This paper examines the philosophical justification for World Rugby’s ban of trans women athletes from the ‘Women’s’ category at elite level. It is argued that Pike’s lexical priority argument in support of this ban is flawed; that Burke’s partially concessive response to Pike leads Burke to endorse an incoherent position; and that by rejecting Pike’s lexical priority argument, Burke’s view can both be made consistent and can be defended against the two criticisms levelled to it by Imbrišević. A stronger justification (...) for WR’s ban is identified and discussed, and a diagnosis for the debate’s intractability is proposed. (shrink)

This paper centers two complementary theoretical approaches to advance the debate about transgender women’s inclusion in elite women’s sports – namely, non-ideal theory and cultural studies. In doing so, the paper highlights divisions between ideal theory and non-ideal theory, normative internalism in sports and normative externalism in sports, and essentialist views of sports compared to non-essentialist views of sports. The paper’s main agenda is to show the value of applying non-ideal theory, externalism, and non-essentialism to the discourse over transgender inclusion.

This paper continues the discussion of three values of sport (safety, fairness, inclusion) that has developed around the theme of inclusion of transwomen in the female category in World Rugby, as discussed by Pike, Burke and Imbrišević. In contrast to their discussion, in which these three values have been seen from the limited perspective of the inclusion of one group of athletes into a specific category of one sport, they are here discussed in the context of the categorization in sport (...) in general, with a focus on constitutive and eligibility rules. Constitutive rules give a strong foundation for eligibility rules. From the perspective of eligibility rules, the value of inclusion is identified as the underlying main value, while fairness and safety are its functions. This view rehabilitates the value of inclusion and has implications for how we think about the inclusion of athletes in sport, and for the creation of categories. (shrink)