In order to comply in advance to Donald Trump’s anti-transgender agenda, the United States Olympic Committee and United States Paralympic Committee officially updated their rules to ban transgender athletes from competing in upcoming events. More to the point, the committees have required all sports to force all transgender individuals to compete in men’s divisions, regardless of international standards and nearly a century of science. Despite their anti-transgender reporting streak, even the New York Times has stated the committees’ statements are rough at best, stating the entire ban is one single “short, vaguely worded paragraph.”
Interested in the current legal landscape of sports? Check this post and scroll to the sports section.
Republicans have centered transgender issues as core to their political platform throughout Trump’s regime. Before the 2016 election, Americans were unconcerned about trans issues, bathroom politics, and “fairness in sports” – but the GOP has invested millions of dollars into propaganda, paying for biased political science, running constant campaigns, and positioning transgender existence as morally wrong. Now, Americans are divided.
Conservatives use the exact same tactics preaching against transgender identities as they have against gay and lesbian individuals, interracial relationships, women’s equality, and every other issue they’ve lost against society’s slow march towards progress. Transgender individuals are characterized as sexual perverts and mentally deranged – which is exactly how gay men and lesbian women were depicted just twenty years ago. Understanding this is crucial in social justice movements when discussing the dangers of the anti-transgender movement with folks unaligned, independent, or just “not into politics.” Religion-based politics never go well. Attacks on transgender lives immediately turn into attacks on drag performers, intersex folks, lesbian women, gay men, independent women, disabled individuals, non-Christian faiths, and people of color. Their movement relies on the masses being uneducated and unsympathetic. The GOP argued for years that legalizing same-sex marriage would create a slippery slope that never happened – but this slippery slope against human rights WILL occur unless it is stopped.
The decision by the US Olympic and Paralympic Committees ONLY affects prospective Americans. Despite what Donald Trump claims, the United States has zero authority regarding the rules of these international events. The US can attempt to complicate the process for international transgender competitors entering the country for the upcoming games, but they have already been met with domestic roadblocks and international scorn.
Speaking of which, just how many Olympic competitors identify as transgender? Recent media obsession would imply it’s a huge problem where transgender athletes are taking over the events and depriving cisgender competitors of wins – but that’s the furthest from the truth. Taking just the 2024 Summer Olympics hosted in France, only 193 of the total 10,714 competitors identified as LGBTQIA+ (which equates to 0.018% of competitors). An even smaller margin of those individuals are transgender, estimated at 0.001%. Due to the stigma and hostility, transgender individuals aren’t as inclined to perform in competitive sports – no one wants to be the next media spotlight being roasted online. Additionally, sports have historically been unkind to LGBTQIA+ individuals due to inherent sexism and homophobia instilled in athletic spaces.
What does science say? Honestly, not much. Until 2020, there was very little research on the subject – and then, a flood of research began coming out as the GOP invested money into pushing their agenda. We know for a fact that before the start of puberty (approximately ages 11 to 12), there are zero competitive advantages based on biological sex. There aren’t enough sex hormones or bodily differences to make significant impacts on performance. Complete bans on transgender athletes, including those who transitioned in childhood, don’t make sense – until you account for the fact that the GOP is forcing transgender minors to go through biological puberty by banning gender-affirming care like puberty blockers. It should also be noted that research still shows “biological advantages” obtained during natal puberty are still contested by non-GOP research publishers.
Scientifically, there are ASSUMED advantages for transgender individuals who have undergone any of their biological puberty. The limited research compiled since 2020 proclaims that transgender women are faster runners than cisgender women up to two years after beginning hormone replacement therapy and can complete more sit-ups and push-ups up to four years. But using this research to make these arguments is severely flawed.
First, these arguments advocate for complete and permanent bans on transgender athletes. Ignoring how nonsensical it is to ban those who transitioned before puberty, it isn’t logical with adults either. The used studies claim HRT does not significantly affect muscle mass, bone density, and strength – but this is factually bogus. All of these have been proven over and over again as primary side effects of HRT, BUT they are not overnight changes. Medical transition takes time, and it never truly “ends.” Two years on HRT is a VERY early benchmark – for many trans women, this is when they start to notice many of the collective changes they’ve experienced on HRT since it can be such a slow process. Five years and onward is a more acceptable comparison of when transgender bodies fully mimic their cisgender counterparts, but the research ends before this. Had those studies continued for much longer, evidence would have backfired on them.
Secondly, athletes are not typical. To be an Olympian, you must be exceptional. To go pro, you have to be dedicated to your sport. These people are not casual hobbyists. The individuals selected for the studies used to fuel current rules weren’t random. Upon being asked by NPR Michel Martin about the “fairness of transgender bans,” Dr. Bradley Anawalt at the University of Washington replied, “There’s always been inequalities in sports. Somebody who’s born taller than someone who is shorter and plays basketball, we really don’t have this conversation about the potential competitive advantage for people participating in ballet or theater. Peter Pan is almost always played by an adult woman because an adult can act with greater artistry and maturity based on age and experience.” In other words, professional athletes and Olympians have always been insanely exceptional competitors – research pushed out in just a few years is worthless when considering these questions. Further, this doesn’t even begin to unpack sports where biological sex and HRT have nonsignificant impacts, like chess and fencing.
