Transgender Athletes Research Articles

(In)equity in athletics: U.S. antidiscrimination law and the white, middle-class advantage

ABSTRACT Equity in Athletics, Inc., v. Department of Education (2011) questioned whether schools could cut men’s sports for Title IX compliance. The case uniquely wedded racial and gender antidiscrimination precedents to argue Title IX harms men and therefore is unconstitutional. The courts disagreed and validated Title IX’s constitutionality. We argue this case did far more than endorse Title IX. Equity in Athletics showcases how antidiscrimination laws failed to redress the roots of racism, capitalism, and sexism all while ignoring harms done at the intersections. We use Crenshaw’s (1988, 1989, 1991) intersectional legal framework – single-axis, essentialism, and restrictive view of equity – to analyze Equity in Athletics. An intersectional reading of the case showcases three areas of the law – constitutionality tests, quotas, and segregation – that increase the athletic advantages for white, middle-class cis-gender girls and women at the expense and exclusion of lower-income, Girls and Women of Color, and transgender athletes.

Transgender Inclusion in Sport

Questions about transgender individuals’ place in sport persist. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to focus on transgender inclusion in sport. Drawing from varied perspectives, the authors present five reasons for inclusion, basing their arguments on sport as a human right, fairness, gendered notions of athleticism, well-being, and economics. The authors then present a multilevel model for including transgender athletes, coaches, and administrators in sport, identifying factors at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of analysis.

'Save Women’s Sports' Laws Aren’t Saving Anyone: An Argument for Application of Bostock to Title IX and a Playbook for Transgender Athlete Inclusion Moving Forward

'Save Women’s Sports' Laws Aren’t Saving Anyone: An Argument for Application of Bostock to Title IX and a Playbook for Transgender Athlete Inclusion Moving Forward

SPORTS AND PERFORMANCE IN THE TRANSGENDER POPULATION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT Introduction: The debate surrounding the regulations on the participation of transgender individuals in sports is not recent, but it is still ongoing. Some sports organizations are more flexible in this regard, while others are more conservative. Objective: Through a systematic review and meta-analysis, this study summarizes the scientific evidence of the effects of cross-sex hormone therapy on muscle strength, hematocrit, and hemoglobin measurements, parameters that seem to be linked to sports performance. Methods: We conducted electronic searches for manuscripts published before November 20th, 2020. Studies published in three different databases (PubMed, SciELO, and Lilacs) were included, without any time or language restriction, and using keywords such as “transgender”, “gender dysphoria”, “strength”, “hematocrit”, and “hemoglobin”. The PRISMA systematization was used for the elaboration of this review, while a meta-analysis was conducted to mathematically evidence the results. The meta-analysis was performed using the random effect model, to find the pooled estimate effect of cross-sex hormone therapy on the parameters analyzed. Results: The electronic search retrieved 21 articles that were eligible for inclusion. Cross-sex hormone therapy influenced the three parameters analyzed in almost all the studies. Overall, there was a significant increase in muscle strength in female-to-males (FtMs), per muscle group analyzed: +17.7% (95% confidence interval [CI]14.9;20.6). In male-to-females (MtFs) the results of the muscle strength analysis were more controversial, but the pooled estimate effect showed a decrease: −3.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] −6.6; −0.6). Conclusion: Muscle strength, hematocrit, and hemoglobin were altered as a result of cross-sex hormone therapy in both FtMs and MtFs. However, there was a lack of studies comparing the transgender individuals to the population of the same desired gender. Such studies are needed, to better infer rules for the participation of transgender athletes in Olympic sports. Level of Evidence I; Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Menstrual Dysfunction and Athletic Performance in a Transgender Runner: A Case Study.

