This is from a Facebook post from a group called Insufferable Intolerant Science Nerds. Pretty comprehensive reportage. I couldn't find a link to post, so here it is. Sorry for the length.
*sigh*
Okay, nerds. Let's do it. Let's talk about Laurel Hubbard being the first trans athlete at the Olympic Games because ya'll have suddenly turned into world-class endocrinologists overnight, and..it's tedious. I'm bored. I'm bored because I've heard it all before.
For those not in the know, Laurel Hubbard is a 43-year-old trans woman from New Zealand who started her transition in 2012, who in 1998, years before her transition (when she was 20) set junior records in the newly established M105+ weightlifting division (the records being: snatch 135 kg, clean & jerk 170 kg, total 300 kg) - these records were passed shortly after by David Liti.
Laurel didn't take up weightlifting again until 2017, 5 years after the start of her transition, where she competed in the 2017 World Championships in Anaheim and won a Silver Medal in the +90 kg category having been beaten by cisgender women athlete Sarah Robles. Laurel then went on to win gold at the Pacific Games in Apia in 2019.
Laurel has been the subject of much controversy since the announcement that she has been selected to represent New Zealand in the Tokyo Olympics. 36 athletes were in the running for her event/category (women's 87+kg), 14 qualified. Laurel is currently ranked 9th by the International Weightlifting Federation for her category (https://www.weightliftinghouse.com/.../tokyo-2020.../). Most often the statement I hear in response to Laurel's selection is thus: "But she will have an unfair advantage over the cis women!"
Now, I'm not here to discuss the science of whether trans women have advantages over cis women because quite frankly, that's best left to the scientists and medical professionals who work in trans health. I want to focus on the statement "She will have an unfair advantage over the cis women!" from a different angle.
In 2003, a committee convened by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Medical Commission drew up new guidelines for the participation of transgender athletes (https://www.pdga.com/files/StockholmConsensus_0.pdf). The report listed three conditions for participation.
1. Athletes must have undergone gender affirmation surgery (previously known as sex reassignment surgery), including changes in the external genitalia and gonadectomy.
2. Athletes must show legal recognition of their gender.
3. Athletes must have undergone hormone therapy for an appropriate time before participation, with two years being the suggested time.
It was not until 2004 that the IOC allowed trans athletes to participate in the Olympic Games with Laurel Hubbard being the first to qualify - 18 years after the initial decision, and 6 years after the IOC's revised guidelines.
In 2015, the IOC modified these guidelines to accommodate the fact that legal recognition of gender in countries where being transgender is illegal will be difficult for trans athletes. They have also recognised that requiring surgery in otherwise healthy individuals "may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights" (https://stillmed.olympic.org/.../2015-11_ioc_consensus...)
1. Those who transition from female to male are eligible to compete in the male category without restriction.
2. Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:
2.1. The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.
2.2. The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 five nanomoles per litre (10 nmol/L) for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).
2.3. The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.
2.4. Compliance with these conditions may be monitored by testing. In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female competitions will be suspended for 12 months.
Other sporting bodies have followed suit. The guidelines for the International Association of Athletics Federations states that the concentration of testosterone in an athlete must be less than 5 nmol/L which has been changed from their previous guidelines of 10 nmol/L. While the IOC's guidelines are being used by several International Federations, the organisation is looking to make their guidelines stricter.
In 2019, the International Association of Athletics Federations' hosted a meeting in Lausanne to discuss trans inclusively in sport. The issues surrounding the physiological basis of performance while acknowledging that further consultation and research was required, particularly in the areas of specific injury risk, ethical considerations, and performance (https://gaisf.sport/international-federation-if-forum.../). The IOC had expressed their support for International Federations to tailor rules for their individual sports.
This approach can be summed up with the following question chain:
1. "Is there a difference (between trans and cis women)?
2. "If yes, do the differences confer any advantage?"
3. "If yes, is that advantage outside the realms of fairness?"
It seems clear that the governing sporting bodies are invested in ensuring that trans inclusion in sport is fair for all athletes. So, if the International sporting bodies have their %*$# together, what's happening here?
