Book review: Gender Diversity and Sport – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Increasing Inclusivity.

The book looks at trans inclusion in sport from several fascinating angles and offers some insight and the tools to start debating how we can include trans people in sport rather than simply exclude them. The book details some interesting new research, some useful legal and historical background and gives a new, positive insight and some possible solutions to a debate that so far has only offered exclusion as the ultimate answer.

The issue of trans people competing in sport seems to be constantly in the news recently and the debate now feels as though it is urging individuals to choose their stance on this issue. With a topic awash with opinion and scientific details, finding material to form your stance is a daunting task. While Gender Diversity and Sport may not contain all the scientific details you may feel you need to decide your opinion, it does offer an alternative view that turns the debate on its head and instead of discussion why trans people should not be involved in sport, it instead raises a more important question – how do we include them.

 The editors have done well to gather together a range of eloquent experts in this field and have produced what may well prove to be essential reading in this area. The book offers a good background history to sex segregation in sport by Jamie Schultz in Chapter 2 which really sets the scene and challenges the reader to consider how sexism may still impact women's sport and how determining what a female is within sport is not as clear-cut as it seems.

The next chapter by Seema Patel also provides some solid background information, looking at the legal and regulatory barriers to trans people who want to compete in sport. With decisions on this matter being published every day from various sporting bodies, Patel not only highlights the ever-increasing barriers but also details how often ignored factors in sport, such as the Olympic Charter and human rights laws, could and should be used to encourage wider participation in sport and provide trans athletes legal protections. 

 University Sports is often an area overlooked within the debate around trans individuals competing. Catherine Phipps writes a good overview which looks at the regulations for trans athletes in this area and presents some interesting research looking into how accessible sport is for trans and non-binary athletes. This research very much highlights some of the short-comings of the British University and Colleges Sports regulations and provides a good exploration of sports at this level. 

The book also goes on to examine some of the overlooked issues for trans and non-binary athletes, issues beyond athletic performance, such as a fantastic chapter on sporting uniforms by Lauren Whitehouse and colleagues and a further chapter from Lauryn Stewart and colleagues devoted to how trans womens' feelings about their own voice has an impact on the Australian sports field.

Hannah Kettley Linsell and colleagues ensure that school sports are also not neglected with a well researched chapter examining inclusive practices in schools and highlighting some important areas where schools currently fail trans and nonbinary students. The media and the representation of trans people is a big part of the current debate around inclusion in sport and the chapter devoted to this subject by Gabriel Knott-Fayle and colleagues reports on a discourse analysis of various media sources to reveal what themes circulate within the subject of trans individuals within sport. Finally, Han Newman and Gemma Witcomb look to the future and look at the opportunities and challenges to a world of sport beyond the binary. 

 The book is both informative and well written, but most of all, it is a great departure from the primary narrative of athletic advantages. Instead, this book gives the reader a good grounding in wider debates around transgender participation in sport and focuses on inclusion rather than exclusion. In addition, it keeps in mind not just the elite athlete who is top of their game, but the everyday athlete, the student joining a University team or a keen amateur runner entering a 10km mass-start race.

So far the debate in this area has been purely based on preserving the cis-based binary nature of sport and without simply going down the rabbit hole of 'natural advantage' and science-based arguments, this book offers a fresh look at the subject, one that centre's the rights of trans and non-binary individuals to participate in sports.