A 16.5-year-old, distance runner, female gender-assigned at birth, who identifies as male, presented with menstrual dysfunction and impaired athletic performance. The cause of the menstrual dysfunction and decreased athletic performance was identified as inadequate energy availability, largely motivated by a desired avoidance of menstruation and further development of secondary sex characteristics. The patient achieved significant weight gain (4.75 kg) in the year after presentation and resumed normal menses. When evaluating and treating transgender athletes for menstrual dysfunction and inadequate energy availability, psychological motivators related to the complex interplay between gender identity, disordered eating, and athletic performance must be addressed.

Glitching trans* athletes: possibilities for research and practice in sports coaching

ABSTRACT The international discussion about policies regulating the inclusion of transgender athletes in elite sports is ongoing. . In this paper, we introduce the metaphor “glitch” to provide a novel way to embrace the possibilities of trans athletes in sport. To do this, we feature three Swedish cases of transgender athletes to consider: (1) What do “trans” and “trans athlete” mean from a glitch perspective? (2) What does this metaphor help us critique regarding sport’s dual gender categorisation? and (3) How can glitch be a source to generate new ways to understand trans athletes? In thinking with glitch, we demonstrate that the “problem” of current trans discussions are not the bodies that transcend certain (gender) categories, but rather the dualistic categories themselves. Glitching athletes, trans or otherwise, help us turn what is taken for granted upside down, and in so doing, can help coaches, coach educators, and coaching researchers explore the possibilities of trans athletes in relation to their everyday sporting practices.

Experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in sports in Germany

There is growing international evidence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and sexually/gender diverse (LGBTQ+) people regularly experience discrimination in sports. However, there is a lack of empirical research with regard to the sports situation in Germany. Based on a quantitative survey of 858 self-identifying LGBTQ+ individuals, the present research is the first to provide a comprehensive picture of the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in sports in Germany. To add distinctive knowledge to the international research, this analysis considers differences within the group of LGBTQ+ people and between various sports settings (i.e., organizational framework, team vs individual sports, and performance level. Two research questions are addressed: (1) What micro- and meso-level factors affect the witnessing of homo-/transnegative language and the prevalence of homo-/transnegative incidents in respondents’ sports activities? (2) What micro- and meso-level factors affect respondents’ feelings of being offended by homo-/transnegative language and what behavioral consequences (i.e., refraining from specific sports and reactions to homo-/transnegative episodes) can be observed among different LGBTQ+ subgroups? The data reveal the impact of the sports context on the perception of homo-/transnegative language but not on negative experiences. Moreover, there is a higher prevalence of gay compared to lesbian athletes with regard to the perception of homo-/transnegative language in their sports and a higher prevalence of gay athletes and non-cisgender (transgender) athletes with regard to homo-/transnegative experiences in sport compared to lesbian and cisgender athletes. The empirical evidence confirms and deepens international findings. Moreover, the data assist the Sport Ministers Conference’s goal of increasing initiatives to tackle the exclusion and discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ people in sports.

Interscholastic inclusion: Local and National News Framing of High School Transgender Athletes

Debates of who is and is not permitted to participate in sport have been magnified in regard to those whose gender identity deviates from traditional heteronormative standards. Former high school transgender athletes Mack Beggs and Andraya Yearwood, in states with different stances toward trans participation, were thrust into media spotlights. A content analysis examined local and national newspaper reporting about the individuals and their states’ policies. Newspapers did not uphold perceived hegemonic ideals associated with sport by negatively depicting each marginalized athlete. Journalists applauded both for driving conversations toward equal opportunity in high school athletics.

Transgender Athletes and Principles of Sport Categorization: Why Genealogy and the Gendered Body Will Not Help

ABSTRACT This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability.

Sport Is for Everyone: A Legal Roadmap for Transgender Participation in Sport

Sport is a vehicle for social change and should be leveraged as such in 2021 and beyond to address matters of equality. In recent years, the public has paid greater attention to transgender athletes participating in sport at all levels—high school, collegiate, professional, and Olympic—despite the fact that transgender athletes have been competing in sports for decades. Backlash has arisen in general but also more specifically in response to several recent Supreme Court cases that have both solidified and extended rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other gender and sexual minorities. In turn, state laws that seek to limit the rights of transgender students to participate in sports have been drafted around the country. To be sure, these laws are often built on erroneous data, a misunderstanding of facts, and ignorance, but their existence continues to fuel the public debate on whether transgender athletes should be allowed to participate based on their gender identity or their sex as determined at birth.

