Ice Hockey UK became one of the first governing bodies in the sport to ban transgender women from participating in women’s hockey. They formally changed their gender and sex participation policies this week.
It followed England’s decision to ban transgender women from field hockey earlier this year.
Ice Hockey UK made the public announcement March 7. The NCAA recently passed similar rules. The rules echo rhetoric shared primarily by conservative politicians. Research and advocacy groups, however, have shown evidence that these decisions will not only hurt transgender women, but also cisgender women.
“Policies that impact trans women’s participation in elite sport are the continuation of a long history of exclusion of women from competitive sport,” wrote the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport in a report titled Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sport: A Scientific Review. “The women’s sports category is the result of the historical exclusion of women from competitive sport, which was underpinned by pathologizing discourses about their bodies and the harms of their participation in physical activities. Policies that impact the practice of trans women in competitive sport emanate from the parallel history of efforts to define the female category in ways that excluded those women whose bodies were deemed to not conform to normative standards of femininity.”
In Great Britain now, all transgender athletes will compete in the male category.
As Ice Hockey UK’s new policy states, “The Parties have concluded that, due to developmental changes brought about by male puberty, and the physical nature of ice hockey as a collision sport, it is both appropriate and necessary to maintain a female only category (female Sex at birth) of ice hockey and to set out certain eligibility requirements for male categories from the Under 12 years age grade upwards and continuing into the adult game.”
Ice Hockey UK’s Policy Threatens All Women
Many believe the new rules will also bar elite girls from competing in boys’ hockey. Women fought and overturned the issue in human rights courts across the globe in the 1980s. This includes the landmark case of Justine Blainey in Canada, which helped shape gender inclusion in sport policies.
Ice Hockey UK’s new policy continued by stating, “The Parties have concluded, based on the evidence available to them, that it is fair and safe for Transgender people to be included within the male category within ice hockey, but because of the physical nature of ice hockey as a collision sport, participation must be subject to risk assessment and consent processes.”
Sex verification testing for women and girls is another looming threat. If requested, women and girls may need to “prove” their sex assigned at birth. As scholar state, this provides additional risk to women and girls in sport, and also reinforces misogynist beliefs about women, and the idea that women are inferior.
Nancy Leong wrote on the topic in Against Women’s Sports.
“One oft-repeated justification for gender verification testing, as well as for sex segregation more generally, is that these practices are necessary to enforce a level playing field. Yet this view is inherently premised on the idea that males are “faster, stronger, and better” at athletics than females. As a result, the same system that supposedly guarantees a space for women to compete simultaneously communicates women’s “competitive inferiority.””
Thestatement presents the idea that anyone assigned male at birth is superior athletically to those assigned female at birth.
As their policy states, Ice Hockey UK has “concluded that the inclusion of Trans people assigned male at birth in female contact sport, cannot be balanced against considerations of safety and fairness. This is due to retained advantages in strength, stamina and physique between the average Transgender woman assigned male at birth (who has passed through puberty and adolescence), and the average Woman.”
