A discourse analysis of the trans athlete issue that doesn’t go deep enough

Miroslav Imbrišević
Allen Hall & The Open University (UK)

The authors of this book (Travis Bell and Anne Osborne) aim to show (p. 241) “how discourse has been deployed in and around sport to construct medicalized boundaries that reinforce the gender binary by sex.” As a result of this discourse, transgender and intersex athletes have been effectively eliminated from sport. The authors write (p. 241): “Our aim here has been to expose the discursive ways that the policing of women’s bodies has been situated as a fundamental foundation of sport propped up by medicalized control, enforced through policy, and amplified by media.”

Bell and Osborne state that their (p. 188) “book focuses largely on media discourse and its relation to medical and sport policy discourse”, going back to the beginning of the 20th century. The authors want to show how the past discourse framed attitudes and policies with regard to transgender and intersex athletes. Their aim is, presumably, to “open the readers’ eyes” to the distortions of this discourse, so that they realise that “gender non-conforming athletes” (trans women and male DSD athletes) do belong in the female category in sport.

This is an interesting project but Osborne and Bell have overlooked one thing: the discourse is not “constructed” ex nihilo. There are “facts of the matter” (i.e. material facts like biological dimorphism, male physiological advantage, etc.) and these anchor the discourse. In order for the authors to succeed they would have to show first that we got the facts wrong and that is why the ensuing discourse is also wrong. They fail to give the first step (i.e. the facts of the matter) proper scholarly attention, and consequently the second step (i.e. their analysis of the discourse) is flawed.

The book is divided into seven numbered chapters. The first chapter deals with “Sport Policy as a Foundation of Sex-Segregation”; the second chapter is about “Medicalizing Intersex and Transgender”. The remaining five chapters cover various time periods, from 1900 to 2023. All this is followed by one more section (Conclusion): “Discourse of Destruction: Emphasized Femininity to Discipline Gender for Intersex and Transgender Athletes”.

The authors of this book are neither philosophers of sport nor sports scientists; their background is in media studies/communications. They aim to examine (p. 17) “how two gender identities (transgender and intersex) are treated across three institutions (medicine, policy, media) over the past 120 years.” This statement reveals a lot about their ignorance. “Intersex” is not a gender identity. It is a rare condition in the DSD (Differences of Sex Development) range. Leonard Sax explains (2002, 174): “In very rare cases, a child may be born with both female and male genitals. Because these conditions are in some sense ‘in-between’ the two sexes, they are collectively referred to as intersex.” Bell and Osborne wrongly subsume athletes with DSDs under their “intersex” umbrella, and this muddies the waters. Most DSD athletes clearly fall into the male or female category (scientists distinguish between male and female DSDs), and that means we can easily class them into the correct sex category in sport (see Hodson et al. 2019, 544).[1]

Most scientists (and clear-headed people) accept that there are two developmental pathways in humans and other mammals: one is designed to produce small gametes (male: sperm); the other is designed to produce large gametes (female: ova)

Good scholarship means that before you do any research you subject your central assumptions to scrutiny – there is not much evidence of this in the book. The authors adopt a constructionist view of the (social) world (p. 1): “We contend throughout this book, both sex and gender are socially constructed and neither can be easily reduced to a binary, although this is precisely what sport has done and continues to do. Arguably, there is no institution more dependent on the sex binary and therefore more affected by its instability than sport.” The alleged instability of the sex binary is one way to facilitate the inclusion of males in women’s sport. Most scientists (and clear-headed people) accept that there are two developmental pathways in humans and other mammals: one is designed to produce small gametes (male: sperm); the other is designed to produce large gametes (female: ova). Goymann et al explain (2022: 4): “During these processes a lot can happen that makes the organism diverge from the usual path (thereby creating diversity which evolution can act upon), but this does not question the biological definition of sex.” Exceptions to the rule or grey areas do not prove that there is a spectrum, nor do they disprove sexual dimorphism. To use an analogy, the occurrence of dusk and dawn does not mean that we have to give up the view that there is a categorical difference between “day” and “night”, and that daylight is the criterion for “day” and darkness the criterion for “night”.

