Practicing Democracy To End Sex Controversy In Sports

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a good number of athletes who have sex controversy participating in sports events. Some of them are transgender athletes, while others are intersex athletes. In most cases, those athletes often have XY (male) chromosomes and would compete in women’s sports events. If they win, they would often be accused of having an unfair advantage over biological female athletes.

While the debate on this topic has been going on for years, I think people have been ignoring the simplest solution to this problem, democracy.

Democracy In Sports

To complete in a game, it’s important that most of the athletes agree on the rules of the game. If all of sudden, the rules of the game are changed by a small group of people in a way that most of the athletes disagree with, then the game would lose its meaning.

This perfectly applies to the rule whether transgender and intersex athletes should be allowed to compete in sports events and if they are allowed to compete should they compete with male or female athletes. Right now, only a very small group of people, most of which are from some sports organizations and committees, are making the decision and rules for this, and a very large group of people, who are not athletes competing in the games, are influencing the decision and rules. This is completely against the principle of democracy. Only the athletes who are competing in the games should have the right to decide the rules of the game.

Ending The Sex Controversy In Sports

Because competing in sports events is not a basic human right, so democracy can be practiced for deciding the rule of whether certain athletes should be allowed to compete in sports events.

To decide whether transgender and intersex athletes, by what metrics, should be allowed to compete in women’s sports events, a vote should be held among all the registered female athletes who are competing in the games once every few years and key sports events should abide by the result of the vote. In addition, whether transgender and intersex athletes, by what metrics, should be allowed to compete in men’s sports events should also be decided by a vote among all the registered male athletes who are competing in the games.

It’s possible that transgender and intersex athletes will not be allowed to compete in neither the men’s nor the women’s sports events by vote. It’s unfortunate for those athletes, but the feeling of the majority of the athletes should be respected. However, if the transgender and intersex athletes are allowed to compete in, say, women’s sports events by vote, then if those athletes ever win the game, no one should accuse them of having an unfair advantage.

Conclusions

What’s hurting athletes are not transgender and intersex athletes competing with them, but the small group of privileged people who are making the rules for the games and ignoring the opinions from the majority of the athletes.