Equality, Equity and Inclusion: Transgender Athletes' Participation in Competitive Sports - a New Era

• Authors: Bal Singh , Kanwaljeet Singh , Narinder Sharma
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This review manifests an attempt towards the conceptual study of gender identity issues in competitive sports, foregrounding the genesis of policy matters in relation to transgender athletes. The study explores the motif of inter-relational dynamics between participation in sports of transgender athletes and medico-legal information related to transgender athletes, as the inclusion of transgender athletes is one of the latest and prominent equality challenges across the globe. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has taken up the issue with regard to participation of sex-reassigned transsexuals and it has resulted in a heated debate for which a changing notion of gender verification came out. The issue under consideration has multi-faceted dimensions of interpretations centering on a desire to ‘deconstruct’ the present structuration of acceptance of sex and gender terminology. The resultant aim is to create a world-view of equality, respect for the ‘other’, and competitive fairness. The latent attempt of the paper is to deconstruct the binary of inequality in the field of sports with a view to give vibrational impetus for attaining the ideals of equality in sports which constitutes the basis of "authentic living", to quote Jean Paul Sartre.

Keywords

EN

sports; transgender athletes; International Olympic Committee (IOC); cultural constructs of society

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 85-88

Dates

published

1 - 10 - 2010

online

16 - 12 - 2010

Contributors

author

Bal Singh

• Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India

author

Kanwaljeet Singh

• Institute of Engineering & Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India

author

Narinder Sharma

• Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India

References

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• Gooren, J. G. & Bunck, C. M. (2004). Transsexuals and competitive sports. The Netherlands. European Journal of Endocrinology, 151, pp. 425-429.
• Laqueur, T. (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Louis, J. G. (2008). Hormone Doping: Detection and Deterrence Olympic sports and transsexuals. Asian Journal of Andrology, 10, pp. 427-432.
• Lyotard, J. F. (1989). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (pp. 178-179). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Prosser, J. (1998). Second Skins: The Bodily Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10141-010-0020-2