We can agree that gender (the social role: woman, man, tomboy, etc.) is socially constructed. But are the subjects (female athletes/male athletes) – and the results – of medical science socially constructed? Bell and Osborne (p. 57) believe that (most) things in the world – including sex – are socially constructed, mediated through language and through the narratives we develop within it (p. 15): ‘it is nonetheless imperative that we also examine how sport policies and medical experts develop narratives that then feed into media coverage.’ However, this view about the (social) world leads to injustice in sport (female athletes having to compete against male athletes).

Scientists, philosophers and ordinary people believe that there are objects (rocks and rivers) and facts about the world (water boils at 100 degrees), we don’t just make them up. The constructivist view about the world has fathered some obnoxious children: the academic as social justice activist, whose goal it is to (p. 13) “create positive social change”. The idea is that if everything is socially constructed, then we can adjust our narratives to make the world a better place, for example by classing trans identified males as “trans women”. This makes it possible to include them in the class “women” in sport. And because trans women are “women” we can ignore what “realist medical science”, as opposed to constructivist medical science, tells us about the sexes: males have a considerable physiological advantage over females.

The problem with science is not just that their findings are “constructed”, it is also that they can be instrumentalised to promote a particular discourse (p. 242): “The cultural convictions are bolstered by ‘scientific evidence’ and media representations that single out und punish non-normative athletes who transgress at the margins (transgender people) or begin wholly outside the binary (individuals with intersex characteristics).” Note the quotation marks around the term scientific evidence.

Like many others who subscribe to the social justice narrative, Bell and Osborne don’t ask: does this really make the world a better place? Think of all the female athletes who are disadvantaged by having to compete against biological males. They lose out on podium places, scholarships and prize money. Furthermore, many girls will self-exclude from sport because of the unfairness and because they don’t feel comfortable sharing female-only spaces (like changing rooms and showers) with male-bodied people. And in collision sports and martial arts there is an increased risk of injury for women and girls (e.g. male punching power is up to 160% greater)[2]. If male punching power really were socially constructed then we could match women against men in the boxing ring – and I invite Bell and Osborne to volunteer their female relatives for this experiment.

The social justice perspective has a narrow focus on the group that is to be included; it is blind to the injustice that constructed inclusion brings about. These scholars ignore the cost of inclusion (see Lawford-Smith 2024: 221) that others have to bear.

The authors also don’t examine how their own narratives frame the issues to serve their social justice programme: trans women and DSD athletes are presented as (p. 14) “gender non-conforming” women, or (p. 51) “women who do not fit the feminine cis-standard”, rather than seeing them as biological males. A further irony is that the authors adopt Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘Hegemony’ (roughly: domination through consent) and fail to see how the rapid and widespread adoption of trans ideology in academia and in politics is just that (p. 9): “what distinguished Gramsci’s interpretation of control is that it is enforced by a ‘political vocabulary’ (…) that is authoritatively installed, and reinforced by laws, policies, and regulations, but then widely adopted as cultural norms. Thus, hegemony is the structuring of power within society that is reinforced by human practice and belief systems.” Bell and Osborne are oblivious to the fact that they promote the hegemonic ideas of a dominant and entitled class: female categories and spaces should accommodate biological males.

One might get the impression that the authors wish to hold on to the sex binary in sport, but they also seem to support giving up on sex segregation in sport altogether (p. 1): “sport acts as a political battlefield fought between those who do not easily fit the male-female binary and those who hold desperately to a belief in its necessity.” Perhaps we can “translate” this mixed message thus: as long as we have sex categorisation in sport we should make the female category open to male athletes who identify as “women”. But we do not really need sex categorisation; one, Open, category would suffice.

