Transgender Inclusion in Single-Sex Competition: The Case of Beauty Pageants

Abstract

Much ethical attention has been devoted to sex segregation and its relation to fairness in the world of sports, with prominent controversies about transgender and inter- sex athletes helping to advance the debate in recent years. In this paper, I deploy some of the discussion from philosophy of sport to examine the fairness of allowing a trans woman to compete in a beauty pageant. This requires scrutinizing the physical characteristics that are rewarded in such competitions and their distribution among the sexes. The analysis casts doubt on the coherence of simple sex segregation and facilitates a feminist critique of beauty standards.