Incorrect Athlete, Incorrect Woman: IOC Gender Regulations and the Boundaries of Womanhood in Professional Sports

• In Event: Transgressing Sports: Racism, Transphobia, and Resistance in Mainstream Athletics

Abstract

In this paper, I posit that professional sports rely on and protect uniformity of gender experience to regulate and exclude trans participation and that gender regulation policies delineate the boundaries of gender and particularly womanhood in a way that further marginalizes nonbinary athletes. I examine the International Olympic Committee by discussing the ways that scientific legitimacy, gender consistency requirements, and an emphasis on fairness contribute to gender regulation. Through this analysis, I show the (d)evolution of gender regulation in sport but also illustrate how nonbinary athletes are challenging sport to reckon with its relentless exotification and policing of transgressive bodies.

Presenter

• Sabeehah Ravat, University of South Florida