Transgender sport in the moral maze
The Olympics are conscripted into the culture wars. Inevitably.
On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we tackled the participation of transgender athletes in sporting competitions.
Our peg was the controversy over the New Zealand transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard. Hubbard previously competed in men’s events before “transitioning” in 2013, and is to compete as a woman in the super-heavyweight category at the Olympic Games. This has been made possible by a change in International Olympic Committee guidelines on testosterone levels in 2015, and after qualifying requirements were modified by the International Weightlifting Federation.
On the Maze, we sought as ever to explore the deeper issues behind this row. Does it present an invidious choice between fairness and rights? Do trans people have an unfair advantage if they compete against women? Is there a right to expect everyone else to adapt their own rules to whatever identity anyone may profess? Are “human rights” even an appropriate framework for finding a harmonious resolution to these divisive issues?
My fellow panellists were Matthew Taylor, Tim Stanley and Ash Sarkar. Our witnesses were Joanna Harper, adviser to the International Olympic Committee on gender and sport; Debbie Hayton, transgender activist, teacher and journalist; Adam Wagner, human rights barrister and visiting professor of law at Goldsmiths, University of London; and Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel, lecturer in theology and ethics at Oxford university.
If you can access the BBC website, you can listen to the programme here.
Recent posts
Premium subscribers can read my most recent exclusive post, on appeasement in our time once again, if you click here.
And you can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, on how the west’s revolutionary chickens are coming home to roost, by clicking here.
One more thing…
This is how my website works.
It has two subscription levels: my free service and the premium service.
Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email.
Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting work.
But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them.
There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service.
A note on subscriptions
If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips.
And thank you for following my work.