Transgenders confront top-class sport with ethical dilemmas. Sports philosopher Sandra Meeuwsen reflects on this in newspaper Trouw.
On the sports field, the law of the strongest applies. How do transgenders fit in? For the first time in seven years, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has changed its position and made it easier to enter competitions.
The world that revolves around physical feats of strength has a long history of policing the bodies of participants. To protect women's sport, it is said.
"It is a complex issue," says Sandra Meeuwsen, philosopher and director of the Erasmus Centre for Sport Integrity & Transition. "Different values in sport tumble over each other here: fair competition versus inclusion." Traditionally, competitions are divided by gender, but does that still work in these gender-fluid times?
Meeuwsen: "We are moving towards a non-binary society. Meanwhile, the sport keeps saying: we want to be able to look down your trousers and then we will decide whether you can participate. On what basis do we think we have that power?"
Read the entire article in Trouw.
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