Image courtesy of Sports Illustrated
This article begins with an excerpt of an earlier article by the same author to define some terminology used in the article. If you are new to this topic or want more context, it is highly recommended to read “This is Bigger Than Sports: Trans Rights and Athletics” by Chloë Boatright, available online at skidmorenews.com.
First, an explanation of some terminology that will be used in this article. Gender identity is a person’s internal sense of their gender. A transgender (or trans) person is a person whose gender identity is different from that which they were assigned at birth. About 0.8 percent of the United States population is thought to be trans, though the real number may be much higher due to social pressure keeping individuals from publicly stating it. The opposite is a cisgender (or cis) person, whose gender identity matches what they were assigned at birth. Some but not all trans people undergo medical transition, where they use hormones and surgeries to modify their bodies to appear more as their gender identity. A trans person is referred to based on their gender identity, i.e. a trans woman is a person who was assigned male at birth (AMAB) and identifies as a woman, or a trans man is a person who was assigned female at birth (AFAB) and identifies as a man. Some trans people are also non-binary, meaning that their gender identities are not completely a man or a woman. Discrimination against or hatred of trans people is called transphobia.
On March 30, the states of Oklahoma and Arizona joined the growing list of states which prohibit transgender women and girls from playing in female sports divisions. These laws have swept the nation over the past two years, primarily in traditionally red states, as part of a backlash to trans people gaining rights. While the topic of trans people in sports dates back to the 1970s, it has been revived as a culture war topic over the last two years. I have written more about this before, and would recommend checking out my previous opinion piece for more context. These particular laws add insult to injury by coming into effect the day before Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV), one of the two trans-specific holidays of the year. TDoV is a day for trans people to talk about our lives and raise awareness of the challenges we face, and this law adding more challenges right before is a slap in the face to trans people around the country.
Oklahoma’s law bans trans women and girls from competing as women and girls respectively at all levels of education. Meanwhile, Arizona’s law specifically applies to sports teams at both public schools and private schools which compete against public schools. Both laws are rooted in the claim that trans athletes have an unfair advantage due to higher levels of testosterone before transition, and that this makes sporting competitions unfair.
However, all major sporting bodies require trans women athletes to undertake hormonal transition, which reduces this testosterone level to a level that is generally lower than that of cisgender (not trans) women (International Olympic Committee). This hormonal transition process also causes a corresponding loss of muscle mass and bone density, which would eliminate advantages given by testosterone. The efficacy of this is plain to see: there are no world sporting records held by trans women and no trans women Olympic medalists (MSNBC, “Olympic athlete Laurel Hubbard just shattered a transphobic myth”). In fact, even though trans women athletes have been eligible to compete in the Olympics since 2004, it was not until 2021 that one qualified and then famously lost, winning no medals. If trans women had an unfair advantage, one would expect overrepresentation in the upper echelons of sport when there is no such abundance to be found.
Additionally, it is notable that the vast majority of the individuals leading this charge against trans sport participation have no past history of caring about women’s sports or women’s rights in general. In fact, the same governor of Oklahoma who signed this bill went on to sign a bill effectively banning abortion less than two weeks later. These are not unrelated, but part of a reaction to the last few decades of progress on LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights. Both bills coincide with a nationwide upswing in homophobia and transphobia, with high profile conservatives describing gay ånd trans people as “groomers” and terrorist attacks on LGBTQ+ community spaces, and laws banning trans healthcare (NBC, “New York City LGBTQ bar set ablaze in arson attack”). On the same day as the sports ban, Arizona passed a law banning transition surgeries for those under 18. While very few trans people even get surgery before the age of 18, Arizona is following in the footsteps of other states which have gone further, such as Alabama and Arkansas, both states which ban youth transition care outright.
So, what went wrong? After victories such as the legalization of gay marriage in 2015, it seems many liberals became complacent and believed that things would only get better. However, the Trump administration tested this, and Trump leaving office was only the start of the latest wave of prejudice. Having lost power, conservatives ramped up their fear-mongering about transgender people to a fever pitch, framing trans people as a threat to children and women through myths and cherry-picked stories. A major part of this has been a focus on youth, both the idea that young trans people are dangerous or unfair to their peers, hence the sports bans; and the idea that LGBTQ+ adults are “grooming” children. This is not new, but it is experiencing a worrying resurgence.