Researcher ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6865-7649

Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Second Department

Philosophy

Reader 1

Malte Dold

Reader 2

Jordan Daniels

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2024 Nicole Player

Abstract

The last decade has seen a flurry of anti-transgender bills introduced and passed in the United States, and the topic that has likely been the most hotly debated regards the dozens of state bans on transgender athletes. While most discussions of these bans go straight to a debate about physiology, this thesis centers instead on a question of justice. In the debate of whether to allow a transgender girl to compete in girls’ sports, is it more “just” to prioritize fairness in women’s sport, as these bans do, or is it more just to prioritize inclusion? This thesis, in finding that the transgender bans’ “fairness” argument attempts to mirror John Rawls’ theory of “justice as fairness,” proceeds to question whether this is the correct approach to the matter at hand. It does so by determining what is really targeted by arguments of fairness in women’s sports, which continue to be deeply inferiorized by patriarchy, and by arguments of fairness in youth sports, which are rapidly being pushed out of environments of “play” into reward-focused environments by modern capitalism. It highlights what is truly at stake for transgender athletes and for cisgender girls in this debate, and utilizes Amartya Sen’s “Capability Approach” and theory of comparative justice to find that justice as inclusion is the better choice in the grand scheme of improving liberty and equality in America.

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