Basketball Australia position on trans inclusion: Lacking detail and transparency

Another week, another case of a trans athlete being banned from a sport. In this particular case, a trans woman Lexi Rodgers submitted an application to play in a semi-professional competition, the NBL1 South competition. Unfortunately, her application was denied and she will not be able to play in the women’s competition. A few things to unpack here, but first I will give a summary of where we are at, and the current climate for trans athlete policy.

Where are we currently with elite trans athlete policy?

Across the globe, more sports have introduced blanket bans for trans women athletes – meaning that unless they have gone through gender affirmation and taken puberty blockers (not gone through male puberty as an adolescent), they are not allowed to compete in the women’s category. World Athletics have just announced this as their policy, as did FINA and swimming not so long ago. In some instances – sports like Triathlon and their governing body British Triathlon, have a female and Open category – meaning trans women can compete, but with the men. For those who think this is a justifiable option, it is basically saying trans women are not real women, and have to compete with men. This is dehumanising, and a violation of their human rights. For the sake of possibly a handful of athletes (if that), sports can and should work towards meaningful ways to include people, not exclude them and police people’s gender.

The new IOC framework, which I have written about here, proposes that each individual sport create their own policy, based on the assumption that every sport is different, and so is, how they define athletic performance, fair and meaningful competition, and what might constitute a fair or unfair advantage. There are also some key parts to the framework, in moving away from testosterone as a single measure of performance, and not assuming trans athletes have an automatic advantage. If a sport thinks a trans athlete has an advantage which would affect the fair and meaningful outcome of a competition, they have to prove it with evidence. Consider though how we frame advantages - as trans women are one of the most disadvantaged groups in society, with their rights being taken away, limited access to healthcare, systemic discrimination and abuse - to argue that they may have physical advantages, fails to consider and contextualise what disadvantages they may have - a lot.

In Australia, some sports like AFL have already developed their policy, and is publicly available online. The AFL base their decision on assessing an application for their women’s competition on a range of factors including: height, bench press, weight, 20m sprint, vertical jump, GPS data, and 2km time trial, in addition to maintaining their testosterone levels below five nmol/L – although current recommendations from some governing bodies suggest it to be as low as 2.5 nmol/L. Other sports are to follow soon, with some having started their journey, but many have no policies in place.

What is Basketball Australia’s policy?

As per Basketball Australia’s policy on their website, under community policy, it states:

“6.2 Basketball Australia is working to establish appropriate Eligibility Criteria, determination, monitoring and dispute resolution for Elite and Sub-Elite Basketball. In the interim, matters will be determined on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the IOC, FIBA, or other applicable governing body criteria”.

Basically they don’t have one. So, they will do case by case. But the question is how will they do a case by case approach, and what are they going to use to as criteria to assess each application? Each sport has to define performance, advantages in their sport, and work out a set of factors and criteria that they will use to assess an application. This will be done through working with sport scientists within Basketball, and working out what specific metrics in Basketball gives a player an advantage – things like height, hand size or grip strength possibly, agility etc. But the key question for sports organisations to grapple with is – what athletic qualities make a good athlete in their sport and how do they measure athletic performance?

A good policy decision and response?

I Just gave a radio interview on ABC Melbourne this morning, and one question stood out. The presenter posed that sport seems to be at the forefront of making decisions around trans people and their inclusion within society – are they prepared to make such decisions? I can assure you, most are not. From my research, and interviewing many sports administrators on this very topic, the majority are uneducated and lack knowledge on trans inclusion, and have little to no understanding of trans bodies, identities, and the impact of gender affirming hormones on bodies and performance.

There are a few problems with the decision in my opinion, which sets a dangerous precedent to capitalise on a growing global movement against the inclusion of transgender people in society, and sport. Organisations must design policies based on evidence, consultation with trans athletes, and those creating the policies need to have a basic understanding of the topic area – which spans several areas including: high performance and sport science, legal factors, endocrinology, human rights, and trans identities and affirmation processes (legal, medical, social). If you are to exclude and ban an athlete for accessing a sporting competition, you need to provide the reasons why – especially under the eyes of the law and the Sex Discrimination Act.

So here in Victoria and some states, you can lawfully and legally exclude a person on the grounds of their sex, in a single sex competition, based on criteria relating to strength, stamina, and physique, and it being relevant to the competition and act as grounds to exclude. But again, you need evidence for this and to be able to prove it.

Basketball Australia have released no information on the process or criteria they used to assess Lexi’s application, and it is unclear what expertise the three-person panel have around transgender athletes and trans inclusion policies. The exclusion of trans athletes at the elite level sends a clear message to trans and gender diverse communities – you are not welcome. This has dangerous repercussions for those wanting to play community sport and engage in activities to help them with their mental, physical, and social health. Decisions like this will turn a generation of young people away from sport. At a time when trans people are under constant attack, sport can be a safe and affirming space for them, and help them – just like it helps the wider population. For a more detailed discussion on how sport can be inclusive of all genders, and move beyond pitting trans rights versus cisgender rights, see the paper I co-authored with colleagues around gender inclusive sport.

This piece was written by our Founder Dr Ryan Storr.