In Response to Imbrišević and Pike, “The Ethics of Sex Verification”

This paper critically examines Imbrišević and Pike’s (2026) defense of sex verification policies in elite sport. While agreeing that sporting classifications are necessarily exclusionary and that exclusion is not inherently unjust, I argue that their position relies on several substantive assumptions that remain insufficiently defended. These include a binary, chromosomally grounded conception of sex; the alignment of sex with gender category membership; the marginalisation of intersex variation; and the treatment of male physiological advantage as a stable and unified class. I further argue that the framework neglects the ethical relevance of transgender men and assigned-female-at-birth individuals, thereby narrowing the scope of analysis in a way that undermines its justificatory force. Finally, I question the implicit attribution of epistemic authority to stakeholders in determining category boundaries. Taken together, these concerns suggest that, while exclusion in sport may in some cases be justified, the argument under consideration does not yet provide adequate grounds for it. The paper concludes by calling for greater conceptual clarity and rigour in the ethical evaluation of sex-based classification in sport.