Mandatory Mixed

Mandatory mixed

Stage-setting

For the past couple of years, I have been playing a somewhat niche sport competitively. When you try bike polo for the first time, it is a rather hit or miss experience. Most people never give it another shot, but the rest start playing every week, travel the continent and the world to camp behind parking lots, or sleep in strangers’ kitchens, as they take part in semi-makeshift tournaments where the public is mostly just other players. Such attractive power is the compound effect of a few things: the sport itself (weird requirements, deep involvement of multiple motor skills), the people around the sport (when people aren’t playing, they most likely drink beer and smoking weed, rather than chug protein shakes), and the overall vibe (pretty DIY).

These also explain the situation that we’re in today.

As a physical, dangerous sport involving moving steel frames sport, it has been historically dominated by dudes. The modern iteration was kickstarted by bike messengers in Seattle, and extended to bike messengers in Europe and beyond. As a community, the prevailing friendliness and inclusivity of the players began to counteract the prevalent “big dick energy” of that could take place on the court during the games. In short, some new people (women/queer/etc.) want play, and they want to be included by the current people (dudes). So the rules adapted, mindsets changed And when the mindsets didn’t change, some people usually left, which is a bit sad. , and more and more tournaments started to be mixed-gender, either by personal team preference, or by requirement of the tournament organizers (at the more local level, trainings and pick-ups were already mixed anyways). And because it’s a DIY sport, there is no over-arching federation to which we all pay a (symbolic and financial) tribute to, so no one to make arbitrary decisions that all have to follow.

This was the state of affairs as of summer 2026.

For organizational reasons we do not need to get into here, there now needs to be a vote on whether team composition will be mandatory mixed Every team should have at least two genders on the roster. Bike polo is played 3v3, so a team is made up of three players on the field, and can have one sub on the bench, as it’s the case for the Euros. .

Players of the continent are currently taking part in a vote, with three options:

1. No, not mandatory mixed.
2. Yes, mandatory mixed as of 2027, and for two seasons.
3. Yes, mandatory mixed, but as of 2028, and for two seasons.

(The third option is there to accommodate players who are not against mandatory-mixed, but had already organized a non-mixed team, and would like to compete in the tournament with this team).

A note on democracy

When I was in school studying political science, one of the few things that stuck with me was the recurring statement that democracy is the least worst system See, for instance, David Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, or Jacques Rancière’s The Hatred of Democracy, or if you’re into old-school, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Contrat Social (#whitedudetheory btw). . So I will preface this whole discussion by saying that I don’t think democracy is a good system, but I think it’s better than most alternative (autocracy, ploutocracy, aristocracy, etc.). In particular, democracy (or direct voting, as it is the core underlying mechanism) has the problem of flattening out the intensity of disagreement. A vote on an important decision that is split 50.1% vs. 49.9% does not mean that everyone kinda agrees; it can very well mean (and it usually does) that the people voting are very radically split, and can hold very strong opinions diametrically opposed to one another (see: the USA).

One decision system I do like a lot is the one used by the IEEE The people who decide how the Internet should work. , because they operate on rough consensus. In rough consensus, discussions are held until everyone either agrees, or does not disagree, which is very different from being against. Not disagreeing means that one does not think that the decision being taken is one thay can get behind, but they do not oppose it, because they do not really have a solid alternative. What is meaningful in rough consensus are the strongly dissenting voices, the ones that feel in their core that what is being decided is wrong, or unfair, or against everything they stand for This might remind you of Henry Fonda’s character in 12 Angry Men . This requires time, face to face exchanges, and an open mind—all scarce things as of writing.

The arguments

Still, there will be a vote, and some discussions (online¹ and offline) have taken place, with recurring arguments for and against. I’d like to try and not type them in strictly the pro- or con- side, so here they are, thematically. Plus, as you’ll see, they overlap quite a bit.

