This chapter explores how the law has identified the biological sex of an individual where it is indeterminate or contested. Legal systems with highly ridged sex-based rules developed social and legal mechanisms for authoritatively determining what sex a person was where this was unclear. The traditional approach of the law was to categorise the individual in question by reference to which sex was more ‘predominate’, following a crude assessment of physiology. The classification of sex has evolved significantly since then, with the House of Lords identifying a precise list of ‘indicia of human sex’. In determining biological sex, the law looks for congruence between a person’s chromosomes, gonads and genitals at birth. If there is congruence, then the law will treat that person as biologically male or female as the case may be. If there is incongruence between the physiological factors, that person is recognised as having a DSD and is subject to a separate legal analysis which looks to further factors to determine what sex an individual is classed as, including social upbringing and self-perception. Our law does not conflate issues of sexual development with issues of gender identity. The default position in our law is that a transgender person is legally recognised as being of their biological sex, regardless of medical intervention.

This chapter explores the scientific connection between sex and sport. It begins by examining the meaning of sex and the criteria used to assign individuals to the male or female category. It ends by exploring the link between sex and sport and identifying the sex-related traits that have the greatest impact on athletic performance.

The question of whether transgender girls should be permitted to participate in girls’ sports has been one of the most politically contested and socially controversial of the last decade. Neither law nor medicine provides definitive answers. This book takes on the absolutist positions staked out by both the left and the right and argues in favor of a more nuanced framework that seeks to ensure all girls and boys –both transgender and cisgender – have access to the benefits of organized sports.

This chapter examines the arguments for transgender girls’ exclusion from girls’ sports that have dominated right-leaning public and political discourse. The chapter articulates the argument for exclusion based on fairness and contends that it cannot justify total exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports at every age and level. The chapter next uncovers the claims about human flourishing and personal dignity that also motivate arguments for exclusion and argues that such claims are too empirically dubious and normatively controversial to drive policy decisions.

There are no natural or neutral eligibility rules for girls’ sports. All rules say something about who and what society values. Courts and policymakers will ultimately need to decide how eligibility rules should or must be drawn. In answering these questions, they will need to decide what the social goal of sex-segregated sports is, and which eligibility rules best serve this end. This book started from the premise that transgender and cisgender girls are entitled to equal concern and respect. It then offered a pragmatic and workable framework for optimizing individual and group benefits of sports for both transgender and cisgender girls.

This chapter identifies three distinct benefits of organized sports. Basic benefits are the physical and emotional benefits of sports that flow to all participants. Special benefits are the tangible and intangible rewards that flow only to the winners. Group benefits are the self-esteem and social-status benefits that nonparticipants receive from seeing a member of their group celebrated. The chapter argues that at the recreational and early childhood levels, the values governing the basic benefits of sports should drive eligibility rules and transgender girls should be included. At the elite level of varsity high school and college sports, the values governing special and group benefits should drive eligibility rules and transgender girls should be included, except where transgender athletes dominate the winner’s circle.

This chapter describes and assesses the arguments for transgender girls’ inclusion in girls’ sports that have dominated left-leaning public and political discourse. At core, the arguments focus on the subjective and objective harms of misgendering. The chapter describes and critiques subjective pain arguments as too indeterminate empirically and normatively to provide a basis for inclusion. The chapter next examines objective claims about human flourishing and hierarchies of oppression revealing their underlying assumptions and perhaps unintended consequences.

Sex is the most dramatic normal human polymorphism. A single gene triggers remarkable physical differences in gonads and gametes, in anatomy and behaviour of men and women via a network of genes that induce a ridge of cells to become either a testis or an ovary. These very different gonads make hormones that activate other whole networks of genes in far-flung tissues and organs. Here I explore the role of sex differences in health, longevity, reproduction and evolution, societal roles and discrimination. Sex is genetically complex, and wide variation results from variation in genes of the sex pathway, in hormone-producing genes, and in downstream genes that receive these messages in other tissues. This throws up ethical dilemmas of whether, or how, to treat, babies with atypical sexual development. And how to create a ‘level playing field’ for sport. Some variants may influence gender identity, and mate choice so that transgender and homosexual, may both be seen as simply the edges of normal curves of male and female sexual development. I conclude with the hope that we are heading for a more enlightened world in which variation in sexual development and behaviour, and sexual identity is accepted and celebrated.

This chapter situates trans autobiography in the history of American gay autobiography. I trace an incomplete lineage of popular United States transgender autobiographies from Christine Jorgensen to Janet Mock – a roughly seventy-year chronology. Referring to autobiographies both canonical and lesser-known, I document trends in trans self-narration, consider the ways in which trans autobiographers variably give accounts of what it means to be or to have a gender, and suggest the ways in which the genre of trans autobiography, though calcified around specific notions of medico-juridical legibility, might in fact move beyond the inherently and paradoxically restrictive genre restrictions that seem to inhere in its production. Trans gender autobiography emerged from, I argue, both the medical imperative for narrative accounts of transness and autobiographers’ desires to serve as sources of helpful and hopeful information for trans and non-trans people alike.

The case study focuses on the CRT tenet of intersectionality at the micro level regarding the issue of homelessness. Informed by the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins on intersectionality, this case highlights how the intersection of multiple oppressed identities compounds the life of a first-generation African American transgender individual. Sitting at the intersection of their race, gender and cultural upbringing affected how the client navigated homelessness. Using that same tenet, the case demonstrates how the social worker working with the client is able to intervene in a way that centers their various identities. The case posits that by acknowledging the interweaving of different identities such as race and gender, CRT prompts a deeper understanding of the structures of power and discrimination.

This case discusses how the concept of family is a social construct, created and maintained by social norms that inform our individual attitudes, perceptions, and expectations of what a family is or is not. Although there is a strong history of advocacy in the Black queer community, families who identify as more traditional may struggle with acceptance of LGBTQ+ persons. Additionally, systemic racism and homophobia may create barriers to legal protections for individuals and partnerships who sit at that intersection. Being aware of the role of negative social construction on Black individuals’ ability to thrive in society and considering and honoring the roles of persons who are part of one’s chosen family is essential for social work practice. This is especially true in spaces where chosen family are given little to no legal consideration.

The way in which our understanding of and approaches to Bloomsbury have been changed by feminist and gender scholarship is under discussion in this chapter. In the main, however, it addresses the gender politics of Bloomsbury itself primarily through how Bloomsbury artists engaged with feminism and gender in their creative endeavors and in their personal relationships, and how their gender politics accorded with or diverged from what was happening in the broader public sphere in terms of social movements such as suffrage, and cultural institutions such as marriage. The chapter discusses Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, and E. M. Forster, among others. Far from seeking to present a coherent position among the group, this chapter teases out the contradictory and shifting views of various members. It ends by considering the group’s legacy in terms of whether and how Bloomsbury contributed, artistically and politically, to the reorientation of gender in its day, and ours.

This chapter introduces trans studies to Michael Field, and Michael Field to trans studies. It sketches out a range of critical approaches to Victorian trans studies and considers how Michael Field’s life and work enrich and complicate this emerging field. It introduces Mo Moulton’s ‘non-binary methodology’ as a framework to consider Michael Field’s many gendered selves, for instance, Edith Cooper as ‘Henry Boy’ in their diaries and correspondence. The chapter then turns to the transgender phenomena that proliferate Michael Field’s published work, using three case studies: Tiresias’ transfeminine power in Long Ago (1889), the condemnation of cross-dressing in The Race of Leaves (1901), and the artistry of transition in The World at Auction (1898).