Equality in Sports: A Transgender Perspective Discussion 2022

Running head: CIVIL PROCEDURE ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS LAW
EQUALITY IN SPORTS: A TRANSGENDER PERSPECTIVE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

CIVIL PROCEDURE ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS LAW1
Introduction
Sport is a social forum in which gender and sexuality are conducted. Patriarchal sport
routinely excludes women and actively promotes discrimination by fostering hegemonic
masculinity. Nevertheless, many gay men, lesbians and transgendered people still play important
roles as sportsmen and activists despite the inhospitably sporting climate. Recently, there has
been observed a change in thought about how people see their lives as living in what which is
known as the ‘post-modern situation’. Many of the formerly prevalent basic sociological theories
or ‘powerful narratives’ as they often are called, were questioned because they are too static or
discriminatory and are simply no longer important in a fast-changing and difficult environment1.
These were often labelled as ‘deconstructed’ because of their validity, which benefits some
individuals at the detriment of others. Sexuality and sex are the two divisions of society that are
constructed on a hierarchical binary relationship where one pair is favoured, promoted, and
respected over the other: men over women and heterosexuality over homosexuality in particular.
In reality, sexuality and sex are far more complex social structures. They also play a significant
part in social regulation and control procedures critically. This paper mainly focuses on the
discussion of the conceptual analysis of matters related to sexual identity in a competitive sport
which emphasizes the origins of transgender policy issues. While discussing the same it also
sheds light on the rights of equality related to transgender athletes.
Discussion
Over the last 45 years, ‘gender’ has been known to be distinct from ‘sex’ throughout
relation to the distinction between the body and nature and between being men and women
1 Bandy, Susan J. "Gender and sports studies: an historical perspective." (2014) Movement & Sport Sciences-Science
& Motricité 86: 15-27.

CIVIL PROCEDURE ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS LAW2
(‘sex’) and the cultural and social roles imposed on bodies; masculinity and femininity
(‘gender’). However, the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ were initially perceived as exist in one body
and gender was not a biological category but a sociological one. The notion that there was a ‘sex’
between men and women in a single body was eventually replaced by the idea that two ‘sexes’
were based on physical dissimilarities among reproductive organs that in the eighteenth century
formed the basis of sexual distinction2. The research on intersex individuals in the 1950s helped
to develop a difference between sex and gender which later gave rise to transsexual
individualities. However, it has been argued by the psychoanalyst Stoller that an individual’s
biological sex cannot establish his/her ‘true gender identity’, a sense of being a man or a woman.
Engdahl had been pointed out that the principle of trans-sexuality is the distinction between
gender identity and sex. Therefore, the distinction between sex and gender allowed enabled
transgender and trans-sexuality as categories. Most of the feminist commentators raised the issue
of the difference between gender, women and feminist. Essential post-modern devices, for
instance, Deconstruction, Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism, and Queer Studies have been the
primary cause of a world-class perceptive movement3.
For many years, gender has been considered to be a matter which occurs occasionally
during women’s sporting events. The verification of gender for competitive purposes has
undergone major developments as attempts have been made to enact initiatives to ensure equal
competition between women athletes. The first system which was introduced in mid-sixties for
the international competition involved very blunt and probably humiliating physical tests. As the
procedure for evaluating sex chromatin by oral smear was easily applied, this technique was
used. However, because the method involved numerous doubts, a significant number of experts
2 Stoller, Robert J. Sex and gender: The development of masculinity and femininity. (Routledge, 2020).
3 Engdahl, Ulrica. "Wrong body." (2014) Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.1-2: 267-269.

CIVIL PROCEDURE ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS LAW3
on the field were clamouring for the interruption of the process, resulting in its abandonment first
by the International Amateur Athletic Federation and International Association of Athletics
Federations (IAAF) in 1991 and then by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2000 in
Sydney. In short, the question of gender verification has always included a distinctive kind of
controversy, which includes metaphysics of doubts in the fundamental understanding of the
problem4.
Sport is a cultural and social phenomenon that plays a significant role in the social
construction of men and women. Sport can also be considered as an object that is still present at
a certain moment in a person’s conscious or unconscious mind. Sport is historically connected to
the protection of the logocentric or patriarchal world order. Females who are active in sports and
females who may be viewed as masculine in certain cultures are considered to be as unfitted.
Females and males are more likely to participate in various kinds of physical activity and have
diverse attitudes towards sport. The events that take place predominantly in women, such as
rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming and events for the men only, such as boxing,
wrestling, and weightlifting reflect the persistence of the prejudices in athletics within each
gender. Sociocultural structures of a given culture can be generally attributed to the reasons for
the discrimination5.
Sports for women usually compete for the beauty of movement while sports for men
compete for power, speed, strength and risk. An issue of their sexuality is a social cost which
sometimes opposes athletes trying to play a sport which is non-traditional for their sex. If a
woman is bisexual or heterosexual, sport and culture, in general, continue to discourage girls and
4 Chen, Victoria. "Ethical Issues Concerning Transgender Athletes." Penn Bioethics Journal 14.1 (2018).
5 Horlacher, Stefan. "Transgender and intersex: Theoretical, practical, and artistic perspectives." Transgender and
intersex: Theoretical, practical, and artistic perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, (New York, 2016). 1-27.