Issue around trans athletes 'not about fairness'
As a fellow educator, I was disheartened to see Leo Quirk’s Feb.16 letter regarding the inclusion of trans athletes in sports. As a trans man, athlete and coach, it was depressing but unsurprising.
Mr. Quirk demonstrates, unintentionally, I am sure, a distressing lack of knowledge about transgender individuals and the transition process, and then extrapolates from this baseline of misunderstanding to conclude trans athletes should be excluded from sports. (Ironically, Mr. Quirk suggests banning trans athletes on principle until we have evidence to justify banning them with science.)
His language implies that trans girls are really boys, and thus it is “unfair” for them to compete with cis girls. This implication, and it is a common one, incorrectly suggests the biology of sex and how it intertwines with gender is straightforward. The reality of sex and gender is messy and complex, despite what popular culture might tell us.
So, the intensity of the discourse surrounding trans athletes is understandable, if unpleasant. It’s not an easy topic. The messy reality of biological complexity defies a multitude of deeply held core values regarding sex and gender. When faced with information that challenges their core beliefs, people often push back. Often, this conversation gets framed much in the way that Mr. Quirk expressed in his letter: reduce trans people to “biology” and frame it as a question of fairness, conveniently positing the trans athletes as the threat to fairness rather than any recipient of it. This reductionism is a dehumanizing tactic that ignores biological diversity innate in life and competition. Athletes of all body types compete, some with physical and/or economic, cultural, social advantages.
Mr. Quirk expresses most of his concern about trans women and girls in sports, perhaps unaware that trans men also successfully compete. To be clear, the overwhelming majority of women competing and winning in sports at all levels are cis women, including when competing with trans women. Trans women have been eligible to compete in the Olympics since 2003, and in some states for almost 50 years. Since 2003, not a single trans woman has medaled in any Olympic event. Laurel Hubbard, a powerlifter from New Zealand, became the first trans woman to qualify for the Olympics in 2020. She did not complete her lifts and did not even come close to a medal.
In fact, because of the remarkable rarity of trans athletes competing at all, it becomes much easier to hyper-focus on them when they do win, such as the case with Lia Thomas, a successful trans woman swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who is currently at the center of a great deal of vitriol and misinformation despite her repeated losses to cis women. This framing sets up a terrible double standard: If trans women perform on average or less in competition (almost always), they are forgotten or dismissed. And if they win, they have an “unfair” advantage.
If this were truly about fairness, we would focus on issues that seriously and genuinely threaten women’s sports.
There are massive economic disparities between schools and programs that affect access to coaching, nutrition and training, and we know these factors are much more influential in athletic performance than gender.
If this were about fairness, we would ask ourselves why any win by any individual is worth more than the simple right to compete for an entire marginalized and historically oppressed group of people. The psychological and emotional trauma anti-trans bills and sports bans inflict upon young trans individuals, an already endangered population, is devastating.
If this were about fairness, then the equation of fairness would include trans athletes, not treat them as the threat to it. Trans athletes and non-athletes alike are reduced to genitals, muscles, hormones and chromosomes at staggering speed in almost any conversation about trans inclusivity. We are dehumanized and Othered. We are portrayed as false, as interlopers on the social order.
This topic challenges what many believe about sex, gender and the fantasy of meritocracy in sports. There are women, men and nonbinary athletes of all body types who compete. Pitting trans women against cis women only perpetuates invasive body policing of all women’s bodies.
Sex, gender and athletic performance are all immensely complicated in their own respective rights, but when mixed together, along with strongly held social and personal core values, it makes for difficult navigation even among experts in these areas.
I’m not saying this is easy.
It's simply not about fairness.