[AGTRT-BF71] Transgender and darts II: the importance of transition history

Laurens Buijs & Jan Bergstra
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team

There was a commotion last week over a trans woman’s participation in the women’s darts competition. Two women, say A and B, refused to be on the national team any longer with a trans woman, who we call C. We don’t mention that persons’ names here because there’s nothing specifically personal in the story, at least not in the reports about it that we’ve seen.

Read more about the commotion over transwomen’s participation in women’s darts:
Transgender and darts I: medical and psychological Holland’s turn now

A and B argue that C is a biological male and that it is unfair for her to compete in the women’s league. It is always possible for the media to oversimplify the opinions of A,B and C, which is another reason why we prefer not to name names.

We think it is indeed possible to achieve women’s top sport that is inclusive to trans women, but that requires developing clear selection criteria that protect fairness toward cis women in top sport. We believe the following eleven points are important in this regard:

1. The term biological man creates confusion even though it seems very clear (see AGTRT-BF41 and AGTRT-BF42). We prefer to speak of a person with male physical gender. But even then, there are several possibilities that must be distinguished:
   • Morphologically masculine: or what you can see “from the outside.”
   • Male in terms of chromosome composition,
   • Male in terms of gonads and gametes,
   • Male as seen on FMRI brain scans (a recent technique),
   • Combinations of the options above.

2. The IOC’s principles include the following, which we see as valid:
   • Inclusive work on gender is an objective in principle: if you can, let trans women compete in women’s competitions and trans men in men’s competitions.
   • Per sport, the question of whether physical cis-men (or women) have an advantage over physical cis-women (or men) has a different and specific answer, there is no general statement to be made about it.
   • Restriction of admission (for example, of a trans woman to a women’s competition) should only occur when it can be plausibly shown that an “unfair” advantage might otherwise exist. So there is no precautionary principle here (the precautionary principle would then read: as long as we are not sure that trans men have an advantage, they should better not participate).
   • In making its own policy, an athletic association may factor in a prospective participant’s transition history. How this is done also varies from sport to sport (World Aquatics we consider a best practice in this, see AGTRT-BF3).
   • When formulating admission criteria, it is recommended to avoid using the terms male and female.

3. In IOC practice, the issue of transgender participation in sports competitions boils down almost exclusively to the question of whether trans women are allowed to compete in the women’s competition category under the morphological criterion. One complication is that it is impossible to tell in advance whether a well-trained and talented trans woman has an advantage over the average well-trained and talented woman (trans or non-trans). This appears to depend on additional data that can be captured under the heading of transition history. With data on transition history at hand, an estimate can be made of the advantage the trans woman in question can expect in a given match type.

4. For each competition type, two questions are important, and a sports association must make choices to answer them. The answers to these two questions can vary from sport to sport (athletics, swimming, darts, chess, etc.) and within a sport from event to event. Sometimes other criteria regarding weight, age or height are involved.
   • What information about a candidate participant’s (personal) transition history is needed to assess whether they may participate?
   • Under what conditions (regarding the transition history of the prospective participant) do they want to reject participation?

5. Transition history information is used to justify to an admitted participant that they will not have an unfair expected benefit. For example, the IOC makes the point that a person (man) who has long-term youth testosterone levels that are usual for a man of that age can “benefit” from them for years after hormone therapy. This expected benefit may be a reason not to admit a trans woman who has transitioned late as a prospective participant.

6. A, B and C agree that C is transgender. But what does this mean? In the medical field (and according to the APA, the American Psychological Association), a transgender person (in this case, a trans woman) is someone who thinks of herself as transgender (to be a trans woman). There is talk here of having a female gender identity. The darts federation, as far as we understand, explicitly does not mean the latter (and in this they are then quite right). In the medical field, the move from transgender identity to gender categorization is handled far too easily. In sports, a transgender person is someone who changed gender after birth, no more and no less.

7. The discussion on darts is so vague because different meanings of transgender are mixed up. If there is awareness of the fact that for the APA and many in the medical field, being transgender is solely a matter of “how you feel” then the discussion would quickly end: everyone immediately understands that you cannot regulate access to competitions in the “woman” category on that basis (see also AGTRT-BF70).

8. Every transgender person has a transition history. It is the transition history of person P that, in combination with a sports federation’s established rules for that purpose (for a competition comp_K of category K), determines whether P may participate in a comp_K event. P’s transition history is person confidential and should not be publicly on the table, but the organizer of a comp_K event is entitled to sufficient information about it. The sports association’s job is to manage these matters so well that confidential information about P’s transition history does not get into the wrong hands.

9. The public debate on A,B and C regarding darts does not explicitly discuss C’s transition history (as a draft). The cause of that lack of information and communication, in our view, lies unequivocally with the trans movement, where such a concept as “P’s transition history” is not much use.
   
   The consequence of this lack of clarity is that the participation of transgender persons comes under fire in a more general sense (“we don’t want a biological man in our comp_K event”) and that is exactly what should not happen. Indeed, if P’s transition history meets certain conditions (to be checked by the event organizer), there is no objection to P’s participation.

10. The situation with C seems to be as follows:
    • C complies with the rules of the Dutch darts association to participate in the women’s competition; the discussion is therefore not between A and B on the one hand and C on the other but between A and B and the organization of this sport in the Netherlands.
    • With regard to C, A and B are not sufficiently clear as to whether the history (specific to C) of her gender transition is such that it is sportingly fair for her to compete in the adult women’s competition category.
    • In darts, there is disagreement as to how and to what extent the prototypical man would be better at it than the prototypical woman (see also AGTRT-10 for this use of the term “prototypical,” and AGTRT-BF4 for an application of this regarding chess). In this, the sports organization believes that the benefits for the prototypical man are limited anyway, while others see it differently (see also Jan Kuitenbrouwer’s recent column in HP/De Tijd).
    • There is a taboo on qualifying transgender persons in terms of how gender transition has occurred for them. But with any sport, there is no getting around the fact that exactly this qualification matters in a big way. It is important in darts to come to clear statements on this point. As with other sports (e.g., chess, see AGTRT-BF4), this is not yet easy.
    • Separating men’s and women’s competition categories has different backgrounds in different sports.
    • Consideration could be given to introducing a new competition category for neutral gender and, if in doubt, referring a trans woman to that category anyway (with trans men, that problem does not arise in the case of darts).

11. It is unfortunate that there is no representation of transgender people who can and will have this level of debate. Without it, the credibility of participation in sports by those transgender persons who would previously be called transgender will fall victim to the ultimately untenable claim that all transgender persons should be able to participate in any sport in the category of their gender.