Balancing inclusion, fairness, and binaries in transgender eligibility sport policies

Transgender athlete inclusion is a fairly recent yet important topic considering the significant increase in transgender eligibility policies. While sport’s dominant sex-segregated structure, gender hierarchy, and androcentrism have historically prohibited the participation and advancement of transgender athletes, several organizations have introduced policies that conditionally permit their inclusion. Of interest is how codified language is used to navigate “progressive” standards of inclusion alongside normative meanings relating to gender, sex, and sexuality, especially as these two areas are often perceived as incompatible. In this chapter, I draw from Michel Foucault and Wendy Brown to propose a framework examining how silence and oppositional discourse shape policy texts, which then allow sport organizations to uphold ostensibly contradictory aims. Using World Athletics’ 2019 transgender eligibility policy as a case study, I explore how the organization is able to outwardly commit to inclusion, safety, and fairness, while subtly reinforcing essentialized ideas of (transgender) bodies and athletes.