On March 23, the World Athletics Council, which runs the World Athletics Championships and other sporting events, decided to ban transgender women athletes from competing in any of their events if they have gone through any stages of male puberty. While this didn’t exactly come as a shock to anybody, given that the Council proposed this back in January, it was still an unpleasant reminder of just how transphobic the sports world can often be.
So, let’s talk about trans athletes — particularly trans women, as trans men were not included in the WAC’s ruling — because there are pervasive misconceptions that contribute to the mass hysteria over trans people playing sports.
First, some basic definitions. A trans person is anyone who does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. Trans is a broad category that encompasses trans men and women, as well as non-binary and gender non-conforming people. A trans man is someone who was assigned female at birth and transitioned to a man. A trans woman is someone who was assigned male at birth and transitioned to a woman. I’m going to use trans people to refer to primarily trans men and women throughout the piece, but nonbinary and gender non-conforming people are very much a part of that community, and they are affected by this ruling as well.
Just to be very clear: Gender is not biological. Neither is sex. There are so many gene combinations that can cause someone to present as male or female that are not XX and XY. Genitals may not match up with someone’s external appearance, especially for intersex people. The World Athletics Council’s order hurts intersex individuals just as much as it hurts trans women because it prevents anyone who has gone through male puberty at all from participating — this applies to intersex people if their parents chose the male gender for them.
The process of transitioning varies wildly by person. Not all trans people choose to medically transition, but many do. For these two genders, this involves hormone replacement therapy — trans men take testosterone and trans women take estrogen. Trans women may undergo breast augmentation while trans men may undergo double mastectomies (commonly called top surgery), and both may undergo bottom surgery to change their genitals. Any medical solution may also require extensive mental health analysis, referrals from doctors and certainly money. It is not something that someone undergoes just because they felt like trying out another gender for the day.
So, trans women in sports: What’s the big deal? Short answer: There isn’t one. The only people making a big deal out of this are sore losers and transphobes.
The long answer is exactly the same: There isn’t a problem, except for the ones society creates. There is a belief, for example, that trans women are beginning to dominate women’s sports and win all of the awards. There is another, even dumber idea, that men would claim to be trans women and change in the girls’ locker rooms so they could see boobs.
Absolutely zero trans people are transitioning so that they can win sports events. However, there are trans people who happen to play sports, and the best thing we can do is allow them to compete in the categories of their identity. Unfortunately, many organizations do not allow that because of rules about testosterone and assigned gender.
One of the most famous examples of a trans person in sports is Lia Thomas, a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania. She gained media attention in 2021 when she became one of the most successful transfeminine athletes in college sports, dominating her competitions and becoming the first trans woman to win an NCAA Division I championship. She came out during her junior year and began HRT for her gender dysphoria. NCAA rules at the time stated that trans female athletes “may not compete on a women’s team until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.” Those rules have since been updated to be more inclusive.
After Thomas had completed that requirement and deferred her eligibility a year due to COVID-19, she began to swim on the women’s team in 2021, dominating competitions and drawing massive amounts of hatred from right-wing news sources and many of her teammates and opponents. Many opponents cited that her ‘biology,’ such as her height and bone density, gave her unfair advantages, and backed this up with some scientific studies that supposedly show that advantage. However, Dr. Joshua D. Safer, co-author of the Endocrine Society’s guidelines for treating trans people, stated, “A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance,” and most medical experts agree.
Sometimes, when looking at how dominant Thomas was throughout her final season, it might be easy to believe that the transphobes are correct and that Thomas is simply too dominant to be allowed to swim with women. But, she was previously one of the best swimmers on the Penn men’s team, and she was not even ranked No. 1 in the country in collegiate women’s swimming during her final season. If she was so good on the men’s team, what advantage would she have gained by transitioning? Maybe she’s just a good swimmer.
But transphobes don’t want to hear that. One of the girls that Thomas beat is still on Fox News whining about her loss nearly a year after the race. She and those who agree with her simply cannot accept that someone who is trans might be good at sports. And, while they are comfortable speaking their hatred, they are often empowered by the shield of anonymity, as is evident in this quote from a teammate of Thomas’ who didn’t want her to swim on the team: “I’m not about to be labeled as transphobic.”
There is also a deep misogyny that often runs as an undercurrent for these arguments. People are very rarely as concerned about trans men playing sports unless they are competing in the women’s category. Trans men are allowed to compete with men because people often feel that they are weaker than cisgender men due to their sex assigned at birth and thus not a ‘threat’ to the sport. Trans women are not allowed to compete because of their sex assigned at birth, which apparently makes them stronger than every cisgender woman alive. These arguments never account for the vast differences in female biology or for those who are intersex. I am always particularly surprised whenever women who claim to be feminists jump in to defend the sanctity of “biological women.” Are they so transphobic that they would rather define a woman by their uterus, estrogen and supposed weakness? Seems deeply anti-feminist to me.
Furthermore, the amount of controversy generated around this non-issue is just stupid. Anti-trans legislation in the United States has skyrocketed this year. Three hundred and eighty seven bills were introduced in state legislatures, and 51 of them were about trans people — primarily trans women — playing sports. And yet, this “problem” concerns an extremely small number of people. In Utah, whose legislature overrode the governor’s veto to pass the law, the number of kids affected by the legislation was four. In South Dakota, the number was zero. These legislatures decided that a good use of their time and taxpayer money was to bully kids — kids, mind you, whom the Utah governor said were “just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something.”
But, to be honest, this argument should have been settled last year during the 2023 Tokyo Olympics, when the International Olympic Committee rewrote their guidelines about trans athletes. Previously, the Committee’s policy involved setting testosterone levels for all female athletes, which excluded both trans and cis athletes. Now, the governing body of the most famous sports event in the world says that each sport should set its own rules for trans athletes and that “sporting bodies should not assume that transgender women have an inherent advantage over cisgender women, nor should transgender women have to reduce their testosterone levels to compete.” It makes no sense for the World Athletics Council to be going backwards on this issue. If the International Olympic Committee can be progressive about this, there is no reason for anyone to not follow suit.
Madison Auchincloss is an LSA freshman and a member of The Daily’s Copy section. They can be reached at mauch@umich.edu.