On the Rules of Fair Play and Legal Conflicts in High Performance Sports

At the present stage of medical technologies development, high-performance sports have faced serious difficulties. Its rules and fundamental principles not only fail to keep pace with changes in law and society, but also sometimes contradict themselves. High-performance sports is a balance between the basic rights to selfdetermination as a person of a certain gender and the rules of fair play. The reality is that in order to win sports competitions, people go to extreme measures, for example, changing their biological gender. In this situation, determining the persons (men, women) with whom an athlete should compete becomes not such a simple task, there is legal uncertainty, which sometimes does not provide an opportunity to clearly determine what gender a particular athlete is. The unequal struggle or “death of women’s sports” as such, as well as concerns that men who become women gain an unfair advantage in women’s competitions and the increasing number of cases of participation of transgender athletes in international competitions, prompted the authors of the article to analyze the foreign experience of legal regulation of the participation of such persons in high-performance sports. What is more important: the right to self-determination and self-acceptance as a person of the opposite sex or the rules of fair play? If there are special and general rules of legal regulation, a normative act of a private nature is applied, defining the “self-determination of a person” as a dominant in sports matters. But is everything so clear in high-performance sports? Legal conflicts and ambiguous legal situations (legally significant circumstances) are considered within the framework of this article.

The influence of sports policies on the right to fair competition for women

PurposeCompetitions in high-performance sports are based on the premise of fairness and the absence of advantages for participants. Therefore, several metrics were created to divide participants into categories and neutralize the advantages of some athletes. The division by sex is justified in the face of differences in body development between men and women due to testosterone levels. Faced with the difficulties of determining a single unequivocal criterion for determining sex, major sports entities periodically change the rules that guide the inclusion criteria to compete in the female category. The purpose of this study is to assess whether changes in gender metric rules bring female sports performance closer to male performance, reducing the equality of conditions for female competitors.Design/methodology/approachThis is a retrospective study that compared female and male results from the past 5 Olympic games in the 100-metre dash, high jump and javelin throw.FindingsThe performance in the men's category in the 100-metre dash was superior to the women's in the Olympic Games in Sydney by 8.78% (± 0.16), in Athens by 9.88% (± 0.21), in Beijing by 10.11% (± 0.29), in London by 9.25% (± 0.59) and in Rio de Janeiro by 8.6% (± 0.23). The male high jump was higher than the female by 17.24% (± 1.18) in Sydney, 16.61% (± 1.83) in Athens, 17.01% (± 1.79) in Beijing, 15.47% (± 1.96 higher) in London and 19.67% (± 1.09) in Rio de Janeiro. In the javelin throw, the male superiority was 34.87% (± 2.35) in Sydney, 29.88% (± 4.15) in Athens, 31.87% (± 4.15) in Beijing, 29.44% (± 3.24) in London and 32.31% (± 2.69) in Rio de Janeiro.Research limitations/implicationsAs limitations of the study, this study mentions the lack of hormonal dosage of the athletes involved, the non-evaluation of other modalities with different dynamics of execution and muscular requirements and the non-evaluation of the rules in sexual metrics during the qualifying stages for the games.Practical implicationsIn this manuscript, the authors show that interference of the International Olympic Committee in the sex metric influences the athletic performance of women in some sports. Rules that facilitate participation of transgender athletes, or with sexual differentiation disorder and other forms of hyperandrogenism, improve female athletic performance overall.Originality/valueThe authors believe that this manuscript is appropriate for publication by International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare because it is an original paper that fits the goals of the publication. This manuscript creates a paradigm for future policies that rule the sex determination metrics in competitive sports.

