GENDER AND SPORTS – THE CONVERSATION THAT NEEDS TO BE HAD
The biggest loophole in trans rights that even the most well-meaning so-called allies – both queer and
cis het, fall for is gender and sports. Biological advantage is something that is cited as the go to
answer. Transphobes like Elon Musk, JK Rowling and Kangana Ranaut (who should’ve known how
hard cis women can slap by now) already have their antipathy towards trans people made clear.
However, many “liberal” identifying opportunists like Barkha Dutt, and parasitical queerphobic
homosexuals like Abhijit Iyer Mitra, Mohit Gulati and MAGA gays who enjoy social media clout
have also expressed their trans exclusionary views. Change the names of commentors. Actually
mention no names. Just add links.
GETTING THE BASICS CLEAR
Firstly, trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people are valid and awesome as
well. Gender is a social construct. Nations including India allow the rights to self-identify one’s
gender as stated by the NALSA Judgement of 2014. [Gender is performed, not possessed. – say that
many countries including india have the right to self identify]
Making this amply clear, biology is not a neat binary as one makes it out to be. It is just as complex.
There are many intersex people who fall outside the binary with different genetic karyotypes, gonadal,
genital and hormonal variations. For instance, congenitally having high levels of sex hormones that
are common to another biological sex (such as congenital hyperandrogenism in females and high
estrogen levels in females) are more common than expected, and if factored in, accounts for more
intersex people than those who actually exist. If erased intersex people are considered, then being
intersex may not be a one-off variance but a more common occurrence.
This part can be removed
TRANS WOMEN COMPETING WITH CIS WOMEN
Coming to trans feminine individuals competing with cis women, it is important to primarily
understand that trans individuals are too busy trying to with the abuse handed to us. If we go past it,
we think of sports, which is a rare occurrence.
Go to the paper on you ain’t a woman, the paper,
Very intrusive body scrutiny done in the 20th century from Ezra’s article and the swaddle
Secondly there is enough publication by reputed entities like Canada Center for Ethics in Sports
(CCES) who have done well-documented research on the fact that trans women experience
testosterone levels far below that of a premenopausal cis woman post gonad removal. Available
evidence indicates that transwomen women who have undergone testosterone suppression have no
clear advantage over cis women in elite sports. Further, a research paper published in the NCBI
(National Center for Biotechnology Information) titled: “Sports and Transgender People: A Systemic
Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies” has
conducted substantial literary review, concluding that there is no direct or consistent evidence
suggesting transgender female individuals have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition. It
is also important to note that in sports like free style swimming and uphill cycling, only light weighted
people are at an advantage. Trans women may or may not have an advantage in these sports
depending on their muscle masses.
Furthermore, body types and physiques are themselves diverse. It is very likely muscular cis woman
very much endosex, can defeat a lean endosex cis man. Which team should she fight for then? This
brings us to the inherent fact that a binary bifurcation of gender and sex is pointless because there
exists no such absolute binary.
Going by the given stupidity, they may even declare that people with PCOS and high androgen
profiles can’t fight cis women without given the unproven claim of “testosterony advantages”, even if
they are cis het women themselves. Besides the whole idea of a “normal testosterone level” for
females is itself very white centric, and this often leads n black women to be primary targets of
testosterone rules during every Olympic event.
IS SPORTS INHERENTLY FAIR?
Sports are themselves not inherently fair. Take the question of privilege and access – 64% of black
children do not know how to swim compared to 40% of white children, exacerbated by the paucity of
coaches, therapy, financially well to do parents and more. Similarly in India, Dalit athletes
systemically face violence, cis het or LGBTQ. Not too long ago, Vandana Kataria and her family
members were hurled casteist slurs at and was accused of making the Indian team lose the Olympics.
Mentioning physical privileges, cisgender male athlete Michael Phelp has double jointed elbows and
knees, a hyper-extended thorax, 50% less lactic acid production than the average competitors. Yet no
one has pointed out this biological advantage. Usain Bolt had 75% more of fast twitch muscle fibers
which allowed for greater force, agility and speed. Boban Marjanovic is a basketball player who had
11-inch-long hands that were 12 inches wide, and one of the tallest to be able to dunk without
jumping. That was not a problem ever.
All athletes carry genetic variances. The average difference between an assumed endosex male and an
endosex female is far smaller than between the weakest and strongest males and weakest and
strongest females. Very tall and very short females are allowed to complete in sports like Basketball,
volleyball and rowing. It isn’t as if very large competitive examples are rejected, as long as the person
isn’t remotely queer.
Sports do not categorize people by physical characteristics – barring weight in combat sports where
people are pitted against each other based on size – but one convenient exception is sex/gender.
