https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1486-5972
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ABSTRACT
Since the update of the Stockholm consensus in 2015, the policy direction had been to allow trans and non-binary women to participate as women athletes, after satisfying certain restrictions. More recently, a reversal in policy direction towards the exclusion of trans* athletes from women’s competitive sports has occurred. This policy reversal has been driven by a number of authors who openly support a gender critical feminist position. This brief commentary looks at three pillars of the gender critical position, and argues that each of these three pillars will produce conservative outcomes in women’s sport that will do nothing to challenge the dominance of men, nor prevent the ongoing subordination of both women and trans* athletes.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to both the anonymous reviewers and the journal editor who all made useful comments and gave kind support for earlier drafts of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. I will use the term sex/gender (or gender/sex) as meaning ‘the biosocial entwinement of sex and gender’ (DuBois and Shattuck-Heidorn Citation2021, p. 3).
2. Whilst some of the suggestions will be supportive of trans women, this is not a transfeminist perspective. Interested readers of the transfeminist sport position could look at Barras (Citation2021) or Caudwell (Citation2021).
3. I do not intend to dispute the science that has been presented in articles such as Hilton and Lundberg (Citation2021), Wiik et al. (Citation2020) and others.
4. I am ignoring the position that trans women are biologically male and therefore enjoy privilege in world rugby.
5. This is not the only purpose for separate spaces, according to gender critical feminists (Lawford- Smith Citation2021).