Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

World Rugby knows the evidence it has so painstakingly gathered will not save it from human-rights challenges in countries with legal gender self-identification. Meanwhile, women’s groups may also bring challenges to trans inclusion against national federations. Under British law, failing to exclude males from women’s sports is arguably indirect discrimination. A case would be hard to win, since indirect discrimination is hard to prove. But even a failed challenge would provide campaigners with a chance to make their argument in the court of public opinion. If you want to know how sporting bodies got into this pickle in the first place, you could do worse than consider the presentations made at World Rugby’s workshop. The experts opposing trans inclusion drew on research and statistics, and explored the pros and cons for everyone on the pitch. Those in favour presented anecdotes, appealed to emotion and considered the consequences for transwomen only. They had no concrete or logical arguments. ‘Perhaps the most striking aspect of the workshop was the gulf in methodological and scientific robustness between the arguments for and against inclusion,’ says Tucker. ‘The positions were obviously different, but the difference between the evidence bases underpinning those differences was enormous’.