Thread by @KirstiMiller30

It has been argued by the likes of Tucker & Hilton et al without evidence that cisgender women athletes could be at greater risk of physical harm and injury if they compete in sports with larger and stronger transgender and intersex athletes.

This is the basis of World Rugby’s ban on trans women. According to the report prepared for World Rugby, trans women who transition after male puberty retain ‘significant’ physical advantages over cisgender women — even after they take steps to lower their testosterone levels.

The report claims advantages include being 30–40% stronger and more powerful and 10–15% faster.101 Importantly, the report concludes these advantages create at least a 20–30% greater risk of injury for cisgender female rugby players competing against transgender female players.

The science underpinning the report is heavily contested, 5 of the largest Rugby Federations in the world rejected the WR report. Not least because the report’s conclusions are based on comparing cis men with cis women, cis men being used as a proxy for trans women.

However, even if one were to accept the science at face value, a decision to blanket ban all transgender women based on this very bad ’evidence’ it raises many questions from a WHS perspective

Unlike the WR report, sports like the AFL and IOC now understand the gender status or identity of an individual does not create any inherent danger or risk to safety. Rather, disparities in strength, speed, endurance and/or physique may do so, depending on the sport.

Sports like #WorldRugby blanket banning #transgender women on safety grounds place themselves on a slippery slope. Safety has no gender!

austlii.edu.au/au/journals/Ad…

WHS law presents sport governing bodies, clubs & athletes trans, cis & intersex with a valuable avenue to pivot the discussion away from the moralism of a debate grounded in competing rights to a focus on risks & solutions grounded in a debate about safety.

Assessing any group of athletes as a monolithic group especially amongst trans athletes is flawed. Trans is an umbrella term many different body stages of transition & body types.

To the extent that larger & stronger athletes (trans, intersex or cis) may pose a H & S risk, it is best to address that risk by amending the rules of the sport to engineer out (or at least minimise) the risks at their source (to employ more mainstream WHS parlance).

The new IOC Framework also makes clear that no athlete has an inherent advantage & moves away from eligibility criteria focused on testosterone levels, a practice that caused harmful & abusive practices such as invasive physical examinations & sex testing.

Far too often, sport policy does not reflect the lived experience of marginalized athletes, and that’s especially true when it comes to transgender athletes and athletes with sex variations.

Inclusion, prevention of harm, non-discrimination and fairness are among key aspects of the framework, there should be no presumption of advantage and that IFs must base any restrictions on "robust and peer-reviewed research.

As with any set of guidelines, the success of this new framework in ensuring a safe & welcoming environment within the Olympic movement will largely depend on the education & implementation process with national governing bodies international federations, & other key stakeholders

Also the 2020 AFL Policy also understands blanket bans are not justified. The AFL says that while a trans or non-binary person may be excluded on the basis that their participation poses an unacceptable safety risk,

Such an exclusion would only arise in ‘exceptional circumstances’ involving a significant disparity in physique that cannot be managed safely within the rules of the sport.

Importantly, the 2020 Policy states it ‘will not arise simply from the proposed participation of a gender diverse person’. The AFL’s ‘exceptional circumstances’ approach stands in stark contrast to World Rugby’s blanket ban.