Critical Reflections on the Governance of Women and Gender Expansive Athletes: An Intersectional Interdisciplinary Dialogue

In response to growing reactionary movements pushing an antigender, transphobic moral panic, sports organizations are increasingly pressured to implement policies for the women’s category that more heavily regulate and/or exclude marginalized groups of women. These efforts are the latest iteration in a long history of the paternalistic, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal governance of women athletes. Drawing on a panel convened at the annual conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in November 2022, we present an intersectional, interdisciplinary dialogue on how “sex” has been, and is currently, weaponized to reinforce normative gender logics. Throughout our reflections, we offer perspectives on raising the stakes for representation in women’s sport, following Jennifer Doyle, to rethink women’s sport as a “radically inclusive space.”