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PHYSICAL CULTURE AND SPORT STUDIES AND RESEARCH

2010 • VOLUME XLIX 85

DOI: 10.2478/v10141-010-0020-2

Equality, Equity and Inclusion:

Transgender Athletes’ Participation

in Competitive Sports – a New Era

Singh Bal Baljinder 1 , Singh Kanwaljeet

2 ,

Kumar Sharma Narinder 3

1 Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab ,India 2 Institute of Engineering & Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India 3 Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar, Punjab, India

ABSTRACT

I. Introduction

Sport is a social site where gender is performed and sexuality is regulated. By promoting

hegemonic masculinity, patriarchal sport systematically excludes women and actively encourages

homophobia. And yet, despite the inhospitable sporting environment, many gay men, lesbians, and

transgendered people continue to play significant roles as athletes and activists. In recent years, there

has been a shift in thinking about how we understand our lives as lived in what has been called the

'postmodern condition'. Many of the previously dominant foundational theories of sociology, or 'grand

narratives' as they are sometimes known, have been challenged on the grounds that they are too rigid,

exclusionary, or simply no longer relevant in a rapidly changing and complex world (Lyotard 1989,

pp. 425-429). Their legitimacy has also been called too ‘deconstructed’, on the basis that they benefit

some people at the expense of others.

This review manifests an attempt towards the conceptual study of gender

identity issues in competitive sports, foregrounding the genesis of policy

matters in relation to transgender athletes. The study explores the motif of

inter-relational dynamics between participation in sports of transgender

athletes and medico-legal information related to transgender athletes, as the

inclusion of transgender athletes is one of the latest and prominent equality

challenges across the globe. The International Olympic Committee (IOC)

has taken up the issue with regard to participation of sex-reassigned

transsexuals and it has resulted in a heated debate for which a changing

notion of gender verification came out. The issue under consideration has

multi-faceted dimensions of interpretations centering on a desire to

'deconstruct' the present structuration of acceptance of sex and gender

terminology. The resultant aim is to create a world-view of equality, respect

for the 'other', and competitive fairness. The latent attempt of the paper is to

deconstruct the binary of inequality in the field of sports with a view to give

vibrational impetus for attaining the ideals of equality in sports which

constitutes the basis of “authentic living”, to quote Jean Paul Sartre.

sports, transgender athletes, International Olympic Committee (IOC),

cultural constructs of society KEYWORDS

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Gender and sexuality are two such social categories that are based on a rigid binary relationship

(i.e., masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual) in which one of the pair is privileged, legitimized,

and valued over the other: specifically, masculinity over femininity and heterosexuality over

homosexuality. Gender and sexuality are actually much more complex social constructions. Moreover

- and critically - they play an important role in processes of social regulation and control (Foucault

1980).

II. Discussion & analysis

In the last 45 years, 'gender' has been understood as different from 'sex' by reference to a

difference between the body, biology and being male or female ('sex'), as well as the social and

cultural roles inscribed on bodies; masculinity and femininity ('gender'). But originally the categories

'male' and 'female' were understood as residing in one body, and sex was a sociological category rather

than a biological one (Laquer 1990, pp. 178-179). The idea that there was a male and female 'sex' in

one body was superceded by the concept of two 'sexes' based on bodily differences between the

reproductive organs, which became the foundation of sex difference in the eighteenth century. The

sex/gender distinction was developed in research on intersex people in the 1950s, which later gave rise

to transsexual identities in the 1960s. Later, psychoanalyst Robert Stoller used the distinction between

sex and gender to argue that the biological sex of a person may not necessarily determine their 'core

gender identity', a feeling of being male or female (Stoller 1968). As Jay Prosser states, it is 'the

difference between gender identity and sex that serves as the logic of trans-sexuality' (Prosser 1998).

Thus the sex/gender distinction enabled transgender and transsexual as categories. Many feminist

critics have raised the issue of differentiating female, feminine, feminist - the prominent feminists

being Toril Moi, Susan Gubar etc. To add it, the postmodern critical tools, e.g. Deconstruction,

Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Queer Studies etc., have played a dominant role in causing a

perceptional revolution in the world order.

1. Verification of gender

Gender has for many years been an issue that surfaces from time to time in women's events at

athletic meets. Gender verification for the purpose of competition has undergone significant evolution

since attempts were made to introduce measures aimed at ensuring fair competition amongst female

athletes. The first mechanism (introduced for international competition in the mid sixties) involved

rather crude and perhaps humiliating physical examinations. This method quickly gave way to the

method of determining 'sex' chromatin through buccal smear examination. However, as there were too

many uncertainties associated with this method, many experts in the field clamored for its

discontinuance, resulting in it being abandoned first by the IAAF in 1991 and then by the IOC in

Sydney in 2000. In a nutshell, a distinctive sort of controversy has always engulfed the issue

verification gender thereby involving the metaphysics of doubt in the core perception of the issue.

2. Gender and sport

Sport is a social and cultural process in which social constructions of masculinity and femininity

play a key role. Sport may also be called an archetype always present in the conscious/unconscious

mind of an individual at a given point of time, as per Jungian thought. Sport is traditionally associated

with masculinity maintaining the logocentric/ patriarchal world order. In many societies, it is

considered inappropriate for women to engage in sports, and women who do may be perceived as

masculine. Women and men tend to engage in different types of physical activity and their attitudes

towards sport may be very different. The women-only events (rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized

swimming) and men-only events (boxing, wrestling, and weightlifting) reflect persistent biases

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regarding athleticism in each gender; the reasons for the same can largely be ascribed to the socio-

cultural constructs in a given society.

