The question of transgender participation in sport has become a lightning rod for divergent views on the inclusion of those who see themselves in a different way to that which society has traditionally viewed in a simple binary equation.

Stepping into the debate risks upset and drawing a spotlight on inclusion but it is only in an open discussion that accommodation can be found.

Only four weeks ago on Sport for Business, we reported on a Scottish Government decision to reject calls for transgender athletes to be allowed to play any sport based on their chosen identity. The request for clarity came from a non-binary working group featuring representatives of LGBT Youth Scotland and the Scottish Trans Alliance who said that to exclude on any basis of gender identity risked ‘closing down rather than opening up sport to everybody’.

Instead, it suggested that each sport needed to make a decision based on its own rules in line with the UK Sports Council policy of individual sports creating rules for their own events and encouraging Trans athletes to participate in ‘open or universal’ categories where the physiological differences in terms of potential performance might be less.

Poorly Handled Debate

We said then that this was coming fast in Ireland, following on from sport and changing room safety being dragged into a poorly handled debate on the RTÉ Liveline programme.

Now the IRFU has become the latest body to make a decision and open up a strong backlash that what they are doing is “disturbing and regressive.”

Sport is in a tough bind here. There is a consensus that the inclusion of anyone who wishes to play sport is a good thing, and in that sense, it is very much in line with public policy, the values of sponsors and of the more progressive members within their own sports.

There will doubtless be calls for Irish Rugby sponsors including Vodafone and Aviva to examine if this is still a fit within their own values. We only hope they will have time and space to consider carefully and not be bounced one way or another or painted into a corner.

Lord Sebastian Coe spoke of the issue within World Athletics earlier this year when he said that the two pillars of inclusion and fairness were central to the sport, but that where there was conflict fairness to athletes would always have to come first.

Rules Based

The organisation of sport is done on a rules-based platform and competition, rather than more simple participation has to be universally applied for it all to make sense.

If football in England allowed for 12 players on a field and the international norm was 11, then one or other would have to fall into line to enable competition.

World Rugby ruled last year that “Transgender women may not currently play women’s rugby because of the size, force and power-producing advantages conferred by testosterone during puberty and adolescence, and the resultant player welfare risks this creates.

Irish Rugby is applying the rule that has been handed down to it from its’ own international governing body and in that sense, it had very little choice.

Two players are impacted by the change and will no longer be able to play competitive rugby. It may be that Ireland will take a lead on discussing this at international level but the original ruling was arrived at by a World Rugby working group “following research into available scientific literature, detailed and extensive consultation where the working group heard from independent experts in the fields of performance, physiology, medicine, risk, law and socio-ethics, and subsequent research and consultation.”

Working on Advice

Sport Ireland has suggested that the rules of a national organisation are bound up in those of their lead global body but that it is working on advice for bodies.

The Ladies Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association do not have the cover of an international body and are both understood to be working on policies relating to the participation of transgender players at all levels of the game.

An incident at a recent Dublin Ladies Football Final caused upset on social media recently and the issue is one that is very much in a spotlight that is only growing hotter.

Ireland’s first LGBTQ+ inclusive Rugby Club, the Emerald Warriors are sponsored by Bank of Ireland and have featured as part of a number of Sport for Business events and discussions around inclusion.

They said yesterday that the IRFU decision “further reduces spaces for transgender people to exist safely, affecting rugby, sport and society.”

Values

“This step does not follow the values of our game,” the club spokesperson continued. “We are gravely concerned with the messaging to transgender youth, their families, friends and allies clearly making them no longer welcome in rugby.”

The issue of sporting competition is one that affects only a small minority of those who have or are in the process of transitioning from male to female or female to male.

There is a level of confusion and at times brutality in the way that closed minds react to their personal decision and it appears that sport is being used by some to point out what they see as something “wrong” in the idea that gender at birth is not gender for life.”

Sport has a hugely important role to play in how we function as a society and how we relate to all members of the communities in which we live.

Gender identity is now firmly a part of that. It is now in the realm of science to provide definitive answers on that “force and power” equation that World Rugby references.

Human bodies are different and unique in every way. The previous means of dealing with eligibility issues on a case by case basis recognised that and while it was time and energy consuming for all parties it did allow for a sensitive treatment and acceptance.

Whether that can now be re-instated in contravention of World Rugby rules is doubtful though and so sport will continue to be caught in the vortex of inclusion of all and fairness to all.