Combining these issues, remember that very few Olympians are transgender. Out of the 0.001% of athletes competing that ARE transgender, they are going to be beyond exceptional. Due to discrimination, harassment, and bias, they have had to fight every step of the way to compete, which is beyond comprehension for their cisgender counterparts. They must absolutely astound their qualifying judges. They’ve got to have a thick skin to survive insults from other competitors, the media, and the general public. This is the case for every successful transgender athlete – due to how hostile the climate is, we must be nearly supernatural at our sport to be accepted.
The policy instilled by the United States Olympic Committee and Paralympic Committee has already been denounced by non-transgender organizations, such as the National Women’s Law Center. The GOP uses transgender identities to proclaim they are protecting women’s lives – but they are the true party of sexual predators and have proven countless times they are against women’s rights. An attack on transgender rights will inevitably become an attack on all rights.
It is worth mentioning that inclusion in sports is important. Alongside the military, professional sports represent societal acceptance. For the Armed Forces, inclusion (and exclusion) of varying identities, religions, and political beliefs melds us together. Conservatives are ironically quite wrong and misunderstand the impact military service has in opening closed minds, similar to college education, which is why the race-based desegregation of the United States military was so important in desegregating everything later, and why the transgender ban on service members is devastating.
In the context of sports, representation forces the public to become aware and normalize marginalized identities. Before Jackie Robinson was signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Americans struggled with the concept of desegregation. Robinson’s legacy added to the same as those of Black servicemen in the US military in pushing America forward. Less than 1 in 3 Americans claim to know a transgender person, which is the same amount of Americans who argue healthcare providers should not be allowed to provide gender-affirming care to minors, according to Data for Social Good: “There is a positive correlation across the survey results between someone personally knowing a transgender person and expressing greater support for transgender-inclusive policies.” Or, seeing and knowing transgender people makes cisgender people empathetic to our rights.
Transgender people aren’t new to sports. Just like how transgender people have been around for centuries, we have also been participating in competitive sports for a substantial amount of time. The first high-profile case was Renée Richards, whose fight to compete as a woman in the 1976 US Open gained international attention and ended up winning at the New York Supreme Court. Before Renée, there were Zdeněk Koubek and Willy De Bruyn – two transgender and intersex individuals who competed in the 1934 Olympics.
Beginning in the 1940s (likely in response to Koubek and De Bruyn), professional sports began requiring “femininity certificates” provided by athletes by physicians with the central purpose of excluding intersex and transgender competitors. These early tests consisted of visual inspections and physical examinations – but they morphed into chromosome testing by the 1960s due to anti-communist suspicions that the best female athletes coming from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe must be men. Today, sex verification heavily relies on hormone testing – much to the detriment of cisgender and transgender athletes alike. Now, sports sex verification excludes many cisgender women from competing due to naturally high testosterone levels that give them “unfair advantages.”
From Renée’s time in the 1970s until 2003, transgender participation in sports was mixed. Generally, trans individuals were barred from playing, but some were able to successfully compete, such as Roberta Cowell, Parinya Charoenphol, and Michelle Dumaresq. In late 2003, the International Olympic Committee published its first official policy regarding transgender competitors in preparation for the 2004 games in Athens. These policies have become known as the “Stockholm Consensus,” becoming the international standard for sports, although domestic leagues such as the NFL and MLB have never subscribed to IOC guidelines.
The Stockholm Consensus clearly stated that transgender athletes were allowed to compete as their chosen gender rather than their gender assigned at birth, IF they met certain criteria. The Consensus required completed bottom or genital surgery, sexual sterilization, legal recognition of one’s gender in their home country, and long-term verified hormone replacement treatment.
At the end of 2015, the IOC met again to review the Stockholm Consensus and came to the conclusion that its requirements were unhelpful and far too strict. In the ten years it had been put in place, two concerns had come up: first, genital surgery and sterilization showed zero impact on performance and requiring it was an unnecessary and invasive barrier compared to other aspects of transition like HRT; and secondly, one’s ability to be legally recognized as their chosen gender varies drastically based on where they live since the majority of countries don’t allow individuals to do so. The IOC created the 2015 Consensus, which stated transmasculine individuals had zero restrictions for competing (as long as they pass anti-doping tests), and transfeminine athletes must prove they are currently on HRT throughout competition AND show they have been on HRT for at least one full year.
The most recent change came in 2021 when the IOC updated the policy again. Regardless of Trump’s executive orders, laws passed in the US Congress, or any personal policy instated by the US Olympic Committee, this policy is the international standard that the rest of the world abides by. The 2021 Consensus established the precedent that individual sports can create their own requirements regarding transgender competitors – but these requirements are agreed on the international level. Most Olympic sports elected to use the 2015 Consensus as their requirements and called it a day, although some did make their own in pursuit of balancing “fairness” with “inclusion.”
In reality, the US Olympic Committee and Paralympic Committee are likely breaking the IOC rules since it will place a blanket ban on all transgender competitors who failed to medically transition before puberty regardless of transition status – despite the 2021 Consensus stating, “Eligibility criteria should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations. Provided they meet eligibility criteria that are consistent with principle 4 [Fairness], athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity.”