The current discourse on trans identity and sports could benefit immensely from rethinking the fundamental ways in which athletic eligibility and competition are structured, particularly by decoupling self-identity from athletic ability.
Staring Down the Hard & Hardest Stuff
What might be a best practice DEI approach to the destructive conflicts roiling about transgender female athletes?
I know that posing and considering this question constitutes walking into a highly volatile arena where one is bound to bump into folks who have strong and possibly inflexible opinions and convictions but I believe that DEI integrity obliges us to do our best to stare down the hard and hardest stuff with humility, detachment (from a partisanship, not from the importance of the given issues), and the biggest dose of critical thinking we can apply.
With that in mind, I offer this as grist for your mill, and, especially if you are a K-12 educator, as something that might promote meaningful, constructive, collaborative discussion among your students.
Fair or Just, What's it Going to Be?
If a student were to exclaim that letting trans women compete in women’s sport is unfair and another student were to exclaim with equal vigor and passion that not allowing someone to live according to their identity is unjust, what would you do?
If I were in that classroom and I had the wherewithal, I hope I might respond with framing, remarks, questions, and encouragement to be good thinkers as follows.
Presenting a Proposal for Addressing the Trans Identity-Athletic Fairness Conflict
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is first and foremost about thinking clearly about the vast range of ways to be human and the equity and inclusion measures that should be applied to the vast range of ways to be human. How can we apply that essential principle to this fairness challenge?
It’s possible that one student is right and the other is wrong. It’s possible that both students are right in the ever-important both-and kind of way - in the paradoxical kind of way. We are easily lured into false dichotomies. Much of the great value and joy in teaching inheres in facilitating students' ability to move beyond false binaries to recognize the kaleidoscopic nuances present in so many of the topics we take up.
Rules of fair competition mustn’t allow for unfair advantages. Justice mustn’t allow for unfounded exclusion from participation. Is there any way to honor both of these seemingly competing truths at the same time? Please Turn & Talk and take notes on the major questions, themes, ideas that come up in your discussion so that you can share them clearly and efficiently in whole-group discussion.
After the students have successfully and likely happily shifted from conflict to collaborative problem solving, I might try to enrich their considerations by offering the following.
Discarding Obsolete Proxies
We are making progress away from using sex as a proxy (a "good enough" indicator or substitute) for intelligence and overall human worth, looks as a proxy for unearned privilege, and race as a proxy for natural, essential differences between people. Seems it’s time to add gender and athletic capacity to the list - to stop conflating how a person identifies with what they are capable of doing.
Traditionally, sports eligibility has relied on sex-based categories, which served as a proxy for physical traits like size, muscle mass, and hormonal profiles (e.g., testosterone levels) that significantly influence athletic performance. This binary approach has seemed adequate because biological sex appeared to align consistently with these traits.
However, increasing awareness of the complexities of sex, gender, and their social and biological decoupling exposes the limitations of this framework. Gender identity (self-concept) and biological sex (physical characteristics) are not synonymous, yet sports policies often treat them as interchangeable. Athletic ability is determined not by identity but by traits such as strength, speed, agility, endurance, and hormonal influence. Conflating these traits with identity creates unnecessary confusion and exclusion.
After this provision of the conventions that have governed approaches to sex, gender, and fair competition, before sending the students off to develop proposals for a re-imagined improved way to honor competitive fairness while at the same time respecting personal identity, I’d provide some precedent for trait-based criteria for competitive fairness.
Trait- Not Identity-Based Eligibility
Athletics have long relied on measurable criteria for competition, independent of identity, such as weight classes in wrestling, boxing, and martial arts to ensure fairness among competitors of different body sizes; sprint times for qualifying races, ensuring that only those with sufficient speed advance to higher levels; and height preferences in basketball positions like center or forward, which naturally align with competitive advantage but are not formalized as eligibility criteria.
This history provides evidence that we already accept non-identity-based eligibility measures where fairness and performance are paramount. Can we imagine extending this logic of trait-based eligibility standards to all sports in which physical capacity is a crucial element? This might look like using physiological metrics like muscle mass, oxygen capacity, hormone levels, and endurance thresholds to determine eligibility for competition categories. It might involve developing competition classes that focus on relevant athletic capacities instead of relying solely on gendered divisions. Strength-based categories, endurance-based categories, speed- and agility-based categories… Criteria that reflect what really makes the difference instead of judging people on who they are or who we think they are might move us towards the both/and destination of honoring fairness and upholding justice.
There would, no doubt, be all kinds of complexities and complications, cognitive dissonance, resistance based on the inertia of custom, and some trial and error along the way to best practices in this area but it would move us away from the senseless and tragic amounts of hurt, injustice, and bias that currently dominate the discourse.
I’d then present the students with the opportunity to consider this proposal and generate questions about it, concerns about it, translation of it to actual policies for a sport of their choice, or a proposal for a whole different way to address the challenge.
Apply Your Logical Leadership Skills
So, what do you think about this challenge after what we’ve considered?
Has your thinking changed any from before this discussion?
Do you think the proposed shifts in the way we approach athletics and identity might have some merit and if thoughtfully and thoroughly worked out, get us past current difficulties?
Do you think a different approach would be better? If so, what might it look like (even at just a conceptual level – no need to have worked out all the details 🙂).
Let’s spend the rest of the period on some individual thinking about this. Tomorrow we’ll do some Pair-Share to exchange and enrich our views, followed by sharing the questions, concerns, elaborations, and alternatives you came up with independently and in collaboration with your peers.
Resources
Luckily, there are some good sources of thought about this apparent dilemma. Because this is not an attempt to offer a full-blown lesson plan, I’ll offer just one here. I’d ask students to scrutinize the list of sources I provide (for usefulness, possible bias, etc.) and invite them to see for themselves what’s out there that might be useful to take in and apply.
Comentários