On Transgendered Athletes, Fairness and Doping: An International Challenge

Abstract

This essay argues that the most pressing issue involved in transgendered athletes' participation in elite sport is whether the athletes, who compete in the opposite gender category to which they were born, retain any physiological advantages associated with their original sex that can confer a competitive advantage in sport. The challenges to sport that transgendered participation at the elite level creates are often related to, and confused with, anti-doping issues because of fears that the transgendering process provides athletes with the same type of advantages that athletes gain from using substances and procedures banned under the World Anti-Doping Code. This essay argues that much of the controversy surrounding the participation of transgendered athletes in elite sport is centred on fair and unfair advantages over competitors, and concludes that any advantage a transgendered athlete possesses over his or her competitors differs substantially from the advantages an athlete gains from doping.