Vol. 26 No. 286 (2022)
Inclusive Sport and Science
Every time a trans athlete enters a sports competition and loses, the world seems to celebrate inclusion and acceptance of diversity. But if they win, which happened recently with Lia Thomas, they generate claims from their cisgender opponents. The athletes consider it unfair that someone with physical superiority competes in a category that was historically protected.
Specialized journalists resort to different arguments to justify segregation in professional sports. One of them uses statistics: men -on average- are taller, with greater muscular development, heavier, with a larger heart and greater muscular capacity. If this were so decisive, professional sport should prevent access to men without these characteristics. And on the contrary, it should allow women with these exceptional qualities to participate in the competitions that award the greatest material and symbolic prizes, today exclusively limited to men. But this is not what happens.
What's more, three of the best soccer players in history (Pelé, Maradona and Messi) have heights closer to the average for women. Stephen Curry, leader of the Warriors, one of the best players in recent NBA seasons, is only 1.88 meters tall and manages to stand out against opponents of much greater physical size. Paradoxically, in this unfair context, Zhang Ziyu (2.26 meters tall female Chinese basketball player) will see his professional success limited and will have to settle for earning at most 500 times less than that of his male peers, like many other athletes.
From another point of view, Richard Dawkins, a biologist born in Nairobi, Kenya, argued that complex and statistically improbable things are by nature more difficult to explain than simple and statistically probable things. In this sense, sports sciences must be less biased and focus their knowledge on these new social contexts, in a world that demands greater attention to singularities, promoting equal rights and not segregation.
Tulio Guterman, Director - March 2022
Published:
2022-03-10
