ABSTRACT

While efforts to include gay and lesbian athletes in competitive sport have received significant attention, it is only recently that we have begun examining the experiences of transgender athletes in competitive sport. This book represents the first comprehensive study of the challenges that transgender athletes face in competitive sport; and the challenges they pose for this sex-segregated institution. Beginning with a discussion of the historical role that sport has played in preserving sex as a binary, the book examines how gender has been policed by policymakers within competitive athletics. It also considers how transgender athletes are treated by a system predicated on separating males from females, consequently forcing transgender athletes to negotiate the system in coercive ways. The book not only exposes our culture’s binary thinking in terms of both sex and gender, but also offers a series of thought-provoking and sometimes contradictory recommendations for how to make sport more hospitable, inclusive and equitable.

Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport is important reading for all students and scholars of the sociology of sport with an interest in the relationship between sport and gender, politics, identity and ethics.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

part I|29 pages

Individual stories of transgender sporting experiences

chapter 1|10 pages

Advantage Renée?

Renée Richards and women’s tennis

chapter 3|8 pages

Becoming me

Transitioning, training and surgery

part II|88 pages

Research into transgender sporting experiences

chapter 5|14 pages

Between stigmatization and empowerment

Meanings of physical activity and sport in the lives of transgender people

chapter 8|13 pages

Honesty and discipline

Identity management of transgender netballers

part III|42 pages

When policy and identity clash

chapter 11|12 pages

Subjective sex

Science, medicine and sex tests in sports

part IV|47 pages

Challenging the system

chapter 14|21 pages

From transsexuals to transhumans in elite athletics

The implications of osteology (and other issues) in leveling the playing field 1

chapter 16|12 pages

Queer genes?

The Bio-Amazons project: a response to critics