I suspect for the average person, the statement "Trans women have an unfair advantage" is seen as self-evident. It's never framed as a question but as a self-evident fact based on the public collective idea that advantages in sport are only ever contained in the chromosome, or that the be-all-end-all of sporting ability is determined by the puberty an athlete has gone through with little regard for skill and training. This might account for why the average person starts and ends their line of questioning with questions 1 and 2:
"Is there a difference (between trans and cis women)?" - the answer to this question is seen as self-evidently "Yes"
"If yes, do the differences confer any advantage (on balance)?" - also viewed as a self-evident "Yes"
The last question is never addressed and the conclusion is reached is "Yes there is a difference, yes there is an advantage therefore that advantage is unfair"
Case in point, whenever I discuss this topic I will inevitability get asked a question along the lines of: "Do you want a 6ft (180cm) trans women competing with 5ft 6in (170.68cm) cis women?" as if that was some form of "gotcha." This really makes no sense. The shortest WNBA player is Shannon Bobbitt who stands at 5ft 1in (157cm) tall with the tallest player being Margo Dydek who stood at 7ft 1in (218cm) tall. Brittney Grine of the team Phoenix Mercury is 6 ft 9in (210cm) whereas her co-player Olivia Epoupa is 5ft 5in (167.6cm) (https://nothingbutnylon.com/tallest-shortest-players-on...).
You can't treat all cis women and all trans women like monoliths - because there are differences between individual athletes who reside within the same group. A 6ft 5in tall cis woman is going to have an advantage over a 6ft tall cis woman playing basketball, or any sport where height is an advantage. A cis man with longer feet and bigger webs between his toes than other cis men is going to have an advantage in sports involving propelling oneself through the water.
(Another point - thanks Zoe.
The average weight discrepancy between Pacific Islander women and Japanese women is larger than the average weight difference between AMAB people and AFAB people. And yet nobody gets upset when Japan plays Samoa in the Rugby World cup.)
So, why this question? Well, that's easy. The question is meant to invoke a very specific idea of what trans women competing with cis women will look like. The public idea of trans women hasn't moved on from the tired trope of "man in a dress" and the posed hypothetical scenario is designed to make the average person think that a trans woman who looks like a footballer is going to be playing against a small, petite, dainty cis woman.
(As an unrelated side note, I have thoroughly enjoyed looking up images of tall, buff women for this post. My inner lesbian is very happy right now. My outer lesbian is a goddamn mess, however)
Using hypothetical scenarios as a means to push transphobic ideas is nothing new. And using LGBTphobic ideas against LGBT athletes is also nothing new.
Martina Navratilova is a Czech-American former tennis player who is now widely considered one of the greatest players of all time, She's won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 major women's doubles titles, and 10 major mixed doubles titles. That's a total of 59 major titles earning her the record for most Grand Slam titles won by a single player. She reached the Wimbledon singles final 12 times, including for nine consecutive years from 1982 through 1990, and won the women's singles title at Wimbledon a record nine times.
Suffice to say she's great at tennis.
She's also gay as !!!!###$$$!!!.
Having been outed originally as bisexual in 1981 before she was ready to publicly disclose her sexuality, Navratilova has since re-come out as a lesbian and is still one of the more recognisable LGBT athletes within the LGBT community. Not surprisingly, she faced homophobic abuse.
The headline “Martina ‘Turns Girls into Gays’” featured in the July 12th 1990 edition of The Sun newspaper with quotes from infamous Australian tennis star and all-out homophobe Margaret Court stating: “Martina’s a great player, but I’d like somebody at the top who the younger players could look up to. It’s very sad for children to be exposed to homosexuality.” Court was also featured saying “...so bad that young girl players were scared to go into tournament changing rooms...”
The "lesbian as a bathroom predator" was a prominent trope in the 1990s, the era I grew up in. Not-so- coincidentally, Margaret Court was also a prominent figure against same-sex marriage in the 2017 same-sex marriage Plebiscite in Australia. She's been beating the same drum for a long time.
Yes, Margaret Court is a massive homophobe because she doesn't like The Gays, however, homophobia is also an excellent way to push athletes out of their sport. It's designed to instil fear in heterosexual women players - not fear of straight players losing games, but fear of assault, of unwanted attention, of not being able to exist safely around other players. Can't lose against well-trained lesbians if there are no lesbians to lose against.