Fair Play: Transgender Athletes and Their Opponents On (and Off) the Field

The current debate swirling around the inclusion of transgender individuals in sports is a complex and nuanced issue. This article reflects on how athletic organizations have historically dealt with this dilemma, as well as covers key legal battles that have surfaced in recent years in secondary schools and universities across America. With the “Save Women’s Sports” movement gaining traction across the country, current legislative measures will be analyzed in light of Title IX, and main arguments on both sides of the debate will be explored. Finally, suggestions for moving toward reasonable policies that protect the rights of both cisgender and transgender individuals will be discussed.

Sports, Transgender Rights and the Bodily Politics of Cisgender Supremacy

Between 2020 and 2021, one hundred and ten bills in state legislatures across the United States suggested banning the participation of transgender athletes on sports teams for girls and women. As of July 2021, ten such bills have become state law. This paper tracks the political shift towards targeting transgender athletes. Conservative political interests now seek laws that suture biological determinist arguments to civil rights of bodies. Although narrow binary definitions of sex have long operated in the background as a means for policy implementation under Title IX, Republican lawmakers now aim to reframe sex non-discrimination policies as means of gendered exclusion. The content of proposals reveal the centrality of ideas about bodily immutability, and body politics more generally, in shaping the future of American gender politics. My analysis of bills from 2021 argues that legislative proposals advance a logic of “cisgender supremacy” inhering in political claims about normatively gendered bodies. Political institutions are another site for advancing, enshrining, and normalizing cis-supremacist gender orders, explicitly joining cause with medical authorities as arbiters of gender normativity. Characteristics of bodies and their alleged role in evidencing sex itself have fueled the tactics of anti-transgender activists on the political Right. However, the target of their aims is not mere policy change but a state-sanctioned return to a narrowly cis- and heteropatriarchal gender order.

Transgender Athletes in Sports Competitions: How Policy Measures Can Be More Inclusive and Fairer to All.

OPINION article Front. Sports Act. Living, 14 July 2021Sec. The History, Culture and Sociology of Sports https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.704178

Anti-doping and other sport integrity challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had an unprecedent impact on the world of sport and society at large. Many of the challenges with respect to integrity previously facing competitive sport have been accentuated further during the pandemic. Threats to the integrity of sporting competition include traditional doping, issues of technological fairness, and integration of transgender and intersex athletes in elite sport. The enforced lull in competitive sport provides an unprecedented opportunity for stakeholders in sport to focus on unresolved integrity issues and develop and implement long-lasting solutions. There needs to be a concerted effort to focus on the many technological innovations accelerated by and perfected during COVID-19 that have enabled us to work from home, such as teaching students on-line, applications for medical advice, prescriptions and referrals, and treating patients in hospitals/care homes via video links and use these developments and innovations to enhance sport integrity and anti-doping procedures. Positive sports integrity actions will require a considered application of all such technology, as well as the inclusion of "omics" technology, big data, bioinformatics and machine learning/artificial intelligence approaches to modernize sport. Applications include protecting the health of athletes, considered non-discriminative integration of athletes into elite sport, intelligent remote testing to improve the frequency of anti-doping tests, detection windows, and the potential combination with omics technology to improve the tests' sensitivity and specificity in order to protect clean athletes and deter doping practices.

Knowledge of and experience with transgender players among soccer team staff: a cross-sectional questionnaire design

