It’s a simple question, but one that critics of trans athletes competing in a division different from their socially defined gender rarely ask. Or if they do, they fail to explore what the answer means for the position they hold.
Namely: what is it that you believe gives trans women an unfair athletic advantage over traditionally defined women in high school or college sports?
After all, that’s what they’re worried about, right?
The answer may seem obvious. But if it is, the implications apparently are not.
To those who view trans women as just biological men, they would likely reply that it is the presence of testosterone at levels well above “real women” that makes the difference: that, and differential musculoskeletal development, from bone density to limb and pelvis size to joint flexibility.
Trans women, they would argue, even if they are on hormone replacement and have suppressed their male puberty, will still have residual levels of testosterone above those for most traditionally defined women.
Not to mention, there is some research to suggest that even before puberty, T levels in those understood as biological males will have effects on musculoskeletal development that could provide an athletic edge to trans women in competition with “biological females.”
Fair enough, and for the sake of argument, these are points I will fully grant, despite other evidence suggesting hormone replacement and puberty suppression bring trans women’s T levels down to those more comparable to traditionally defined women than to those of traditionally defined men.
I’ll ignore that research for now. Honestly, it hardly matters for the point I seek to make. Because here’s the thing:
People have varying musculoskeletal development and even levels of testosterone, which don’t always cleave neatly to their biological sex.
There are some traditionally defined female athletes with musculoskeletal development and higher-than-average testosterone (T) levels for women, which can be more comparable (especially in the musculoskeletal dimension) to those of traditionally defined men. Likewise, there are traditionally defined male athletes with lower T levels and musculoskeletal development that is more similar to that of persons traditionally defined as women.
So if T and musculoskeletal features are what matter for athletic fairness, we shouldn’t have men’s and women’s sports based on socially assigned gender identity or the presence of specific genitalia — which is essentially what we’ve done forever — but instead should be T testing athletes, and dividing up athletic divisions based on different testosterone ranges and musculoskeletal types.
Most of the competitors in each would look much as they have traditionally. But there would also be variation using this standard. In one group, we would find primarily traditionally defined women, but also some traditionally defined men and T-suppressed trans women.
In the other group, one would find primarily traditionally defined men, but also some higher T traditionally defined women or women with musculoskeletal development more similar to men, and also some T-boosting trans men. And…
Oh yeah, trans men.
Interesting, isn’t it, how the critics of trans athletes never mention them at all. And this oversight actually gives the game away and demonstrates the absurdity of their position.
After all, where are trans men supposed to compete in the world envisioned by the transphobes?
If T gives men an edge over women, then why are they more concerned about trans women, who are actively suppressing their testosterone, than they are about trans men, who are actively boosting theirs?
Should trans men who are taking synthetic T, bringing their testosterone levels up to those of traditionally-defined men, be competing against women, just because they were born with female reproductive organs? Because that’s the implication of the anti-trans position. Which means it isn’t about T, but rather, genitals.
Transphobes are simply hung up on gonads.
If athletes should, in their view, compete only in sports divisions corresponding to their official biological sex, and if that sex has always been designated as female, then that means trans men should be required to compete against traditionally defined women, despite their clear testosterone advantage, which can also serve to boost muscle mass.
It makes no sense, and goes to show that the transphobic position is not about what’s fair for girls and women; it’s about policing trans bodies as second-class and banning them from entire swaths of life based on what these bigots think genitals say about a person.
Additionally, the singular focus on trans women suggests a deep-seated misogyny at play too: the kind of misogyny that responds to any “man” demonstrating insufficient masculinity — and God forbid transitioning to live and identify as a woman — as a gender traitor, worthy of social banishment if not worse.
Just as so-called “Tomboy” girls were typically less stigmatized than so-called “effeminate” males, so too, trans panic focuses principally on policing male-designated bodies to ensure they perform masculinity as expected. As if failure to do so is seen as a repudiation of men altogether, and in a patriarchal system, what greater crime could there be?
Trans men, while still the subjects of derision (and certainly violence), do not tend to stir the same level of contempt as trans women, and the selective conversations about sports and bathrooms prove it. Trans women are the ones singled out and villainized in these discussions and the politics surrounding them.
And the only logical reason for this is that trans men, by embracing the masculine, are seen as upholding patriarchal conventions, even when they may personally reject patriarchy, just because of their perceived embrace of maleness. As such, they receive a relative pass in most of the current transphobic discourse, especially around athletics.
No one thinks about them at all.
Even though, by the logic of right-wing argument, those “biological females” should be competing in women’s tennis, women’s soccer, women’s gymnastics, and women’s swimming, even as they take testosterone supplements that might put them well ahead of a swimmer like Lia Thomas in the T category.
In short, if we apply the “science” of transphobic biology to athletics, there would be a bunch of T-loaded people in the pool, relegating the precious and bitter Riley Gaines to 5th place just like before. Because she was always sorta mid, no matter who her opponents were.
The only way to really satisfy the transphobic hatreds of the people who have made this their signature issue is to eradicate trans people entirely. That has always been their goal.
It was never about women’s sports.
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Previously Published on Medium
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