Transphobia works in the same way. As does any characteristic be it minority status, or a bodily difference. Athletes annoyed at swimmer Ian Thorpe's numerous wins raised "concerns" about his "potential advantages" citing his larger feet, and how his hips allowed him to move through the water. Cite any perceived unfair advantage to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the win.
A federal lawsuit was filed in Connecticut (USA) against the state board that governs high school athletics and several school districts to ban trans girls from participating in girl's sports in the state. Trans students and sprinters Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood became defendants in the case. Cisgender students Chelsea Mitchell, Selina Soule, and Alanna Smith declared to the media they could not win in sporting events that allowed trans athletes to compete according to their authentic gender citing trans girls having an advantage over cisgender girls. Before the lawsuit was dismissed, Chelsea Mitchell had beaten Terry Miller in their final two races in February 2020 (https://www.syracuse.com/.../lawmakers-seeking-to-ban... and
www.vice.com/.../these-2-athletes-were-being-used...), Chelsea Mitchell has since gone on to receive a scholarship to NCAA D1 College for track and field: William & Mary. (https://www.outsports.com/.../biden-justice-connecticut...). Both trans students have not been elected for any sporting scholarships.
In 2017, trans student Mack Beggs - a trans boy from Texas (USA) was required to wrestle against girls despite wanting to wrestle against boys. This was due to state sport regulations requiring athletes to compete alongside athletes of their assigned sex. This image (https://u2v2u3t5.stackpathcdn.com/.../tansgender-woman...) has been going around social media describing Mack Beggs as a trans woman who was wrestling in girl's competitions as means to instill fear in those who were unfamiliar with trans issues and transphobic dog whistles.
So, what does this all mean?
When stacked up against the other examples of "unfairness," the rallying cry "the inclusion of trans women is unfair to cis women" seems less like it's employed because the speaker wants fairness in sport, and more like it's employed as a means of devaluing the athlete for their achievements and to push them out of their game, particularly if they are a minority. Particularily, since sportng bodies the world over have been taking steps to find a fair and inclusive solution.
In this instance, the "unfair" argument is being leveled at Lauren Hubbard with transphobia as a, for a lack of a better term, social lubricant. Anti-trans sentiment is a convenient vector to spread the idea of "unfairness" while using plausible deniability to dismiss accusations of underlying transphobic ideas. "I just want fairness and equality in sport" "I just have concerns" "I want to protect women"
Using a characteristic of difference against an athlete is a tool that has taken many forms. This iteration is no different. Rather than being seen as a tool that has been used against cisgender women and men, LGBT athletes, and athletes of colour - it gets passed off as a heroic effect to save athletes from the bogeyman of "unfairness," particularly cisgender straight white women who are seen as needing never-ending protection from trans women, lesbians, and women of colour.
If you feel that trans woman automatically have an advantage over cis women purely based on their transness, you should be comforted by the fact that every major sporting body and association has been working on implementing a fair and balanced solution for all players. Some having implemented this solution for nearly 20 years. If this doesn't comfort you, ask yourself - do I want fairness in sport for all players? Or do I just want trans women to go away?
Another point to be made to those claiming to be concerned about trans women in women's sports is that if you are honestly concerned about this, the best option to reduce any risk of player advantage would be to lobby for easier access to puberty blockers for trans youth. Puberty blockers stop puberty from occurring (you can read my full post on them here:
) which means trans girls will never need to go through male puberty, and trans boys will never go through female puberty, and when they are adults they can start cross-sex hormones and go through the puberty of the sex they are transitioning to. This means every trans person, like every cis person, will only go through one puberty and one puberty only.
-- As a side note. I'm amazed at how quickly a person will descend into misogyny if it means being mean to trans women and their appearance.
-- Additionally, the "unfairness" claim means that trans women are in a position where their wins will never be seen as legitamate due to preceived advantages, which is not surprisingly something cis women of colour face as well. Racists in sport use the "she might be a secret trans woman" excuse against black women when they win too many events. This has occurred with several cisgender black women who happen to be intersex:
www.sbnation.com/.../caster-semenya-world...