Reason & Guidance: Trans Women in Parkour Competitions

A reasonable take and some guidance on the inclusion of trans women in parkour competitions

This is a difficult and emotive topic and many people have found themselves in the discourse without being properly educated on the subject. This is an attempt to offer some reason and guidance.

My recommendations to competition organisers who wish to balance fairness and inclusion:

1. Take anonymous surveys from all women registered to compete (trans and cis), asking them whether or not they are comfortable to compete with trans women. This is easily achieved with platforms like Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Typeform, etc.
2. If you or the survey results side with inclusion, then you could require trans athletes to provide proof of a year of HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) — either via prescription receipt or via documentation of purchases (many trans women use the black market due to inaccessable gender affirming care on the NHS)

This guidance does not offer a perfect solution for anyone, but it ensures a balance of fairness and inclusion.

Not inviting specific people to compete due to personal differences is fair, but it should not extend to disallowing other people they share a particular category with — this is tantamount to prejudice.

I don’t believe that blanket allowance of anyone identifying as a women is reasonable, but I also do not believe that blanket refusal of trans women is reasonable. The guidance above at least takes direction from women, and offers a route for inclusion for trans women. It goes some way to shield the women with reasonable concerns about fairness from undue social repercussions, but it does not entirely do so. Hopefully it is enough that people will feel comfortable to honestly express their opinion. Similarly, it goes some way to make trans women feel that they aren’t being completely alienated or targeted, but I admit it does not protect them from this completely.

This is a better way to go about things, but it isn’t perfect. I don’t believe in perfect solutions, I believe in trying to do better, analysing the results, reevaluating, then readjusting actions and decisions based on the outcome.

Some background on the subject:

• There is a distinction between ‘woman’ and ‘female’ (gender and sex).

Woman: gender — social expression and identification, informed but not limited by biology.

Female: sex — biological term that is defined by multiple factors including chromosomes, hormone profile, reproductive organs, etc.

• Biology is not physics, there are no binaries, there are always exceptions, variations, and mutations. This is fundamental to natural selection.
• You cannot use biology to make an essential argument against the legitimacy of trans women — in doing so you are ignoring the distinction between gender and sex, you lean on the naturalistic fallacy (something being natural does not mean it is good or correct), you deny the changeable and variable nature of biology.
• It isn’t correct to call someone a biological male when they have made significant changes to their physiology via drastically changing their blood hormone profile and if they’ve had affirming surgery — they are significantly more biologically female according to multiple traits affected by the therapy, regardless of genitals or chromosomes.
• There is enough uncertainty to reasonably discuss inclusion and fairness without taking a strong or committed stance either way, and anyone convinced on either side should fairly weigh up both sides of the argument without assuming malice.
• There are valid concerns regarding fairness when you consider the effects of being born with male sex traits and going through male puberty, these include skeletal size and density, VO2 max, muscle size and strength, and other structural differences.
• There are valid reasons to consider including trans women despite these differences due to the negative effect on performance resulting from HRT and other gender affirming therapies.
• Sport is not fair, performance variation within individuals is biopsychosocial, meaning their ability is determined by a vast array of things outside of their control — genetic and psychological differences, support structure, coaching, opportunity, etc.
• The best we can do is agree on the things we can control to make sport fair enough — but again, it will never be perfectly fair.
• Most (if not all) examples of trans women in parkour competitions have been in very small divisions, and most instances of them winning with significant margins have been when they have competed against significantly younger or less skilled/experienced women.
• It is reasonable to not allow individuals who simply identify as women to compete if they have not made any adjustments to their own physiology.
• It is reasonable to set a minimum standard for inclusion. This does not invalidate anyones identity, merely their ability to compete within a division with people who will be at a significant disadvantage.
• The most legitimate and conclusive data will be statistical performance differences within competition — to have this we must be able to record the data which means including trans women, otherwise this is all speculative.
• We will need to see the performance difference between cis men, cis women, and trans women (you cannot categorise trans women with cis men as they are significantly different biologically if on HRT for a year).

If you have any questions, criticisms, or feedback then please send it here: https://forms.gle/er4QJQR4LcGNenqD8 — I will respond in confidence via a Q&A article.