The Fight for Trans Athletes in Sport
Rich Von Biberstein/AP
“[Transgender youth] don’t have to choose between who they are and the sport they love,” expressed trans swimmer Lia Thomas in an interview in early March with Sports Illustrated. However, analysts reveal that not everyone agrees with this statement when it comes to professional sports.
In 2019, Thomas began medically transitioning, taking testosterone blockers and estrogen required to legally participate on women’s teams, reported the New York Times. However, despite her treatment effectively suppressing her ability to swim, she has still risen to the top in competitions. In March she claimed the title of the first openly transgender women to have won a National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) competition.
In the world of competitive swimming, each second is a rare advantage, so having reached the end goal nearly two seconds before the runner-up was a significant success for Thomas.
News organizations worldwide reveal that due to her growing success, Thomas has been tossed in the line of fire between broadly right-wing opposers and democratic supporters of transgender rights. While the former argues that trans athletes have an unfair advantage in sports, the latter counters that it would be discriminatory to exclude them from the opportunity to find success, and that anti-trans bills centre around transphobia rather than medical reasoning.
In addition, opposers believe these bills have been enacted to score political points. Specifically, through claiming these actions protect youth, reported the NBC. Don Haider-Markel, political science professor at the University of Kansas commented, “Who doesn’t want to protect children?”
As noted by news outlets, another claim coming from right-wing supporters of anti-trans laws is that banning transgender athletes protects women’s rights. The World Athletics president recently expressed that “gender cannot trump biology,” while UK member of parliament Sebastien Coe has emphasised how trans athletes can not be allowed to compete if we want to maintain the “integrity and future of women’s sport.”
As well, Coe informed the Daily Telegraph that if he “wasn’t satisfied with the science that we have and the experts that have been working on this for a long time, this would be a very different landscape.”
However, when it comes to science, there is not enough “consistent research” revealed the National Library of Medicine. Amy Wilson, the NCAA’s managing director of inclusion communicated how there is no clear answer when it comes to how big of an upper hand transgender athletes have at Thomas’ level. This is primarily due to how few transgender men and women find themselves among the 500,000 NCAA athletes.
On March 25 the Utah State Legislature voted a bill into law that will, as of July 1, prevent transgender youth from participating in girls’ sports. The bill, titled H.B. II, has received relentless opposition, as reported by the New York Times. Along with this disapproval came a letter from Republican Governor Spencer Cox whose words rang true of Wilson’s statement. Cox ended his letter with a strong message: “Four [transgender high school] kids [within the state] and only one of them playing girls sports. That’s what all of this is about.”
As well, Cox emphasised the negative impact the bill would have on mental health, with 56 per cent of Utah’s transgender youth having attempted suicide in response to trans oppression.
In addition to the few number of transgender people participating in sports, experts have pointed out that the advantages transgender women such as Lia Thomas may have depend on which sport they play. Dr. James Barrett, the director of the Adult Gender Identity Clinic in Londo referred to the fact that “heavier musculature” may prove to let them down, while in sports such as swimming, height, as well as larger hands and feet may serve as leverage.
Yet, there are some opposers who believe bodies should play no role in who is authorized to compete. “At what point is a woman too tall or her hands too big? At what point is a woman not woman enough?” expressed Lee Cowan, the CBS National Correspondent.
While many sources have confirmed the lack of consistent research, there is one piece of scientific evidence that shows how futile transgender athlete bans are in younger grades. The New York Times emphasised in an article that girls and boys hold fairly the same athletic ability till they reach puberty, confirming that having transgender athletes compete in elementary sports is no different than cis athletes.
“Sports is my life,” expressed 14 year-old Kris Wilka in an interview with the Human Rights Campaign. Being a transgender boy, Kris was banned from playing football at his school in South Dakota. “It wasn’t really until sports that I could be myself, because I could just be one of the dudes” he shared.
However, when it comes to younger students, some state governors feel that decisions involving gender “should be made when an individual reaches adulthood,” as expressed by Arizona Gov. Douglas A. Ducey. More specifically, when it comes to medical alterations.
In response to such arguments, Nikita Shepard, a PhD candidate in the History Department at Columbia University expressed on the ACLU’s At Liberty podcast that “...children need less protection and more empowerment,” and, “...if we’re giving parents more rights and more power to wield, it doesn’t keep their children safer.” She then went to discuss how not giving children control of their bodies directly results in STIs, unplanned pregnancies, sexual violence, poor self-esteem, and isolation.
When it comes to elite level sports, a 2014 study funded by the International Olympic Committee (“IOC”) and the World Anti-Doping Agency show that there is little point in classifying athletes as male or female based on testosterone due to how varying these levels can be for women.
However, analysts suggest that many republican governors and senators from US states appear to find this little reassurance that bans should not be implemented. Utah was not the first state to have enacted trans athlete bills. News outlets have reported that Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana and West Virginia have also enacted similar policies.
On April 7, Louisiana legislation unanimously approved a law that, similar to Utah’s would prevent transgender college and K-12 students from participating in sports teams. Toronto City News reported that opponents have used this as evidence to prove that these bills are illogical and discriminatory, as there are no openly transgender athletes currently competing in Louisiana.
Another piece of proof harnessed by opposers is that states such as Texas and Alabama have additionally been banning transgender boys from sports teams. However, if supporters of the bans argue they serve to protect women’s rights, one wonders what banning transgender boys has to do with it, remarked Sports Illustrated.
The NCAA has recently announced a new arrangement that requires trans athletes to provide documentation of testosterone levels four weeks before competing. Before March, a year of testosterone suppressions was required, reported CBC.
On the other hand, according to CNN, USA Swimming has recently enacted a policy that requires elite transgender athletes to suppress testosterone levels for the longest period yet — 36 months before competition. For World Athletics this period is only 12 months, reported the Guardian.
Joanna Harper, a medical physicist with a master’s degree in physics working in a medical centre in Portland, Oregon, feels from her own experience as a trans athlete that rules and measures do need to be put in place to allow fair play. However, as expressed in an interview with the New York Times, she feels that USA Swimming’s rules have been exaggerated to target Lia Thomas due to her growing success. “If we allow trans women to compete, we have to allow them to win, too.”
Transgender athlete bans have mostly been centered in the US, and, from what they have been observing, experts do not expect them to make their way into Canada. Softball Canada does not require transgender players to reveal their transgender identity in order to participate. As well, the IOC has made its policy more inclusive of trans athletes, while the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport has encouraged similar behaviour.
While Canada has not been hit by the bans, experts agree that we can expect to see more surfacing this year in the US, due to the record number of 191 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in 2021.