Sex and Gender in Sport

In this paper, I link philosophical discussion of policies for trans inclusion or exclusion, to a method of policy making. I address the relationship between concerns about safety, fairness, and inclusion in policy making about the inclusion of transwomen athletes into women’s sport. I argue for an approach based on lexical priority rather than simple ‘balancing’, considering the different values in a specific order. I present justifying reasons for this approach and this lexical order, based on the special obligations of (...) International Federations such as World Rugby. As a result, I provide a justificatory framework for the WR Guidelines that exclude transwomen from the women’s game in WR competitions. Finally, I give an account of a maximally safe, maximally fair and maximally inclusive form of sex categorisation in sport. (shrink)

A number of sport philosophers have noted the potential of sport as meaningful narrative and storytelling. While these arguments are convincing, they fail to acknowledge that not all athletes exper...

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue (...) that attempts to address the problem of women’s recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women’s achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence. (shrink)

Jane English, a pioneer in feminist sport philosophy, mentioned one simple idea that has received insufficient attention, but its consequences are of great importance for decreasing discrimination...

This paper addresses some problems arising with respect to the male/female binary division that has traditionally been central to most sports. One strategy for dealing with this problem is to remov...

Her name was Flavia Thalassia and she came from Ephesus. She won the stadion for parthenoi at the Isolympic Sebasta Games in Naples during Domitian’s reign in the late 1st c. C...

In a way, there is nothing surprising about Plato’s promotion of sport for women in Republic and Laws; it is logically implied by his philosophical theories. In another way, Plato’s vision of femal...

Issues surrounding the inclusion of transgender and intersex athletes in the women’s category in sport have spurred vigorous, and sometimes vicious, debate. The loudest voices on one edge of the de...

Recent debate by feminist scholars in philosophy of sport has been focused on the status of women’s sport as a protected category. Positions have varied significantly, from no need for a protected category anymore—to allow women’s sport to flourish and to give them a fair opportunity, given that men’s sport still dominates, just as it has in the past.It will be argued that: i) the concept of a ‘protected category’ is tied logically to the concept of fair play and has (...) been defined and enforced through the rules in sport and generally requires some kind of certification for inclusion. These specific rules will be analyzed in detail. Having separate women’s events means that logically it must be possible to exclude, and exclusion is not a popular stance as many have argued that the onus is on inclusion from a human rights perspective. Thus, sport policy makers are truly in an intractable position. On the one hand, no qualifying athlete should have to ‘dope down’ (or ‘dope up’) to compete in the Olympic Games. On the other hand, women athletes have argued that sex equality in competitive sport is a legitimate goal and that separating athletes in competition by biological sex traits is the only way to achieve this goal. It seems criminal to ask athletes to ‘dope down’ to be able to compete in the Olympic Games, however, although a new auxiliary rule creating new sub-classification of women athletes with testosterone higher than the stipulated cut off seems logical on the face of it, these cases are statistically rare. It is concluded that the community of women athletes should have the most significant voice, as historically, the criteria for the women’s sport-protected category have been predominantly determined by men. That is not to say that men’s voices, or voices outside of the women’s sports community of practitioners, cannot be heard, but they should not be the deciding factor. (shrink)

The topic of Women’s sport has engendered increasing scholarship across differing disciplines in recent years; however, in the philosophy of sport literature, it has not been as abundant as it migh...

In 2018 the World Heath Organization decided to re-examine the classification of gender identity disorder and exclude it from being defined as a mental illness. This re-examination means that sex a...

Throughout 2019, retired athletes Martina Navratilova, Sharron Davies, Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe all spoke publically about what they perceive to b...

In this article, we scrutinize views that justify exclusionary policies regarding transgender athletes based primarily on physiological criteria. We introduce and examine some elements that deserve...

It is true that not all women are born equal, and likewise, not all men are born equal, so before the game even starts, there are some athletes with longer legs, bigger hands and unusually high testosterone levels. These are natural properties and structures that have the potential to cause an unfair advantage. It is argued that since athletes are not born equal, natural properties should not be controlled or suppressed but ought to be considered as fair play in sports. (...) Forcing intersex female athletes to lower their testosterone levels to compete is not only sexist and discriminatory, it is unethical. The question of fair play is at the forefront here as I seek to work from the premise that natural inequalities have always existed and will continue to exist in competitive sports. As long as these exist, competitions will not be fair. Since athletes have no control over these natural inequalities, they are neither causally nor morally responsible for them. (shrink)

In Hypatia's 3, issue, Xinyan Jiang describes a failed experiment in sexual equality conducted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She believes the lesson to be drawn from it is that males will continue to have an advantage in societies requiring much physical strength. In contrast, I argue here that this failed experiment shows that the Maoist attempt to force women into men's roles was not feminist. American pioneers are cited as a counterexample.