Dominance feminism, intersectionality and why the popular understanding of women’s separate sporting spaces is a step in the wrong direction

Abstract

Gender critical feminists (hereafter GCs) are winning the political battle that has been fought over the last eight years about the provision of separate sporting spaces for females – there is an accelerating trend of international, national and local sporting organizations excluding trans* women from women’s sporting competitions. The justifications used by GCs revolve around issues of fairness, safety and integrity of women’s sports. This paper suggests that the arguments utilised by GCs are the wrong strategic turn in the battle for greater power, resources and coverage for women’s sports. To make this argument, I will use ideas drawn from Catharine MacKinnon’s dominance feminism and Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectional feminism. These positions on feminism share a number of underpinning foundations. Both champion strongly political coalitions built from women’s (and other’s) experiences on the ground. Also, both remain sceptical of the value of equal opportunities law in challenging (white) male dominance. This paper uses an intersectionally informed dominance feminism as a corrective to the uncritical embrace of sports sex categorisation taken up by GC theorists.