On the 31st October a group of UN Special Procedures mandate holders published a policy position urging states and other stake holders ‘to uphold the ideal of sport that is inclusive of LGBT and intersex persons’.
The policy position is about ‘the protection of human rights in sport without discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics’. And here, in the title of the policy paper, is the first mistake: in sport we do discriminate (in the sense of ‘recognising a relevant difference’). Why? Because the categories in sport are sex-based – not gender identity-based. The female category is a protected category. If we allowed male-bodied persons (including trans women) into the female category, then girls/women would lose out to (mediocre) boys/men, because of the – on average – large physiological advantage of males. ‘Just in the single year 2017, Olympic, World, and U.S. Champion Tori Bowie’s 100 meters lifetime best of 10.78 was beaten 15,000 times by men and boys. (…) The same is true of Olympic, World, and U.S. Champion Allyson Felix’s 400 meters lifetime best of 49.26. Just in the single year 2017, men and boys around the world outperformed her more than 15,000 times.’ (Coleman and Shreve 2018).
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Miroslav Imbrisevic 