Allyship in Elite Women’s Sport

ABSTRACT

Throughout 2019, retired athletes Martina Navratilova (tennis), Sharron Davies (swimming), Kelly Holmes (athletics) and Paula Radcliffe (marathon) all spoke publically about what they perceive to be the unfairness of trans women competing in women’s elite sport. These successful athletes, all with a history of growing and promoting women’s sport, were simultaneously celebrated for sharing their thoughts on a complex issue, and labelled transphobic for expressing anti-inclusive and transphobic views. Navratilova, particularly, despite her long history of fighting for inclusion and to end homophobia in sport, faced a severe backlash for expressing anti-trans rhetoric. This paper examines the concept of allyship in the context of inclusion and fairness in sport. Conceptual clarification of what allyship involves and requires precedes an examination of whether athletes should be obliged to promote inclusive sport. I argue that elite women athletes have an obligation to promote women’s sport, but not one that extends as far as a requirement to actively act as allies. To support this conclusion, I argue that: 1) past and present trans athlete eligibility rules endorsed by the IOC are problematic; 2) the typical arguments from unfairness and performance advantages fail to demonstrate why trans athletes should not be welcome to compete; but 3) a requirement of allyship requires more from women athletes than we can reasonably expect. Being mandated to act as an ally, without full commitment, does more harm than good. Athletes thus are entitled to express their views, but sports organizations should be responsible for providing education to all athletes on the science and ethics of trans athlete inclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• trans
• women and sport
• gender
• allyship

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Pam R. Sailors for raising several objections this paper attempts to address.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. While the American Psychological Association recommends the use of transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) as the most inclusive way of referring to individuals whose gender identity does not align fully with their sex assigned at birth (APA, 2015), I continue to use the term ‘trans’ in reference to individuals who self-identify their gender as transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, non-binary, gender nonconforming, genderqueer and so on when analyzing the women’s sport category. This is because our binary sport system requires competitors to identify and compete as women or men, and does not create space for the recognition of genderqueer and non-binary athletes.

2. See, for example, Birrell and Cole 1990; Hood-Williams 1995; Kane 1995; Gooren and Bunck 2005; Reeser 2005; Cavanagh and Sykes 2006; Sykes 2006; Teetzel 2006; Travers 2006; Coggon, Hammond, and Holm 2008.

3. See, for example, Epstein and Dreger’s (2014) commentary in the New York Times and Petrow’s (2016) piece in the Washington Post. In the high-impact scholarly literature, see Ljungqvist and Genel (2005) in the Lancet and Karkazis and Jordan-Young (2015) in Science. In the narrower scholarly literature, see especially Hargie, Mitchell, and Somerville 2015; Travers 2018;Travers and Deri 2011; Caudwell 2012 for particularly original and astute analyses.

4. Ivy, formerly known as Rachel McKinnon, won the sprint title in the F35-39 category at the UCI Women’s Masters Track Cycling World Championships in October 2019. The year prior, she also won the women’s sprint title in the same age division, and in doing so became the first trans woman to win a world championship in track cycling.

5. Moser, who competes in triathlon and duathlon, is the first openly trans man to qualify for a US national team, to be featured in a Nike commercial, and to pose for ESPN’s The Body magazine.

6. Jenner, the gold medallist in the men’s decathlon in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, took part in the popular reality television show Keeping Up with the Kardashians and came out as a trans woman in 2015. She subsequently starred in her own reality television series chronicling her gender transition.

7. While trans men face many similar issues to trans women competing in elite sport with respect to discrimination, access, and safety, this paper focuses on trans women’s inclusion and eligibility as there has been far more public outcry, scholarly analysis, and opposition to trans women than to trans men competing.

8. As IOC medical and scientific commission member Arne Ljunqvist recalled, ‘In 2003, a National Olympic Committee asked the IOC Medical department for guidance concerning a female athlete. She had transitioned from the male sex and her female fellow competitors questioned her participation. In the absence of any rules or guidelines, the IOC Medical Commission convened a group of experts to a consensus meeting in Stockholm in October 2003. It arrived at a number of requirements that it was recommended transgender athletes be required to fulfil in order to be eligible to compete in the category consistent with their gender identity (Ljunqvist 2018, 3). Another member of the commission, Myron Genel, noted at the second consensus meeting in Lausanne in 2015, a broader range of experts, including one trans athlete, contributed to the revised regulations (Genel 2017).

9. On the day of the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremonies, Forbes staff writer Christina Settimi reported, ‘two transgender athletes will compete; their names and nationalities have not been revealed’ (Settimi 2016). British tabloid newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, reported that the two unnamed athletes were British and had competed at a European Championship previously (Manning and Gallagher 2016)). Whether these two athletes actually competed remains unknown as Genel confirmed, ‘no transgender athletes are known to have competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics’ (Genel 2017, 12). Ivy is correct that an openly trans athlete has not yet competed at the Olympics.

10. Much of the critique of testosterone as the key factor involved in performance advantages stems from analysis not of the transgender eligibility rules but of World Athletics’ hyperandrogenism policy. Arguments focused on hyperandrogenism are not identical to trans inclusion, but are relevant.

11. Two studies, known as GH-2000 and the Daegu Study, are frequently cited in arguing for or against the impact of testosterone on athletic performance. Sudai (2017) explains that the GH-2000 study found that two hours post performance men and women had a surprising overlap in blood testosterone levels, with 16.5% of male athletes in the study measuring less than 8.4 nmol/L (the low limit of normal for men) and 13.7% of female athletes in the study measuring above 2.7 nmol/L (the high limit of normal for women) (Healy et al. 2014). The other study, led by Stephane Bermon and commissioned by the IAAF, referred to as the Daegu study (because testosterone levels were measured in 849 women competing in the 2011 IAAF athletics world championship in Daegu, South Korea) found that hyperandrogenism is more common in the sample of women track and field elite athletes than the general population (Bermon et al. 2014). One important caveat to citing either study to ‘prove’ trans women’s inclusion in women’s elite sport is fair or unfair is that while both studies address the impact of testosterone on athletic performance, neither study included trans athletes as participants. See also Sönsken et al. (2018).

12. In discussing potential obligations women athletes might have to each other, Locke’s consent theory of political obligation, consequentialist duties, and natural duties are all relevant here, but are beyond the scope of this paper.

13. For philosophical analysis of benefitting from injustice, see Butt (2007).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [862-2014-0008].