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Sport and the non-binary player
Hannah Mouncey: We live in a non-binary world and sport is unprepared for it
Malcolm Knox writes today in the Sydney Morning HeraldQuote:Mouncey is the transgender woman whose eligibility for the AFLW draft was denied by the AFL this week, despite the fact that she meets one of the International Olympic Committee’s technical criteria for being a woman and despite having played, and continuing to play, in the Canberra women’s Australian football competition. Mouncey is far from the first trans-woman athlete to seek inclusion in female competition, but she belongs to a gathering movement that will keep exposing the unreadiness of sporting organisations until satisfactory definitions of eligibility are reached, understood and accepted.…….
Quote:In applying for the AFLW draft, Mouncey presented a blood testosterone level that is legal by IOC standards but had yet to meet a second IOC criterion, which is that the person identify as female for four years before being allowed to compete. The AFL did not, however, rely on that. In an opaque decision, the AFL has reportedly cited Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act, deciding that Mouncey’s “strength, stamina and physique” are so superior to other players’ that it is legal to discriminate against her.…….
Quote:This is why competitive sport cannot easily handle athletes of transitioning or indeterminate gender: in plain English, because if they are too strong, their presence is unfair to other women athletes.…..
Quote:The pro-inclusion body Athlete Ally has argued that this judgment is a form of prejudice that is applied to transgender athletes and not others. Nobody else is rubbed out of sport because they might be too strong. It’s impossible to dispute: this is a very particular targeted prejudice. But does that make it necessarily wrong? How can any form of gender-based exclusion ever not be wrong?…….
Quote:It seems that the AFL is hoping to welcome Hannah Mouncey as her transition progresses and she becomes smaller. Just how much smaller, the league does not say. It just wants to feel a bit better and to welcome Mouncey as one of the pack, not as a dominator. There’s a certain common sense in that, but such an instinctive approach is too subjective to stand up to a future in which more and more transitioning footballers will be following Mouncey.…..
Quote:Many have an opinion on the Mouncey case, but few offer a solution beyond the IOC’s definition, which attempts to offer clarity but is itself arbitrary and a work in progress. Why five years? Why testosterone levels of 10 nanomoles per litre? Fixing a number gives a certain kind of clarity but, like a scoreboard, does not necessarily reflect justice.……
Quote:sport is being forced to discover, that simplicity belongs to the past. Fairness to all parties may eventually be found, but it’s going to be mistake by mistake until sporting bodies get there. There’s no backing away from it, though, because Hannah Mouncey is only the first. We all live in a world in transition.Great article….
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1 Reply
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It’s very clear from the above article and also this one on the ABC news website.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-22/sport-is-in-transition-whether-you-like-it-or-not/9074436?section=sport,
that the AFL have got it wrong in their decision to ban Hannah from elite play but are allowing her to play in a local league.
To quote Tracey Holmes in the ABC article
” The AFL is just the latest of many national and international sporting organisations that have overwhelmingly failed to adjust to a changing world where shades of grey have replaced the previously black and white male-female gender dichotomy “.I must admit at first though I thought it may have posed difficulties for other cis women players but I dont have that view now having thought more about it and read the article.
Well said Tracey.!!!!
The debate on Transwomen in sport this has become very personal. although in my case it wont be at an elite level .!
I am absolutely thrilled that I have recently been accepted as a Lady member at a Golf Club and will be able to enjoy a sport I love , playing as a Female.Caroline
