how Atlanta’s Olympic officials would handle such a delicate matter, should any of the tennis players entered in the 1996 medal competition attempt to switch divisions at the last minute, either from men’s to women’s or, well, you know, the other way.

It is one thing to disqualify a swimmer like Kristine Quance for zigging instead of zagging, or a sprinter like Ben Johnson for taking dash-enhancing drugs, but somehow I can’t see Olympic officials asking to see a driver’s license to make sure the winner is male or female. (Although they must have been tempted, back when there was such a place as East Germany.)

Besides, most of our gymnasts aren’t old enough to have driver’s licenses.

I still believe they will eliminate all of these sexually divisive classifications someday and simply have a unisex Olympics, much as they did 100 years ago. Except, rather than men only, this one would bring men and women together, splashing, running, wrestling, tumbling, shooting arrows from one quiver and making this crazy world of ours one gigantic dream team.

With the big Centennial Olympics ready to fire up the old wok, Atlanta is busy sprucing itself up, getting vagrants, prostitutes and sportswriters off the streets.

Advertisements have been slapped on practically everything, with the possible exception (so far) of Hank Aaron’s statue and Jane Fonda’s gym clothes. Nobody is wasting away here in Coca-Colaville.

It apparently is OK to advertise a commercial product on anything in town, as long as it isn’t breathing and doesn’t bark. A man just offered me $1 million to write that this paragraph is brought to you by Bausch & Lomb, the official contact lens of the ’96 Olympics, yes, Bausch & Lomb, for all your vision needs, but I said absolutely not.

Here in Atlanta, cost is no object. (Except for the customer). I don’t want to say things are expensive this week, but I saw an umpire charge $100 for brushing off home plate. M&M;’s are going for 50 cents an M. Horses at the equestrian competition have been complaining that they can afford only one oat.

Self-sanitizing, pay-per-use public toilets--I am not making this one up--are available throughout the Olympics, 25 cents per 15 minutes. So don’t dawdle in there. And, because no strollers will be permitted at athletic venues, babies must be carried, like papooses. Infants are required to have tickets. You lap-sitters, take a hike.

The fact that Graf and Sampras withdrew shouldn’t really matter. Most of the infants I know were only interested in seeing Andre Agassi anyway.

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* A DOUBLE FAULT

The tennis competition lost a double dose of star power when Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf withdrew because of injuries. C7