An interesting and informative Quillette article by Doriane Coleman, a professor at Duke University School of Law who guest blogs about gender and sports here. Excerpts from the introduction and conclusion:
As the Olympics return, it’s foreseeable that XY athletes competing in the women’s division will once again cause a global uproar. This is a centuries-old problem in elite sport, but somehow we haven’t yet managed to address it in a unified way. The debate at the 2024 Paris Olympics is arguably the most explosive ever due to a confluence of at least three factors:
- This time, the athletes are boxers instead of runners, which means they’ll be beating up their competitors. Personal safety and gender norms, not just competitive fairness, are top of mind.
- After the debate about Lia Thomas and Caster Semenya (I discussed this in an article) Quilet 2019), the public is learning more, but still not enough, about the two categories of XY athletes who may compete in female competition: trans women, like Thomas, and those with a disorder of sexual development or difference (DSD), like Semenya. people. DSD is also sometimes called intersex disorder or gender variant by those who prefer non-medical terminology.
- Since then, the domestic culture war over sex and gender has intensified significantly, turning into a global war in which LGBTQI rights groups and their allies in the international human rights community argue that sex is not real or simply does not matter. Meanwhile, Kremlin-led authoritarian regimes portray gender diversity as a harbinger of the end of Western civilization.
…
I will conclude by reiterating three fundamental points that I and other girls and women’s sports experts have long made.
First of all, there are no women’s teams in elite sports Purpose In addition to biological sex differences that lead to gender differences in performance and the disparity between top male and female athletes. It has been suggested that we could choose to rationalize the category in different ways – for example, in terms of self-declared gender identity – or that we could make more and more exceptions in the interest of inclusivity (as the International Olympic Committee seems to have done , allowing Khalif and Jeremy Lin to compete in Paris) have no place outside certain progressive enclaves.
Second, any qualification criteria that denies or ignores gender-related biology (such as the IOC’s framework) is bound to undermine categories.
Finally, federations committed to one-on-one equality for women’s categories and female athletes must step up and do two things. They must develop evidence-based rules and then follow them consistently. They must seriously embrace other opportunities and welcome gender diversity in sport.
