Abstract

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. However, Bell and Osborne are oblivious to the fact that they themselves promote the hegemonic ideas of a dominant and entitled class: female categories and spaces should accommodate biological males. 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.