Sports is all about equality and inclusion. However, it is also about fairness. People that denounce their original gender and wish to appear as representatives of the other, have already asked a quite complicated question. And at first, the athletic community accepted them, based on the first of the admissions above. However, after the latest decision of the Supreme Court in the UK, things already have, and will radically change in the future.
Trans females vs biological ones
Even before the decision of April 16 of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the ruling body of Rugby Union had already banned trans women from their sport, based on health and safety reasons. The court ruling stipulated that the term «female» in the law about equality applies exclusively to the biological gender. It does not apply to transgenders. Right after this ruling was published, the Scottish Federation issued its own verdict on the subject matter, forbidding the participation of non-biological women to the football matches that it organizes.
The famous English FA followed suite. It issued an announcement that as of June 1st 2025, all trans players will not be allowed to participate in the tournaments and championships that it is responsible for. It did however include in the same announcement that it follows the politics of UEFA and FIFA on the issue, adding that they already contacted the already registered athletes in an effort to allow them continued inclusion through other roles and positions.
Let’s focus on fairness
While there is plenty of legalism and other reasoning in that decision, we will take into this discussion only one aspect as all of the rest, are subject to interpretation and debate. And that aspect hinges on the fundamental principle of all sports: fairness. Medically speaking, it is not fair for biological women to compete with trans females.
That’s because their physiology is the one of men. Stronger muscles, adrenaline, longer legs, greater reach of the arms, better aerodynamics. The vast majority of trans females gain an inherent advantage over biological women to begin with. While, some of those advantages can be mitigated through medication, leveling the play field, such a solution poses a danger to the health of the athletes using such chemicals for prolonged periods of time. And this is unfair to them.
Immediately, there was the question why such a ban would apply to trans women and not trans men. The response is that the case with them is the exact opposite. Trans men are placing themselves at a disadvantage, medically speaking, in comparison to biological males.
Perhaps the solution is a third classification?
According to the claims of the supporters of equality and inclusion, the creation of a separate division for trans athletes goes against the above two dogmatic beliefs. Hence, they oppose any sort of separation. They want to compete as members of the gender of their choice. Furthermore, they claim that the medical reasoning is not enough to warrant either the separation, or the banning of trans athletes.
The discussion of whether it’s fair or not to drive trans women out of UK sports, is a matter of the scientists and the doctors. One thing is rather certain from now on. After the decisions of Rugby Union and the FA to ban such athletes, other sports will follow suite. Which raises a new question. Women’s rights organizations have been campaigning about unifying all sports so that both men and women could compete together. If the above decisions are to be taken into considerations, the probability of such a thing happening, is rather slim, if not non-existent.
For the betting world, since one of the main reasons involved is fairness, it does have a consequence. For the punters that want to open an account at the best betting software and place their bets on the winners of various sporting competitions, when they know that some athletes have an inherent advantage over others, it has an impact on the odds that they are offered to begin with.