Gender and sex often make headlines
WHERE HAS THE SLIPPERY SLOPE DESCENDED
As a trans person, most of the trans inclusive community has always agreed that excluding trans
women in sports was not a pro cis woman but an anti-trans decision, anti-womanhood decision when
trans women were banned in…. CHESS. YES. The international Chess Federation banned trans
women from “female competition” on the grounds of testosterone levels in an intellectual game.
There is NO way one can justify this decision without claiming that cis women are dumber than trans
women, which is a misogynistic claim. It was never a surprise that TERFs are actually the most
misogynistic species.
In fact, a man named McGrigor Allan in 1869, infamously claimed that females’ brains were similar
to those of animals. He blabbered on, that like animals, females’ “organs of sense” were
overdeveloped, which is why women were irrational and emotional. He even cited data from Carl
Vogt, who determined that the female skull is more like that of an infant or of “the lower races. (can’t
help but notice how this parallels the casteist and misogynistic lines of the Manusmriti that say that
people of marginalized castes and women shouldn’t be educated, citing lack of capability as one of
the factors). While the article was eventually debunked as phrenological, the idea that distinct male
and female brains exist persisted, called neurosexism. This pseudoscience is used to justify statements
that portray female born people as intellectually inferior based on the size and weight of the brain.
Remove the manusmriti detail.
This is the same nonsense peddled by TERFS today. It is just repackaging the same sexist bio
essentialist binary trash.
WHEN YOU DON’T FIND A TRANS WOMAN, MISGENDER A CIS WOMAN
Use the swaddle article to talk of various categories of misgendered females
While targeting trans woman is extremely bigoted and yet sadly common, transphobic people have
started labelling cisgender women as trans women, or worse still men, if they refuse to find actual
transwomen. The biggest contenders for this category are cis women who don’t fit in white
conventions of beauty and are largely women of colour. Many of these cis women may also have
intersex conditions such as XY chromosomal variations or Conditional Androgenous Hyperplasia
(CAH) but are assigned female at birth and identify as cis women. Such females are not only denied
space but have been mob lynched, misgendered and abused with vile terms.
Right from Marie Patino in 1980 and Serena Williams in 2012, to current sport stars Caster Semenya,
and Santhi Soundararajan have all been misgendered, abused and slandered. The most recent victims
are Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting. To those who claim that they have both allegedly failed IBA tests,
the International Boxing association has been banned from the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) who have cut ties on grounds of corruption.
The hate received by Imane is far more senseless, considering she is from Algeria, where transness is
a crime. On odd days, Islamophobes claim that Muslim majoritarian nations throw queer folks from
the roofs, and on even days they claim Muslim majoritarian nations send trans sportspeople to play.
Besides, Imane has not identified as trans or intersex. This is a clear case of both racism and
transphobia against women who strive hard and emerge from non-white nations and fail to fit into
shallow white beauty standards.
As an Indian, I noticed some additional factors – make this in paragraph format.
1. Scratch a liberal and find a fascist. Well educated anti-right women like Barkha Dutt being
trans exclusionary proves this. Remove these names and rephrase this sentence. Say that the
sad truth is this has become a space for various groups of people to pile om transphobia.
2. No one is bothered about the lack of safety, hygiene and adequate remuneration that Indian
sportswomen can access. According to an article by the Adelphi University, male athletes in
Basketball, Golf, Soccer, Tennis and baseball make anywhere between 15% and 100% more
than female athletes. This is also because the audience doesn’t see women’s sports as
wannabe compared to men’s sports.
3. I wish the same uproar that was created against Imane was created against the allowance of
convicted child rapist and pedophile Steven Van De Velde in the Olympics or against Brij
Bhushan. When a trans person is scapegoated, a cis het predator is made to get away with
murder.
4. People don’t know basic biology. For those who think that only so-called “male Gonads”
create testosterone in females, Adrenal glands do produce small amounts of testosterone.
5. People in power find the weakest to scapegoat. It gives them a superficial sense of arrogance,
be it Elon Musk, JK Rowling, Donald Trump or their counterpart savarna clowns in India.
Remove savarna and remove names. Just add links.
6. Transphobic people are not closet but open misogynists. They believe women should fit in their
stereotype of being women, which includes meekness, being docile – and in unsaid words –
being weak. Many cis women like Katie Ledecky, a Hungarian swimmer and singer Hillary Duff
have been misgendered for not fitting in these stereotypes, it sounds ridiculous. They are undoing
the feminist movement rapidly.
PARTING LINES
As always, people in privilege have managed to make the Olympics a popcorn eating and watching
event for themselves while making it traumatic for trans* and intersex folks. Like they do with pretty
much everything else. I wish people took a few minutes out in introspecting on how hard they make
the world for us to live in. increase the conclusion.
