A while back Sports NZ published its Guiding Principles for the Inclusion of Transgender People in Community Sport
In the now de rigeur format, in which appearance not so much overrides essence as smothers it, the guidelines start with a foreword from the CEO which signals the policy's underlying ideological thrust.
It moves on to the ubiquitous glossary of terms, which, in light of how politically and academically contested many of the concepts are, is highly ideological. This glossary does not disappoint and even notes that the concept of simply identifying as a particular gender has been phased out in preference for being a gender.
Par for the current gender identity course, they sidestep the vexed question of what gender is other than to saygender or gender identity describes "one's actual, internal sense of being male or female, (note the default order)neither of these, both etc."
Nor do they define female or male other than to make the standard nod to sex characteristics as "each person's physical features relating to sex, including genitalia and other sexual and reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and secondary physical features emerging from puberty."
As if all that exists separately from the wider body; as if it is possible to literally or even figuratively dissect the complex web of reproductive sex out of the body.
Symptomatic, compartmentalised, pharmacocentric, commercialised medicine has a lot to answer for.
But back to community sports.
We know that most sports and ALL big money/blue riband sports were developed to showcase male abilities and attributes, and they are still dominated by men because of historical sexism and misogyny.
Women were barred from all sports, then from some sports, and in some countries they are still barred or have to play in kit which hides their bodies to satisfy male created and imposed chastity standards.
In the sports in which women have fought their way to some level of equality, men are still very much the senior partners. Professional, elite sport is a huge global corporate industry, in turn dominated by men, and which channels most of its sponsorship etc to elite male athletes.
The discrimination against women in sports flowed/flows from patriarchal attitudes which are still very much in play even in countries which believe they've moved beyond them.
Discrimination was once always linked to qualifying words such as "unfair". The term now stands alone which makes a nonsense of the underlying concept in any sphere where decisions are made about inclusion – be that in recruitment and selection for a job, or who gets to play in a given sport at a given level and against whom.
To discriminate between two people each vying for a job or a place in a team or a competition, is to discriminate in favour of one and against the other.
Denying an adult 100kg rugby player a claimed right to play against kids who weigh 60kgs is to discriminate against that older, heavier person but in no sane world would anyone see that as unfair discrimination.It is discrimination in the sense of recognising relevant distinctions and differences which form the basis of a judgement.
The point – the entire point – of equality of opportunity in all spheres and at all levels, is to ensure that the processes and procedures involved, and the decisions arrived at are as fair as it is possible to make them.
In a community sport in which a male-bodied trans or non-binary person wishes to compete as a woman, and in which their right to absolute privacy is deemed to be paramount, how are the cultural and religious needs of women that preclude undressing in the presence of or being in bodily contact with a male person (irrespective of that person’s gender identity), to be met?
It is either weirdly illogical or stunningly cynical on the one hand to call for sporting uniforms / costumes to be of a sort that allows transgender and gender diverse people to hide the aids they use to “enable their body to more closely match their gender”, and to haul in the cultural and religious demands on women in support of that, while completely ignoring how those cultural/religious constraints will act to exclude natal women if male-bodied people are included in women’s sports.
It's just a small example of the contortions of logic this issue demands of its adherents.
There are no easy answers in this and those who simply say female equals anyone without a Y chromosome, stray into a form of biological determinism or reductionism which serves to exclude people born with compete androgen insensitivity syndrome, for example, who are phenotypically female but chromosomally male.
In a way, the issues facing competitive athletes are clearer and more easily resolved. Although natal females in competitive sport are still very much the junior partners, they have a louder voice than girls and women who want to play sports at a community level.
I'm not going to write a prescription but I will reiterate this: natal males are on average taller, heavier, and stronger than natal females. This is not an ideological statement about male superiority and female inferiority; it is a statement of material fact.
The performance advances made by female athletes have been matched by men, and the average performance gap in most sports remains.
Women are not just small men; we have very significant anatomical and metabolic differences. One to which far too little attention is paid are the differences between the musculature of the female and the male posterior cervical spine. Women are more prone to whiplash than men. Women might also be more prone to brain injury as a result of the lesser ability for the musculature of the female posterior cervical spine to stabilise the head in the course of a collision.
Given men on average are heavier, taller, and faster than women, if natal males enter contact sports as women, they will serve to increase the average weight, height, and speed of the players. In contact, team sports that will serve to increase the average impact forces bodies may experience.
In some contact sports the height, weight and speed differentials between players and resulting harm from impact are already a health and safety issue for players. Increase height, weight, speed differentials in women's sport and it seems logical that given the more vulnerable female cervical spine, the potential for serious harm is also increased.
I'm perhaps more alert to this than most because I have a congenital fusion of my cervical spine which, combined with age related osteoporosis, puts me at a higher risk of catastrophic neck injury as a result of a whiplash injury. My sort of congenital fusion is common enough and its added risk factors are serious enough that arguably anyone engaging in contact sport should be screened for it.
To blithely ignore these sort of realities in the name of some people’s ideas about inclusion is unforgivable.
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