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Body, doubt and dignity: What the case of Nayara Ferreira teaches us
2025-10-26 11:37:28 / IDE
The Albanian Volleyball Federation has requested that Brazilian athlete Nayara Ferreira, a player for Dinamo Volleyball Club, undergo a “gender test,” following a complaint from two rival clubs. Ferreira, with a 15-year international career and a recognized license from the FIVB, has been temporarily suspended while the procedure is reviewed.
But beyond the incident, this case raises a much deeper question: how do we treat another person’s body when it does not match our expectations?
In the absence of a clear legal or medical basis, the request for gender testing seems more like an act of suspicion than a sporting procedure.
In essence, it turns into an intrusion on human dignity and privacy, a line that sport should never cross.
Ferreira is not an unknown name: she has played in several European countries, with valid licenses and without any previous incidents. Why, then, does the need to verify her body arise here?
In this event, sport becomes a mirror of a broader culture: a culture of suspicion towards what is different.
When a strong, confident and successful woman on the field challenges stereotypes, society often demands “proof” that she is who she says she is. This is a modern form of control over the body, disguised as a concern for the fairness of the competition.
This mechanism, described in the last century by Michel Foucault, is not only related to sport: it is the way in which power seeks to keep the body and identity under control, especially the female body.
Thus, the “gender test” becomes an old ritual to guarantee the new order.
International standards – from the Olympic Charter to the decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport – clearly stipulate that any such testing must be based on strong reasons, clear evidence and the consent of the athlete herself. Otherwise, it is not an act of verification, but an ethical violation.
In Ferreira’s case, the lack of transparency and guarantees of privacy creates the risk that Albania will find itself in the same debate where many other federations have collapsed – between order and respect, between biology and dignity.
At a deeper level, this event reveals a well-known social fear: the fear of blurring boundaries. Between male and female, between “normal” and “other”, between what we understand and what surpasses us.
When we do not know how to cope with this uncertainty, we invent procedures and tests, verifications, articles to calm our anxiety. But no test can measure humanity.
Essentially, the Ferreira case does not ask whether she should play or not, but how we want to behave as a society when we need to verify the human being.
If sport is truly a field of honesty and respect, then it must begin with respect for the athlete’s own body.
This case can serve as a moment of institutional and social education: to build ethical protocols that protect human dignity before every competition.
Because in the end, beyond points and trophies, what remains is the way we have treated others.
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