Nice wording choice by the editor
The issue comes to life when the correct sex term etc are used
ON the final day of the UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow yesterday, a gathering of transgender male and female people and cisgender male and female allies lined parts of the city’s streets to draw attention to who would not be competing in the female day’s races.
One month earlier, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) had ruled transgender women males would effectively be barred from participating in any women’s female race on the UCI calendar in perpetuity. Instead, they males would be forced to race in the men’s male category … or not at all
This decision reflects a dark trend in sporting bodies. The British Athletics Association, British Cycling, World Aquatics, World Rugby, World Athletics and the British Rowing Association have announced similar policies and restrictions on the inclusion of transgender people males In female sport.
In time, I believe this will be regarded as a bleak stain on the history of each and every one of these institutions, a discriminatory decision based not on evidence but appeasement.
After all, if transgender people males truly represented such a threat to fairness in female sport, shouldn’t there be countless examples of us males storming our way en masse to gold medals and prize podiums with little resistance, rather than just the imagined threat of such? And with regards to the science of what constitutes an unfair advantage for transgender women males having gone through “male puberty”, the results are actually pretty inconclusive.
Meta-analyses of peer-reviewed studies in this area unfair advantage for males having gone through male puberty actually show there just isn’t enough data to attempt to justify the exclusion of trans women males from competitive female sports.
For many raised in a culture as rooted in male sexism as the UK is, this will seem counterintuitive. It’s for this reason that the topic of transgender male inclusion in female sport is a reactionary’s wet dream, particularly for those who already hold a warped view on the bodies of transgender male people. Anti-trans activists will discard the evidence and instead home in on a perceived unfairness at the heart of this issue because they know it is an emotive subject that leads people to snap judgments.
Fairness in female sport is something we all want. The concept of “fair play” is often viewed as an integral part of the values that define these islands. But the nuance required in how we discuss this is entirely absent.
With all the grace of a sledgehammer, anti-trans activists have gleefully hoisted the issue of fairness in female sport into the spotlight because it is a subject that, despite having almost no bearing on the lives of most people living in Scotland, still evokes a deeply emotive reaction. And in turn, it is used to justify further encroachments on the lives of transgender male people, whether they enjoy taking part in a sport or not.
To believe transgender women males will immediately dominate in whatever professional female sport they deign to give a go is to do a great disservice to the cis female athletes who work and train so hard to excel in their field; it is a manifestation of the same everyday male sexism that makes one in eight British men males who are not professional tennis players believe they could actually win a point from tennis great Serena Williams. Though I for one would pay a reasonable ticket price to watch her destroy the fragile egos of those non-professional tennis players who would dare try.
Bizarrely, I’ve seen this same ideology stretch into the electronic non-physical sporting world too, as if women females too fragile to even handle a video game controller without being at a disadvantage. There are huge issues facing female inclusion in physical sport at a professional level – but it isn’t transgender male people who are blocking the path. The evidence shows social factors – such as chronic underfunding for female athletes and base discrimination – contribute far more significantly to performance disadvantages.
If anti-trans activists had shown any interest in addressing these problems before suddenly declaring themselves the great saviours of women's female sport, I’d have more reason to believe this was anything other than another shameless opportunity to further ostracise male trans people.
Trans male people raise questions about the world we live in, and the odd structures that govern it.
Our male existence challenges many strongly-held views of the world. The role of trans male people in female sports SHOULD be raising questions; questions about why we have structured sports in such a segregated manner – questions about funding allocations; questions about how much of perceived differences in ability are grounded in fact.
For example, wouldn’t moving to a system of weight classes, like in boxing, make more sense than the male/female segregated approach currently in play? The sporting bodies who found it easier to ban trans women males from female sport than to truly examine the foundations of their own organisations took the easy option.
And it was a decision that has not been overlooked by Glasgow’s queer community. While activists gathered, Leap Sports Scotland hosted a solidarity cycle in response to the UCI’s policy which they describe as “disproportionate, discriminatory and lacking in evidence”.
In a statement from the Glasgow Trans Rally group, organisers noted that: “These bans are not relevant only to male athletes or male sport enthusiasts. These policies are symptomatic of a wider hostility towards male trans people and their systematic exclusion globally and in the UK.”
They concluded: “Allowing these policies to pass without challenge will embolden others to push their anti-trans rhetoric.”
It is to the detriment of all female athletes that a moral panic has been used to conceal the real barriers women females face in accessing female sport.