ABSTRACT Objectives Transgender issues have become increasingly prominent in sports. However, knowledge of and experience with supporting transgender players across soccer team staff remain unclear. The objectives of this questionnaire-based study were to 1) clarify staff knowledge of transgender-related terminology; and 2) explore soccer team staff’s awareness and experience with supporting transgender players. Methods A questionnaire was distributed to coaches, physicians, and physical trainers affiliated with soccer teams between 2018 and 2019 to capture 1) participant characteristics (e.g. gender, age, certified license, team categories); 2) their understanding of transgender–related terms, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and of the IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism in 2015; 3) their awareness of transgender players; and 4) their experience supporting transgender players. Participants were categorized by age, gender, profession, qualifications, and category of involvement; their understanding and experience were investigated statistically using univariate and multivariate analysis. Results The 478 respondents included 30 women and 448 men with a mean age of 38 ± 10 years. Of these, 83% understood the term transgender, 75% understood the term LGBT, while only 7% were familiar with the 2015 IOC Consensus Meeting. Physicians reflected more knowledge than coaches and physical trainers (p < 0.01). Altogether, 15% had identified transgender players and 1% had experience supporting them. Respondents with certified licenses who worked with women’s teams were more likely to recognize transgender players (p < 0.01). Four participants (1%) had witnessed transgender players receiving transgender hormone therapy. Conclusion Although most soccer support staff were familiar with transgender terms, many did not have sufficient knowledge of or experience with transgender athletes.

Female Olympians’ voices: Female sports categories and International Olympic Committee Transgender guidelines

The fair inclusion of female athletes at elite and Olympic levels is secured in most sports by way of female categories because of the extensively documented biological and performance-related differences between the sexes. International policy for transgender inclusion is framed by the definitive International Olympic Committee transgender guidelines in which the International Olympic Committee confirms the ‘overriding sporting objective is and remains the guarantee of fair competition’ and transwomen can be excluded from female categories if, in the interests of fairness, this is necessary and proportionate. Feminist theorists argue justice requires that women have equal moral standing in the sociocultural–political structures of society including sport. As such their voices should carry equal democratic weight. However, female elite and Olympic athletes are rarely heard in the sociocultural–political discourses of academic literature or policy formulation for transgender inclusion in female categories by the International Olympic Committee and governing bodies of sport. This empirical study investigated the views and presents the ‘voices’ of 19 female Olympians. The main findings include (1) these athletes thought both female and transgender athletes should be fairly included in elite sport, (2) unanimous agreement there is not enough scientific evidence to show no competitive advantage for transwomen, (3) unanimous agreement that the International Olympic Committee should revisit the rules and scientific evidence for transgender inclusion in female categories, and (4) the majority of athletes felt that they could not ask questions or discuss this issue without being accused of transphobia.

A history of transgender women in Australian Sports, 1976–2017

ABSTRACT Although debates about transgender women in sport have been prominent in recent years, there is a much longer history of transgender participation in sport. This article uses oral history interviews and media to examine Australia’s history of transgender women’s participation in sport since the late 1970s. It explores the public debates around gender, sex, the body, and ‘fair play discourse’ as expressed around specific transgender athletes. It also examines the lived experience of those transgender sportswomen and analyses how they used gender presentation to affirm their femininity. Indeed, gender presentation and transgender (in)visibility heavily influenced whether teammates, opponents, sporting associations, and the media accepted transgender athletes in their affirmed gender. The presence of transgender women in sport consistently exposed anxieties around gender, sex, and the body because they exposed rigid understandings of gender binarism. Examining the long history of transgender women in Australian sport reveals how longstanding debates have played out in a variety of settings, with transgender athletes regularly searching for ways to affirm their gender and navigate sporting communities.

Factors influencing acceptance of transgender athletes

ABSTRACT This study examined factors influencing acceptance of transgender athletes in sport events. Quantitative data were gathered from 373 Japanese university student-athletes. We investigated contributions of two types of predictors. One is the context in which trans athletes are placed; the other involves survey respondents’ psychological constructs that may influence their reaction to the issue. The results show that trans men were more accepted than trans women, trans athletes with hormone treatment were considered more acceptable, and trans athletes were more accepted in unofficial sporting events for children and adults than in official national and international events. The results also revealed that for respondents with weaker athletic identity, higher degrees of belief in a just world were positively associated with attitudes of acceptance. Whereas stronger athletic identity was positively associated with acceptance for men, it was negatively associated with acceptance for women. Considering the different nuances surrounding transgender issues in Japan, our study will add cultural diversity to research literature that has mainly focused on the contexts of North America and Western Europe.