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Who is sport for
Trans women is sport is a contentious subject rooted in the hopes and feels of those who seek to exclude trans women from the public sphere. It is not about protecting women’s sports, rather, it is an exercise in purification based on the false notion that sport is fair by its very nature. Anyone who plays any sport will quickly disabuse you of that notion, as all sport is inherently unfair due to funding, coaching, facilities, nutrition, culture, and a broad ranger of issues outside of genetics. Trans women playing women’s sport changes none of this; indeed, targeting the a vanishingly small group of women to demonise and drive out of sport has exposed the ugliness of women’s sport in general, namely that genetic purity doesn’t make the sport fairer, it simply makes it more arbitrary and punitive. It also calls into question as to who sport is for, and why do people compete in the first place.
All great athletes have an edge, something which sets them apart from their peers. They are usually a combination of genetic advantages, rich parents, access to great facilities, and an ability at a young age to focus solely on their sport. Every single great athlete has that. Add to this external funding, media coverage, sponsorship, coaching, and a myriad of other factors and you end up with a dominant presence who plays everyone else off the court. Team sports do this in combination. There is no inherent fairness in…
