Allowing gender to be weaponized is making sport in the UK a hostile space
Modern western history has seen the concept of gender understood through a binary dialectic. You are either born male or born female and behave accordingly either way. American philosopher Judith Butler has highlighted how gender has mistakenly been interpreted as an extension of biological sex, creating an imagined distinction between male and female that an individual will spend a lifetime trying to abide by.
There is evidence that gender non-conformity goes back as far as ancient Mesopotamia, and transgender people are treated as a natural constant in cultures across the world. Yet by the 19th century not adhering to gender norms constructed by society was pathologized as deviant or deranged in Europe and the United States. Trans individuals still have to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a medically recognised mental illness in all but name, to access gender-affirming treatment in the UK.
As sport reflects society and vice versa, it is perhaps not a surprise that wider public sentiment regarding trans people has scrambled the thinking of decision-making bodies and governance committees.
When questioned about trans inclusivity at a recent Department for Culture, Media and Sport review into women’s football, former England international and review committee chair Karen Carney was unwilling to definitively state that trans women belonged in the game she used to play. Her belief that “sport is for everybody” is a notionally pleasant idea if you are ploughing sponsorship money into a club or competition, and it can even be misinterpreted as the truth if you are unwilling to assess UK sports governance critically, yet it is clearly not a reflection of reality.
Last year, former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries began a campaign to ban trans athletes from competitive sport. In February, British Athletics proposed that women’s events should be ‘preserved for those who were female at birth’, even going as far as to suggest that trans women should compete alongside men in a new ‘open’ category. Whilst many governance bodies are yet to be as aggressive in their approach, the inability to definitively defend the inclusion of trans people is allowing a louder, more divisive voice to dominate the conversation.
With a focus on maintaining neutrality in sport for the good of marketability, a vacuum has been created. Rather than establishing a base level whereby no one is excluded from being involved in sport on the basis of their fundamental human characteristics, this unnecessary neutrality creates a situation that sees a narrative that is both exclusionary and oppressive seem like a legitimate side of an argument rather than the discrimination it truly is.
Major publications are willing to platform transphobia in its various forms as well. Whether it be the sort of dog whistle othering that reinforces the idea of abnormality and difference, or baseless discrimination that fuels an uncontrollable fury, lacking clarity but contributing towards making trans people acutely at risk of violence and abuse. The behaviour of these varied but related stakeholders has meant that sport in the UK has become a hostile environment for those who are gender non-conforming.
By making it seem as though trans people are in some way cheating in sporting competition due to their gender identity alone, the idea that they are inherently untrustworthy or deviant in a wider sense on the basis of gender is intensified. It therefore becomes easier to paint them as some sort of political problem to solve, earning credence from the public when draconian measures are introduced and distracting from genuine issues at the same time.
Sporting bodies have essentially allowed themselves to be hijacked and turned into a battlefield for a wider political agenda to be played out upon. The reaction to the attempts of Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to truly make gender a matter of self-identification displayed just how unwelcoming a place the UK has become for trans people. Whilst Sturgeon’s approach was bullish and undermined in the court of public opinion by the Isla Bryson incident, the ferocity with which opponents lined up to oppose it pointed to how deep-rooted an acceptable version of transphobia has become.
Equalities campaign group Stonewall highlighted how the gender self-ID system proposed in Scotland is already used in 30 countries including Canada, Australia and Ireland. Yet in the UK, it was opposed by both the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court.
When sport is boiled down so that only what is tangible remains – who wins and who loses, who is top of the league table or standing on the podium, who can play and who cannot – it gives up its true meaning. The emotion it produces and the feeling that so convincingly sweeps you off your feet when watching, playing in or even dreaming about an event is grounded in a sense of community and belonging. It would be less potent if there was no one to share it with.
Therefore, how can it in anyway be accepted that an entire section of society, who are more similar to you than they will ever be different, should be allowed to be excluded from playing a part?
Transgenderism has been a natural part of human history. It is the responsibility of governance bodies to incorporate this into the ways in which they regulate their sports, not on individuals to conform to boundaries that restrict and persecute, based on little more than cultural norms that have been built on ideas that should never have been allowed to spread when they did and need to be dismissed as quickly as possible now.
UK sporting bodies won’t be able to shift this grim moral panic about a marginalised section of society themselves, but they can at least provide respite for trans people who wish to take part. Taking a stand on this issue, so that the void of silence they are currently creating is not filled by a hateful and malicious rhetoric, is the least that can be done.