Demographics

The first point of contention is the number of FLINTA Meaning basically not cis-men. The US-American equivalent is WFTNB. ready to play competitively at a high level (which is obviously not the only way to play, see below). At the Swiss level, this was one of the main questions: are there even enough FLINTAs to make up all the 12 teams of the national championships? In a very concrete sense of composing teams, this solidifies some strange dynamics. Already, cis-men are having problems participating in mixed tournaments, which seems to be a lot less the case for FLINTAs. This is because, if there are much less FLINTAs then non-FLINTAs, then FLINTAs are being sought after to join a team so that the team can join the tournament. Then there are a few (unexpected) consequences. At a similar skill level, a FLINTA will have more opportunities to play with stronger players than for non-FLINTAs. I’ve also heard some FLINTA who feel weird about being asked in a team just because they’re not dudes, kinda objectified as a key to unlock access to a tournament. The last, maybe obvious point, is that you have a team of friends that you want to play with and everyone happens to be all the same gender, well, you can’t play.

The other dimension of the demographics is that the vote concerns, in practice white FLINTAs, since bike polo is still very very very caucasian. This, for some, delegitimizes the vote, as they perceive it as another form of disguised oppression (white FLINTAs take the spotlight away from other issues, issues that are just as serious and offending to those are victim of it). A fairer vote would be to include all forms of discrimination.

Representation

Considering demographics dovetails nicely with the question of representation. When FLINTA players might feel objectified for being asked to join a team just because of their gender, the specter of tokenization looms near. Tokenization is taking a single case as a proof that you abide by broader norms (e.g. always putting the one minority member (whether gender, skin color, abilities) on every picture to show that your group is not discriminatory. A concern would be that it just remains at the symbolic level: a club has enough FLINTAs to ensure that all players can reasonably participate in the tournaments they want, but don’t really do anything to support or include them beyond that point. This happens fairly often in mixed tournaments with teams of 4, 3 players + 1 sub. I’ll let you guess the gender of the players most often on the court, and the gender of the player most often on the bench.

But representation is not always tokenization. Seeing a mixed sport has an effect on external and internal audiences. When you talk about bike plo with friends, colleagues, or people in the train who ask you what is that weird equipment you’re carrying, and you tell them that it’s a mixed sport, eyebrows are raised, not in suspicion but in curiosity. A mixed gender sport? How could that be? Aren’t all competitive (and amateur) sports segregated? Consolidating the sport as mixed-gender is a strong signal that another world is possible The phrasing is not innocent, I think bike polo involves a lot of anarchist practices, if not politics. . Having a mixed-gender sport sends a strong signal reminding everyone else that competitive sports operate on the assumption that males and females should not compete with one another and that, whenever it is not clear whether a competitor is male or female, they get excluded. It also shows that you can play together and have a high, or at least enjoyable level of competition. It also does not hurt when you ask for funding from the city to support your club.

Internally (that is, within FLINTAs playing bike polo), representation can also have a positive effect. I once had a colleague who was a social psychologist and studied the gender dynamics in STEM Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics classrooms. Those classrooms are usually vastly dominated by boys, and girls adapt in different ways. They can drop out, or behave like boys, out of fatigue or lack of self-confidence. But the colleague observed, is that, even if there are only, say, three girls, in a classroom of thirty pupils, and just one of them is performing very well, it boosts the confidence of the two others, and reassures them that they do belong here. It’s the same in the sport: FLINTAs have talked about how inspiring for them it was to see other FLINTAs playing at a high level and competing against non-FLINTAs.

Competition and socialization

If segregation is not the only way to play sports, neither is competition. Competitive play is another point of disagreement in the mixed-mandatory vote: just as there is a gender gap in the community of players, there is also a skill gap—non-FLINTAs have been playing for longer than non-FLINTAs on average, and so they have a headstart. Having a mixed-mandatory tournament might then lower the overall level of the games, and winning a tournament with such format might depreciate the value of a victory (as opposed to winning a tournament without such constraints).

In the modern era, before the quantification of sports, sports were more of a healthy and social activity that an utmost cutthroat game where everyone involved gets incredibly insulting and violent I’m looking at you, football fans. for reasons that are absolutely absurd for anyone who is not into sports. A lot of the fun in bike polo is actually hanging out, joking around, meeting old friends and making new ones. This is not to say that there is no good in competition. Competitive games have the beautiful tendency to create a unique kind of drama, taking players and public together in a lovely roller-coaster of emotions. It’s uncertain whether these emotions would diminish with a mixed-gender tournament. There might be less “wow” moments of crazy tricks done by very old players. A golden goal in the finals remains a golden goal in the finals, separate from the gender of who scores it.