Analysing the Discourse

When it comes to analysing the discourse it is striking that Bell and Osborne try to make the “words” (in media, science and sports policy) fit their narrative. For example, the IOC Framework Document from 2021 effectively advocates for unrestricted trans and DSD inclusion. Bell and Osborne, however, read all kinds of oppression into it (p. 30): “the IOC Framework positions its desire to police disproportionate advantage by sex and not gender, regardless of its stated desire for inclusivity. Thus, policing becomes tied to biological determinism contrary to cultural constructions of gender that essentializes sex”. This is a complete misreading of the Framework Document. Admittedly, it is a confused and confusing document, but it opens the doors wide to male inclusion in the female category (Imbrišević 2024a, p. 86): “The new Framework policy by the IOC permits trans women to carry a category advantage into the female category. At the same time, the IOC presumes that any advantages trans women might have must be competitive advantages – rather than category advantages. (…) The IOC also pretends that there is no scientific evidence (IOC 2021: Principle 6) for a general presumption of advantage by trans women.”

I will give another example for how Bell and Osborne adapt their narrative to their social justice aim. When discussing the WA (World Athletics) policies for transgender women from 2023, they quote WA. The athlete (p. 35) “must not have experienced any part of male puberty either beyond Tanner Stage 2 (FN) or after age 12 (whichever comes first)”. The accompanying footnote (FN) explains what is meant by Tanner Stage 2: It “is the period during which girls enter into puberty and begin to experience physical changes such as development of breast buds and growth of pubic hair, usually between ages 9 and 12.” Oddly, rather than defining the features of Tanner Stage 2 for boys they describe what happens to girls. This is supposed to suggest that trans identified males and people with male DSD are really girls/women.

The authors spend a lot of time discussing the role of testosterone and build a strawman out of this. They claim that sports policies (p. 51) “rest on the narrow understanding that maleness is defined by testosterone and femaleness by its absence”. This is a distortion. At the beginning of trans inclusion in sport (about two decades ago) governing bodies accepted that trans women benefitted from (male) physiological advantages over women. They valued inclusion higher than any other values, and – in desperation – tried to find a way to mitigate the male advantage. This is how prescribing certain testosterone levels for these athletes came about. Unfortunately, sports governing bodies like the IOC did not know that this measure was ineffective. We know now that the advantage remains (reduced by about 20%; see RFU 2022, p. 8).

Bell and Osborne ignore literature that doesn’t fit their narrative. They invoke many a tired trope, for example the “Phelps Gambit”, suggesting that there is an inherent injustice in sport due to varieties in physiology: bigger wingspan, bigger feet, longer legs, being tall, etc. However, the Phelps Gambit has been put to rest by Jon Pike (2023) a while back. They also ignore the many biologists and sports scientists who are critical of their narrative.[3] This is another obnoxious child, fathered by “the academic as social justice activist”: ignore literature that is critical of your position (because these authors are on the side of the oppressor).

Since we still live in a patriarchy, it makes sense that the men in power (in sports governing bodies, in law, in politics) approved of trans inclusion in women’s sport – and in other areas of society.

Bell and Osborne quote Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) on the prevalence of intersex conditions in the population. However, they don’t seem to be aware that Fausto-Sterling’s numbers are vastly overstated (p. 63): “nearly 2% of infants are born with intersex characteristics”. According to Leonard Sax (2002, p. 174) “the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling’s estimate of 1.7%”.[4]

It is likely that the IOC in the early days under Avery Brundage (from the 1930-1960s) primarily aimed to police femininity, but later, as our medical knowledge advanced, sports governing bodies aimed at keeping males out of the female category. The authors fail to consider that these are distinct issues. The German Football Association (DFB) banned women’s football until 1971. The particular reasons given were the health of female athletes, but also concern for femininity (Taylor 2019): “West Germany’s DFB depicted their ban as a defence of femininity. ‘This aggressive sport is essentially alien to the nature of woman,’ it decreed in 1955. ‘In the fight for the ball, the feminine grace vanishes, body and soul will inevitably suffer harm … The display of the woman’s body offends decency and modesty.’ ”

Sex testing was abandoned (1999) and replaced with case-by-case screening. Since then, the number of male DSD athletes in elite sport has soared. They are vastly over-represented. Athletes with male DSDs are 140-200 times more prevalent in female sport than in the general population (Handelsman and Bermon, 2025), and that is reflected in podium places. In the women’s 800m Olympic Gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games all podium places were taken by athletes with 46 XY DSDs (Coleman 2024).

