‘There are many factors that may contribute to competition success in tennis – height, weight, reach, power, speed, nutrition, good coaching, other environmental factors, etc. – but they cannot be balanced against the categorial factor of sex.’
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
‘Here, sex […] provides the foundation and context within which competition advantages may be expressed.’
This paper is very nicely written. The authors dissect terms like:
‘discrimination’ - logically, to distinguish; socially, to dis/favour.
‘arbitrary’ - the existence of a rule may not be arbitrary (weight cats), while the threshold may be so (60 v 65kg cat).
‘discrimination’ - logically, to distinguish; socially, to dis/favour.
‘arbitrary’ - the existence of a rule may not be arbitrary (weight cats), while the threshold may be so (60 v 65kg cat).
The two understandings of ‘discrimination’ are often conflated, with the intent of the latter (generally undesirable) mapped onto and used to undermine the intent of the former.
Similarly, the existence of apparently arbitrary weight cat thresholds (or, as the paper discusses, capacity thresholds in para sport) does not mean the agreed necessity for and existence of cats is arbitrary.
A key point (which I’ve seen Jon Pike @runthinkwrite express?) is the hierarchy of ‘eligibility’ v ‘inclusion’. That is, if eligibility requirements are not met, claims that a person can compete without ‘harm’ (‘not gonna win’) become irrelevant.
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