Barring transgender women from competing is based on sexism

There’s a trend sweeping the nation, and it’s hurting athletes and athletics in a big way.

It’s the move to ban transgender athletes from competing in sports, the latest coming last week with the international governing bodies for swimming and rugby banning transgender women from competing in certain cases.

It’s a movement that is not based in science (because, frankly, the number of studies done on the subject is close to zero).

In a review of studies about the subject in 2016, a group of researchers at the Nottingham Center for Gender Dysphoria and the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University concluded, “Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.”

The anti-trans movement is based on the desire to exclude one type of transgender athlete: transgender women.

You’ve probably read all the fearmongering about Lia Thomas, the transgender woman swimming for the University of Pennsylvania. She is winning races. In March, she won a national championship in the 500-meter freestyle, yet was a full 9 seconds off the record set by Katie Ledecky, a cisgender woman.

Thomas isn’t setting national or world records. She finished last in the 100 freestyle, and fifth out of eight in the 200 freestyle. In a January meet against Yale, she finished sixth, behind four cis women and a transgender man competing with the women because he hasn’t undergone hormone therapy yet.

To repeat, Thomas — the specter of transgender athletes taking over sports — isn’t setting records and certainly doesn’t win all of her races. And yet, people are up in arms about her.

The results, and the limited amount of study done, point to there not being an advantage for transgender women in sports. So why all the uproar? And why aren’t there calls to ban transgender boys and men from competing?

In short, sexism. Banning transgender women and girls from competing is perpetuating a stereotype that women and girls need to be protected because they are weaker.

I’ve coached boys and girls. I’ve played against women and men. I’m here to tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.

I’ve played against some pretty good players in my semipro soccer career (there was no professional league in the U.S. at the time). A handful of those players went on to play for the U.S. national team. But the absolute hardest hit I ever took in my life was during a scrimmage against the Santa Clara University women’s team.

Many in the movement against trans people cite a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that suggests transgender women retain an advantage for up to 2 years following hormone therapy. But there are some concerns with that study, which followed a small sample size of 29 transgender men and 46 transgender women who were in the Air Force during transition.

One of the concerns, said Joanna Harper, a medical physicist in Portland, Oregon, who published the first study of transgender women and athletic performance, is that the study lacked data on the members’ training habits, and there was no examination of when subjects began hormone therapy and when the fitness test was taken, she told NBC in a 2021 interview.

When faced with the lack of scientific evidence showing transgender girls and women have an advantage, the movement supporters pivot to the “eye test.”

They cite Thomas, and a pair of track athletes in Connecticut in 2018, as proof there is an advantage. And yes, one of them won titles. But they always skip the counter-evidence, such as one of those Connecticut athletes getting beaten by cis girls at the state meet and not qualifying for state in other events they were in. Or that California, which has allowed trans athletes to compete in accordance with their gender identity since 2013, has not had a single athlete who has been successful enough to warrant a formal complaint.

Even if there were an advantage, there is the glaringly obvious argument that genetics matters. Taller players have advantage in basketball, and there is no training to be taller — you just are. Swimmers with long limbs or flatter feet (like fins) have an advantage.

At the end of the day, however, the focus of athletics shouldn’t be solely on winning, anyway. Participation raises kids’ self-esteem, keeps them engaged with their peers and teaches life lessons about teamwork, succeeding or failing with grace and dignity, and working toward a team or personal goal.

Winning in athletics is mostly about hard work. Athletes who succeed generally put in the training to earn that success. The notion that transitioning to the gender that reflects your truth is an insurmountable obstacle for cis athletes is prejudice that upholds outdated stereotypes about women and girls.

And, even more hurtfully, it discounts the work an athlete puts in to push themselves to be the best they can be.

This column appeared in The Santa Rosa Press Democrat on June 25, 2022