'Women's'/'Men's' Sport Categories and the Harm of Misgendering: An Argument for Change

I argue for the following conditional conclusion: if World Athletics continue to hold a binary segregation for athletes of different sexes, it should change the names of the competitive categories. This is because the current names can unnecessarily harm some trans binary athletes, some cis athletes with differences of sex development and all non-binary athletes by misgendering them.

Currently, the labels ‘Women’s’ and ‘Men’s’ are commonly used to identify these competitive categories. These labels can cause the harm of misgendering to various athletes. As a first case, consider any non-binary athlete (an athlete who identifies as neither a man nor a woman) who wishes and is able to compete in athletics, but who is thereby forced by the binary categorisation to compete either in the ‘Women’s’ or the ‘Men’s’ category. As a second case, consider an athlete with DSDs legally recognised as female, who identifies as a woman and whose endogenous testosterone levels exceed the 5nmol/L threshold, rendering them eligible to compete in the ‘Men’s’ category. As a third case, consider a trans man with female body and feminine presentation, who has only recently begun to identify as a man. Suppose his testosterone levels are below the 5nmol/L threshold, and that he is therefore eligible to compete in the ‘Women’s’ category.

All three cases exhibit instances where an athlete may take part in a competition, but only at the cost of being considered part of a gender group to which they don’t belong. The competitive labels lead to the athletes’ being misgendered, or at least makes their participation conditional on being misgendered. The harm of misgendering can cut deep (Kapusta 2013). It is a form of microaggression (Sue 2010) and can contribute to hermeneutical injustice (Fricker 2007). Moreover, that the misgendering occurs in a visible setting by an authoritative international body amplifies the harm done, and can thus falsely suggest to many people (spectators, officials, other athletes) that the athletes harmed are of a different gender from their actual gender, thereby legitimating the misgendering.

At root, the problem is that the category names ‘Women’s/’Men’s’ appeal to gender terms, whereas in fact what the actual eligibility rules (World Athletics (2019a, 2019b)) track are sex and testosterone levels. This conflation of sex and gender terms (which along the way I show is pervasive in WA 2019a and 2019b), leads to the harm of misgendering. Such a harm is avoidable. The names of the categories should more accurately reflect the actual eligibility criteria while avoiding the harm of misgendering. After considering some alternative labels, I ultimately argue that the best balance between accuracy, informativeness, practicality and harm avoidance is achieved by the labels ‘High-testosterone’ and ‘Low-testosterone’.