The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
Removed by mod
As someone who is not an athlete and not really interested in sports as a spectator either, I’ve used arguments like that before in good faith. Why is it a problem? Most people never get the chance to compete at a high level in any kind of athletics, full stop. Participants at the highest level are all, necessarily, exceptional individuals.
Can you help me understand what makes that particular exception to be so important? Why would women who have undergone one puberty or the other cast aspersions? Like you said, there are methods like testing hormone levels to ensure a level playing field. Given that, it seems like the only aspersions to be cast would be that their history somehow makes them less of a woman, which I can’t agree with.
I can’t speak for everyone but ime when people use the argument they are often more interested equality or inclusion at all costs. Their good intentions blind them to the fact that womens’ sport has spent centuries trying go gain validity / parity with mens’ sport.
But isn’t the whole reason for women’s sports trying to gain validity about inclusion? Doesn’t parity mean, in another word, equality?
I’m not really sure I understand the difference, is all I’m saying. And again, speaking as someone who mainly thinks about sports by wishing they made my life less of a hassle when there’s a road closure for some game I don’t care about.
Just responding to myself here. My original comment which sparked off this discussion/chain appears to have been deleted. I thought I had been respectful but in the future I’d recommend mods just remove news stories that make them uncomfortable instead of censoring comments.
It’s not that their history makes them less of a woman, just that going through puberty with testosterone leads to advantages that those that went through non-testosterone puberty didn’t have.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as taking testosterone blockers or whatever, they still don’t reverse some of the advantages that going through testosterone puberty provides.
Someone smarter than me may come along but if not just googling or ducking some knowledge about testosterone puberty will shine some light on why they’ve made this change in the sport…