Accommodating Transgender Athletes

Accommodating Transgender Athletes

CHRIS W. SURPRENANT*

ABSTRACT

The challenges of trying to accommodate transgender athletes appropriately

in competitive sports come from living in a society that places a high value on

athletic achievement, as well as on the competing virtues of equality, individual

freedom, and fairness. On an individual level, a person’s participation in com-

petitive sports confers benef‌its to that individual, with those benef‌its increasing

dramatically as the person becomes more skillful and successful—that is, when

they win more. On a societal level, the meritocratic nature of competitive

sports, combined with our collective desire to win and to associate the winner

with who is the best, has led sports to play a central role in advancing social

change in the US, particularly in the areas of race and sex. This paper starts

from the assumption that it is a matter of justice generally to regard a trans

man as a man and a trans woman as a woman. Even given this assumption, it

is not obvious that this general position should be extended to competitive

sports in any and all cases, and, in particular, to the participation in women’s

sports by trans women or trans men.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. WHY COMPETITIVE SPORTS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 906

II. WHY WOMEN’S SPORTS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 908

III. ACCOMMODATING TRANSGENDER ATHLETES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 911

In 2018, philosophy professor Rachel McKinnon accomplished what most aca-

demics never even dream of—she became a world champion in a competitive

sport, winning the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Women’s Masters Track

World Champion in the 35-44 age bracket. In 2019, McKinnon defended her title

and became a two-time world champion.

1

She has received an extraordinary

amount of attention for these victories, much of which comes from her fellow

competitors. But instead of congratulating her, many have cried foul, arguing that

* Professor of Ethics, Strategy, and Public Policy; Director of the University Honors Program and

Director of the Urban Entrepreneurship and Policy Institute at the University of New Orleans. © 2021,

Chris W. Surprenant.

1. Rebecca Reza, Transgender Cyclist Rachel McKinnon Wins Second-Straight World Masters Title,

Bicycling (Oct. 24, 2019), https://www.bicycling.com/news/a29578581/rachel-mckinnon-world-championship-

masters-win-transgender-sport-debate/ [https://perma.cc/S8VK-NB8E].

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