Gender, Steroids, and Fairness in Sport

Abstract

Eligibility to compete in sport is organised principally around two binary distinctions: ‘clean/doped’ and ‘male/female’. These distinctions are challenged both by steroid users who wish to return to competition following a period of suspension, and trans women athletes who wish to compete in women’s events. Recent empirical work has suggested that steroid users retain an elevated capacity for muscle reacquisition years after they cease to use steroids. I suggest that an analogous worry may arise with respect to certain trans women athletes who wish to compete in women’s events. If sound, this argument would establish an unexpected parallel between eligibility debates surrounding returning dopers and trans women athletes.

Keywords:

• Doping
• transgender athletes
• trans sport
• gender and sport
• eligibility to compete

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous referees for very helpful comments.

Notes

1. Only a small minority of sports (e.g. equestrian sports or sailing) incorporate events at the elite level in which there is no sex segregation, that is, where eligibility to compete is sex-blind. A small number of sports incorporate mixed-sex competition at the elite level where the composition of teams must conform to a prescribed gender ratio (e.g. tennis, badminton, figure skating).

2. Age, disability, and performance level are also key eligibility criteria: in youth sport, age serves as a key criterion of eligibility, my focus here is with adult sport. In Paralympic sport, the nature and severity of one’s disability is crucial to determining in which classification one should compete. My focus is on able-bodied sport. Finally, performance level often serves as a criterion of selection, but it is not a criterion of eligibility. That is, only athletes who attain a certain standard may be selected to complete in the Olympics, but this does not mean that athletes who did not attain the relevant standard were not eligible to compete.

3. The scope of this paper’s argument does not extend to every type of doping. It is confined to the use of anabolic steroids: a substance that mimics the effect of testosterone.

4. One of the best-known trans women athletes is Renée Richards (formerly Richard Raskind) who played the US Open tennis championships both as a man and as a woman. See Lentati (2015).

5. Trans athletes should not be confused with ‘intersex’ athletes. The latter do not fit comfortably within typical definitions of the male/female distinction on account of having atypical genitalia. For an illuminating discussion of the ethical complexities associated with the eligibility of intersex athletes, see Camporesi (2016, 293–301).

6. For an excellent summary of the developments in this area over the last three decades, see Martínez-Patiño et al (2016, 541–543).

7. In surveying the literature on the eligibility of trans women to compete in women’s events, one should be mindful that much of the philosophical writing prior to these latest guidelines focuses on post-operative transsexuals. See, for example, Teetzell (2006).

8. John Gleaves and Tim Lehrbach suggest that this concern for fairness emanates from a ‘faulty conception of the nature of sport’ understood as a ‘comparative test between equal competitors’ (2016, 311). In this paper, I address a problem that arises within the prevailing conception of sport. I bracket the question of whether this conception is morally defensible and preferable to the ‘gendered narrative’ conception of sport advocated by Gleaves and Lehrbach.

9. Though the extent of that benefit will depend crucially on an individual’s testosterone receptors.

10. There is evidence that in the female 400 m, 400 m hurdles, 800 m, hammer throw, and pole vault events, a high free testosterone concentration is associated with a higher level of performance. See Bermon and Garnier (2017).

11. Indeed, Steve Davis and Lisa Edwards cast doubt on whether testosterone-induced advantage constitutes an unfairness at all in women’s sport (2014, 49–51).

12. Pitsiladis et al. note that ‘research into the advantage that transgender women possess in athletics is sparse’ (2016, 386).

13. It seems unlikely, however, that those who use steroids for any sustained period could do so without fault.