There is a fundamental tension in many sports: human sex is not binary, but there are only two categories in which people can compete: male and female. Over the past 10 years, the International Association of Athletics Federations regulations have been at the centre of two notable legal disputes. The Court of Arbitration for Sport reached two contradictory rulings: in the first case, the IAAF regulations for the eligibility of athletes to compete in the female category were suspended on grounds (...) of "discrimination against the female category"; in the latter, the regulations were reaffirmed on grounds that although discriminatory, they are necessary to maintain a "level playing field" and to “protect” the female category. Although Semenya’s case has paved the way for questioning existing gender norms in sport, a new stable norm has yet to emerge from her case. The pharmacological solution put forward by IAAF to the tension between fairness and inclusivity of bodies non-conforming to two sexes is not, however, the only possible solution/resolution to the case, as I aim to show in this paper. Here I present some reflections on this topic and suggest how CAS should approach the case if it hopes to resolve it. (shrink)

Both the approach taken by World Rugby to address the question of trans women participation in women’s rugby and the paper by Jon Pike that explains the ethical justification for the exclusion of trans women players from world rugby are compelling when understood within the dominant rugby/sport narrative. However, in this article, I suggest that what is absent is a radical feminist understanding that engages with the political purposes of separate sport spaces for women in producing feminist counternarratives that challenge (...) men’s power in/over sport. Decisions about the inclusion of trans women in women’s sporting competitions should be made on a sport context-by-sport context basis oriented by broader feminist political goals. (shrink)

Morgan has argued that attitudes to the medicalisation of sports are historically conditioned.While the history of doping offers contested versions of when the sports world turned againstconservative forces, Morgan has argued that these attitudes are out of step with prevailingnorms and that the World Anti Doping Agency's policy needs to be modified to better reflectthis. As an advocate of critical democracies in sports, he argues that anti-doping policy mustacknowledge and reflect these shifts in order to secure their legitimacy. In response, (...) wecritically present the World Anti-Doping Agency's policy that incorporates the Prohibited Listof Substances and Methods for athletes. We evaluate the validity of the therapy-enhancementdistinction in relation to its role in both justifying and sustaining the operation of theProhibited List. In particular, we focus on the case of thyroxine, which has been the subjectof controversy in athletic doping. While thyroxine is not currently banned, critics haveclaimed that its use in the absence of a relevant pathology is tantamount to doping. Wechallenge Morgan's claim that a conventionalist defence of the therapy-enhancementdistinction is the best available, and his conclusion that this properly supports a morepermissive stance towards performance-enhancing drug use. Furthermore, we reject hisconventionalist support for democratic line drawing in relation to doping and in particular thestatus of thyroxine with regard to the prohibited list. We offer a modified defence of the statusquo, a qualified, naturalist account of health and disease, where athletes may be prescribeddrugs that are genuine responses to medical necessity that do not, or do not typically, threatenthe goods of athletic excellence. (shrink)