Short-term and long-term

The skill issue has always been lurking behind any form of discrimination. Girls as are not good as boys, blacks are not as smart as browns, muslims are not as civilized as christians, etc., all those lovely arguments that do a lot of the heavy lifting towards blind hatred of the Other. The question implied in the vote is also whether that skill gap is inherent or not, or whether it would close given enough time. Considering it from a short-term or long-term perspectives suggests differing ways of thinking about it. Some people think that, ultimately, yes, anyone will have the potential to play as good anyone else As very wisely stated in Ratatouille. . Others consider that there is, in fact a physiological difference, and that, in the interest of fairness, we should keep things separated To be fair, I haven’t really heard that argument for this specific vote in the bike polo community, but it is dominant outside. .

There are different observations about the development of skills. Everyone knows that playing tournament (and solo polo) are the best ways to improve. “Mandating” FLINTAs to participate at the highest level is a fast-forward towards them getting better, and might eventually close the gap. And even if the gap doesn’t close (for reasons that would probably be heatedly debated), mandatory-mixity only lasts only for two seasons, so we can just go back to how it was before if people are not happy. A counter-argument is that it is, in fact, too short-term: real-change only happens in the long-term, and having a couple of countries opting in for mixity for a couple of years is not actually going to change anything, or will have too little effect to change anything in the long run (worse, it might create resentment in the long term).

Bottom-up and top-down

The last point of contention is not so much about the content than about the process. People might want bike polo to be mixed-gender sport by default, but they don’t think a general vote about the format of the Euros is the way to do it. The idea is that change only comes from long-term, bottom-up initiatives, and that directives imposed onto everyone for a disembodied entity is just yet another form of oppression. Such a top-down approach would also risk brushing aside other (more important) aspects of making a sport mixed-gender: making sure no one is behaving like a dick, doing particular efforts to introduce FLINTAs to bike polo by running beginners’ sessions, re-evaluating individual and collective behaviors regularly, etc.

In other words, some people consider the vote as an easy, quick and temporary solution that might serve as an excuse to not do the hard, slow but more permanent work of being more inclusive. Other options might include considering more graduated approaches to inclusion, such as saving some spots in the tournament for diverse teams, whether at the national or regional level. This part has the benefit of being a little bit more delicate than slamming a simple (simplistic) quota on everyone else.

What I think

Fuck yeah mandatory mixed, everyone else who thinks differently is a stupid loser.

Just kidding. I’ve tried to remain somewhat fair across the discussion of all these arguments, but I suppose you can guess my position.

I think mandatory-mixed is a good idea, for the following reasons (in order of importance). First, outside representation: it gives an example to the world that things can be different. As for the skill level, I also don’t think that physiology is a fundamental obstacle. People with different bodies can play differently and still compete at a high-level. Sure, the level might drop, but nothing prevents other players to play at their best, and to play with all their teammates. Rather than having two other teammates you rely on, your role shifts and it’s up to you to carry your team. In time, all teammates will catch-up, and if they don’t, the sport will change, and that’s fine because I don’t think it’s an overwhelming loss (a different kind of play that might feel less exciting to some, but at the same time feel more exciting to a lot more).

I’m aware this is by no means going to solve sexism or segregation in bike polo. But if I don’t see it as a sufficient condition, I still think it’s necessary. It’s like affirmative action, or any kind of humanitarian action: it’s good, but it should strive to make itself obsolete as soon as possible (the only good NGO is the NGO that is no longer needed).

I do feel a bit bummed that it’s so hard to make teams, but I see in two ways: first, if you want change, you need to work for it (see the long-term actions mentioned just above), and a mandatory-mixed top tournament acts as an incentive to do so. Personally, it also gives me motivation to become a better player (both in terms of hard and soft skills) so that FLINTAs would be happy to play with me! I would also like it if there were more tournaments that are just open, once in a while.

Mostly, I’m against the process. I find it a missed opportunity that people vote without discussing it beforehand with people who hold various perspectives, and it runs the risk of creating the kind of resentment and unspoken rancor that splits communities. I think it’s also a unique opportunity to think through governance at the continental level that does not need to rely on institutions, and I felt like this part of the process was cast aside.