Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Before a sport can ban a trans athlete for having an unfair advantage the sport has to define what this unfair advantage actually is. Human rights are not based on assumptions!

A sport such as rugby union which is a contact sport in which players require high levels of physical fitness, which is a composite of aerobic and anaerobic endurance, muscle strength and power, speed, agility and body composition.

All of these attributes can be assessed on a case by case basis very easily for any athlete, male, female, trans or intersex.

Assessing any group of athletes as a monolithic group especially amongst trans athletes is flawed. Trans is an umbrella term many different body types & stages of transition. Blanket inclusion or exclusion does not work.

Blanket banning trans woman from playing rugby on the basis of risk outcomes of a group level aggregate of physical characteristics that any given individual in this group may demonstrably not possess individually cannot be considered reasonable, proportionate or justified.

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

The sex, gender or chromosomal status of an athlete does not create any inherent danger or risk to safety. Rather, it is dis- parities in strength, speed & endurance and/or physique of each individual athlete that may, depending on the sport.

@World Rugby said case by case is not possible. Rugby 🇦🇺 & the AFLW & all other trans policies already do have a case by case at the elite level of their game. We have already seen the AFL delay the approval of trans player that had a disparity in size, strength & endurance.

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.

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)

It is possible that a larger & stronger trans or intersex athlete could pose a safety risk to smaller cis athletes (and vice-versa). To exclude bigger and stronger transgender and intersex athletes from these sports on safety grounds would create a precedent that would argue...

for the exclusion of equally big and strong cisgender athletes remembering that, from a safety perspective, it is the disparity in size and strength that is relevant, not the source of the disparity.

In these full contact sports such as AFL and rugby in Australian sports, the risks from disparity in strength and physique are mitigated and managed through the rules of the sport.

This was made clear in the AFL’s 2018 Policy which stated that the rules of the sport (including those dealing with rough conduct, unsafe play & other on-field disciplinary matters) are designed to ensure the safety of all AFLW & AFL (men’s) players, including trans & cis players

It is also clear in the 2020 Policy 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 inline with the jew IOC Framework & in stark contrast to World Rugby’s blanket ban & Senator Chandlers Bill in Australia and the states in the Usa that have recently legislated blanket bans of trans athletes in school sports.

There currently exists NO evidence to suggest that trans women who elect to suppress testosterone (through, for example, gender affirming hormone therapy and/or surgical gonad removal) maintain disproportionate advantages over cis women indefinitely.

gendergp.com/new-report-con…

Fact, none of the evidence presented by World Rugby involved empirical research of trans women rugby players. Despite this, trans women are blanket excluded from playing elite rugby but we are welcome to play grassroots rugby, this isn’t about safety.

To demonstrate what the performance advantage men have over women in rugby really requires thoughtful decomposition of what this would entail, and then rigorous testing to ensure trans women do not have this advantage. This scientific study has never taken place.

In relation to performance advantage: there is evidence that increasing the acceptable period of testosterone suppression completely mitigate the parameters thought to be associated with “meaningful” performance advantage in trans women

(which would clearly be more reasonable than banning all trans women), there is currently no definitive threshold of what this “meaningful” reduction should be anyway,

and finally there is no current scientific work demonstrating specifically what the performance advantages of men over women in rugby itself could be said to be composed of.

This means there is no current threshold of “meaningful” performance advantage reduction that any transgender woman rugby player could satisfy.

Therefore, trans women are placed in an uncomfortable double-bind: accused of performance advantage they cannot prove they do not possess.

It is important to note that some @WorldRugby and some other organizations have claimed safety as a value which may merit the discrimination of trans athletes. This is an illogical position.

If there exists no policy regulating height and weight of athletes, and no performance advantage exists in terms of strength, LBM, CSA, or hemoglobin, then no basis exists for a safety concern.

There currently exists no studies which examine transgender athletes posing a realized or potential safety risk to cis women in a single sport.

The only available comparisons use population data for measuring potential impacts of cis men against cis women. As mentioned above, this should not be considered an equivalent comparison.

Other social factors have been forgotten in most articles & studies about competitive differences between men and women: lack of women teams depending on sports & geographical positions; disparities in access to sports facilities for women teams; lack of financial resources

(gender pay gap); lack of staff (including medical staff).

Sexism in sport impacts women’s participation at each step of the game, including on restrictions in muscle/strengthening exercise because of the social representation of what women should look like.

Women have had to quit sport, change clubs/trainer, practice in deteriorated conditions due to sexual violence, lesbophobia, classism, racism, & intersexphobia or transphobia.

Faulty and/or absent data about trans women’s performance makes transphobia especially present and prominent in this context of scarcity and scrutiny for women in elite sport.

abc.net.au/melbourne/prog…

CAS has already ruled that burden of proof on advantage is with IF.

In practice, asking anyone to prove a negative (i.e., absence of advantage) is effectively a ban on participation.