Generally speaking, sports for females compete for the beauty of motion while sports of males

compete for the power, speed, strength and danger, speaking metonymically and metaphorically. A

social cost that often confronts athletes attempting to participate in a sport that is non-traditional for

their sex is the questioning of their sexuality. Author Mariah Burton Nelson describes this situation in

her book, Are We Winning Yet?: "Homophobia in sports serves as a way to control women, both gay

and straight." Whether a woman is lesbian or straight, homophobia in sports and the society at large

tends to discourage girls and women from pursuing traditionally "masculine" activities such as contact

sports and team sports for fear of being labeled a homosexual. "Female athletes in traditionally

masculine sports challenge the social dictates about proper behavior for females; therefore, the

reasoning goes, there must be something wrong with them. Focusing on sexual orientation unfairly

denies women opportunities in sports on the basis of personal preferences irrelevant to athletic

abilities. The mirrored argument highlights a desire of the patriarchy to weave a complex web of

power-relations even in the field of sports as the criteria-constitution is largely from the side of

“cultural construction”, to quote Foucault’s term.

3. Transsexuals in competitive sport

Changing social views and laws affecting sexuality has meant an increasing number of cases of

transgender/transsexual athletes in sport. A transgender/transsexual means a person who was born in

one sex and now identifies with, and lives as, another sex, and includes a person who has undergone a

sex reassignment procedure. The phenomenon is new in the realm of the sporting world, as this kind

of new consciousness on the part of humanity is vibrant across the world. Such types of cases are

astonishing and challenging the socio-cultural stereotypes, thereby causing a new chord in the

symphony of constructs. Men generally have an inherent performance advantage over women due to

their greater average height, muscle mass and power, as the result of correspondingly different

exposures to androgens. Therefore, it is considered fair that in sports men and women compete in

separate categories.

The question now emerging is whether reassigned transsexuals can compete in fairness with

others of their new sex (Gooren 2004). The pertinent question is how far the previous effects of

testosterone in male-to-female transsexuals (M–F) are reversible upon androgen deprivation so that

M–F have no advantage over women, and, vice versa, what the effects are of androgen exposure in

female-to-male transsexuals (F–M) on variables relevant to competition in sports. The issues being

voiced pertain to the thesis in question. An analysis and deliberation is the call in order to achieve

greater democracy, transparency and fairness.

4. Transgendered athletes create a 'New Frontier' of issues

The most recent and controversial decision on gender by the IOC came on May 27, 2004 when

the IOC Executive Committee decided to allow transsexuals to compete in the Olympics and opened

the way for transsexual athletes to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Transsexuals, male-to-

female or female-to-male, must meet three requirements to compete: “Completion of surgical

anatomical changes, including external genitalia changes and gonadectomy; legal recognition of

assigned sex by the appropriate official authorities; and sufficiently long and verifiable administration

of hormonal therapy appropriate for the assigned sex to minimize gender-related advantages in sport

competitions. Eligibility should begin no sooner than two years after gonadectomy.” The quoted

guidelines have brought a revolutionary change with respect to perceiving the issue that carries almost

opposite significations as per the ‘way of the world’. However, it has opened up new frontiers of

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88 2010 • VOLUME XLIX

deliberation to bring about empirical and qualitative understanding pertaining to the issue under

consideration.

III. Conclusion

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has taken an inevitably arbitrary decision with

regard to the participation of sex-reassigned transsexuals in elite sports (Gooren 2008, pp. 427-432):

the IOC's transsexual policy as currently stated is deficient. More specifically, the IOC has not

sufficiently demonstrated that transsexual athletes do not have competitive advantages over typically

gendered athletes. It is the responsibility of the IOC to reduce the various doubts about transsexual

athletics. It is clear, from the scientific, socio-cultural and ethical criticisms outlined in this paper, that

sex testing (gender verification) was/is inappropriate. When it comes to Gender Testing, the policy of

the IOC had to be rethought and was criticized because it involved only testing women to ascertain

their gender. With a view to evolve a holistic understanding of the issue in question, an international

debate of intellectuals belonging to various knowledge disciplines should be initiated.

REFERENCES

Foucault, M. (1980). The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Vintage.

Stoller, R. J. (1968). Sex and Gender: On The Development of Masculinity and Femininity. New York: Science

House.

Gooren, J. G. & Bunck, C. M. (2004). Transsexuals and competitive sports. The Netherlands. European Journal

of Endocrinology, 151, pp. 425-429.

Laqueur, T. (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press.

Louis, J. G. (2008). Hormone Doping: Detection and Deterrence Olympic sports and transsexuals. Asian Journal

of Andrology, 10, pp. 427–432.

Lyotard, J. F. (1989). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (pp. 178-179). Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Prosser, J. (1998). Second Skins: The Bodily Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University

Press.

AUTHOR’S ADDRESS: Baljinder Singh Bal

Department of Physical Education Guru Nanak Dev University

Amritsar, Punjab, India

Email: [email protected]