Bell and Osborne rely on the concept of inclusion but there is no reflection on what this means and why we should include (or exclude) people/athletes. This is a common problem among academics following a social justice agenda. However, blanket inclusion doesn’t make sense, and including the (allegedly) marginalised as being marginalised, needs critical evaluation first (see Lawford Smith 2024; also, Imbrišević 2024b). Before we include someone, we need to establish that they are eligible. Male athletes that are trans or athletes with certain DSD (i.e. those that provide the benefits of going through male puberty), are not eligible for the female category.

This book could have been interesting if the authors had changed its focus: how did trans ideology and trans inclusion (as well as including male DSD athletes in the female category) capture political and social institutions (think of academia), including sport, in “record” time? What are the underlying power relations? Bell and Osborne should have looked in the mirror – they themselves are promoting a particular discourse, a misguided “social justice” programme that prioritises male entitlement. Since we still live in a patriarchy, it makes sense that the men in power (in sports governing bodies, in law, in politics) approved of trans inclusion in women’s sport – and in other areas of society. This was nothing more than a manifestation of misogyny: let us encroach on women’s spaces and rights. And here Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony comes in: many women (alarmingly in academia) also adopted these hegemonic ideas (contrary to their own interests) which support a dominant and entitled class – and all of it hiding under the veil of “inclusion”. Unfortunately, Bell and Osborne fail to unmask these power relations; their discourse analysis didn’t go deep enough.

Copyright © Miroslav Imbrišević 2025

References

Coleman, D. L. 2024. On Sex and Gender. New York: Simon and Schuster

Fausto-Sterling, A. 2000. Sexing The Body: Gender Politics and The Construction of Sexuality, NY: Basic Books.

Goymann, W., Brumm, H., Kappeler, P.M. 2023. Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles, BioEssays, Vol. 45:2, 1–6.

Gramsci, A. 2000. The Gramsci Reader, ed. by David Forgacs, New York: NY University Press.

Handelsman, D.J. and Bermon, S. 2025. Biology and Management of Male-Bodied Athletes in Elite Female Sports, Drug Testing and Analysis, 1-12, https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/dta.3876

Hodson, N., et al. 2019. Editorial: Defining and Regulating the Boundaries of Sex and Sexuality. Medical Law Review, 27(4), 541–552.  https://doi.org/10.1093/medlaw/fwz034.

Imbrišević, M., (2024a). Redefining the Nature and Purpose of Sport: Transgender Women’s Inclusion. Fair Play, 26, 79-98, https://raco.cat/index.php/FairPlay/article/view/432819

Imbrišević, M., (2024b). Inclusion, Eligibility and Forfeiture, Analítica, 4, 127-138, https://revistas.up.ac.pa/index.php/analitica/article/view/6067/4650

Lawford-Smith, H. (2024). Is Inclusion Good?, in Hetherington, S. (ed.), Extreme Philosophy, 220-234. Routledge.

Pike, J. 2023. Why ‘Meaningful Competition’ is not fair competition, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 50 (1), 1-17, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00948705.2023.2167720.

RFU (Rugby Football Union) 2022. Gender participation policy, https://rfu.widen.net/s/pbhblzrrbs/rfu-gender-participation-policy-faqs.

Sax, L. 2002. How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling. Journal of Sex Research, 39 (3): 174-178, https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490209552139.

Taylor, L. 2019. From pink goalposts to blue plaques: a history of women’s football, The Guardian, 8th June, https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jun/08/from-pink-goalposts-to-blue-plaques-a-history-of-womens-football

Footnotes

[1] Note that World Athletics will now permit people with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), although biologically male, to compete in the female category because they lack male physiological advantage.

[2] https://tinyurl.com/2xdjcu7e

[3] See, for example: https://www.sportpolicycenter.com/news/2023/4/17/should-transwomen-be-allowed-to-compete-in-womens-sports;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3; https://sportrxiv.org/index.php/server/preprint/view/324.

[4] Fausto-Sterling is also famous for suggesting in 1993 that there are five sexes. In 2000 she claimed that it was all “with tongue firmly in cheek”: https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2326-1951.2000.tb03504.x. One wonders if this is compatible with good scholarship?