Writing an eligibility rule taught me that metaphysics doesn’t settle policy
For some years I served on the committee that wrote eligibility rules for our regional school competitions. I'm not going to argue here about any current controversy, and I'd ask others not to. I want to share something I learned that I think applies well beyond sport.
Every category in sport has to be drawn somewhere, and every criterion produces a slightly different set of people: age by date of birth, weight by the morning's scale, school by enrolment. When it comes to sex categories, a body writing rules might use chromosomes, hormone levels, developmental history, legal status or self-identification. Each criterion includes someone the others exclude. And the committee has to choose one.
What surprised me, reading the philosophy afterwards, is how little the big theories decided for us. Someone who holds a biological analysis of gender, like Alex Byrne's, and someone who holds an identity-based one, like Talia Mae Bettcher's, could in principle agree on a competition rule for quite different reasons, one because the rule tracks a biological difference relevant to performance, the other because sport is a special context where a different category is needed. And two people with the same metaphysics could disagree sharply about the rule, because they weigh fairness, inclusion and safety differently.
So my takeaway: the metaphysics underdetermines the policy. Before assuming someone you disagree with on a rule holds a particular view of what gender is, ask them. I'd be interested in where people think that breaks down.