A Sporting Case for Inclusion in High School Sport

Abstract Who should be allowed to participate in what category in various sporting contexts is a pressing moral issue, not least of all for youth athletes. Currently there’s significant legal, social, and philosophical pressure to exclude some athletes from competing in the categories that they’d prefer. This paper is specifically concerned with high school sports, although much of the discussion can generalize to other sporting contexts. Specifically, I engage with the argument that high school sports should exclude transgender athletes from participating on the team that best matches their gender identity on the basis that allowing athletes to compete in the gender category that best matches their gender identity would undermine competitive fairness, and so would undermine the purpose of high school sport. But, as I argue, this argument misunderstands sport. Sporting normativity must take into account not only competitive values, most prominently fairness, but also other values relevant to the particular sporting practice at hand. Sport is not simply a competition devoid of normatively relevant context. In this paper, I draw from the philosophy of sport literature to argue that this singular focus on fairness in arguments for exclusive participation policies is misguided from the point of view of high school sport, and, further, that it is in the interest of high school sport to have inclusive gender categories.