These are delicate issues to navigate. I believe the focus should be on inclusion since the most important issue at stake is that all people have the chance to be physically active and involved in team sports to learn all the wonderful things there are to learn in sports.
The more complicated questions arise when transgender athletes compete at a very high-level and are physically superior than their female opponents.
Hi Jeffrey, I’m glad to see that you think the focus should be on inclusion in sports! I wanted to address the second part of your note with some research:
An athlete’s performance is determined by a variety of physiological characteristics, not just testosterone.
Testosterone doesn’t dictate better athletic performance across every sport, and there is no single physiological or biological marker for simply categorizing humans as male or female, according to Katrina Karkazis, from the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University.
Authorizing invasive medical examinations that specifically target trans girls and trans femme youth, and focusing on tran’s women’s ‘assigned sex at birth’ disregards that trans women are women.
If you’re interested in learning more about testosterone and athletics: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/06/testosterone-biological-sex-sports-bodies
Hope this is helpful!
Ragi,
Very insightful and helpful. Thank you!
Thank you for reading!
On January 20th, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on ‘Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation’. The Executive order aims to provide equal protection of laws and give form to the principle of equality as enshrined in the American Constitution. It has sparked controversy due to the debate on the inclusion of transgender (male to female) persons in women’s competitive sports. The directive states that “children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.” The order calls for a broader application of the majority opinion in Bostock v Clayton county (2020) ruling, mandating that action must be taken within 100 days of January 20th. It also makes the order applicable to Title IX which basically means that action can be taken against federally funded schools that do not implement the directive. The White House in a statement denied the interdependence of federal funding on the issue of participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports. While the move was celebrated by LGBTQ+ groups, it was criticised on social media by conservative groups with the #bidenerasedwomen. Transgender athletes’ participation in sports is governed by rules decided by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. As always there are many sides to this story: opponents of transgender participation in women’s competitive sports refer to the unfair advantage that biological males possess but as you shall find in the link, the rules by NCAA already state that such participation requires regular monitoring of testosterone levels. The supporters of transgender participation in women’s competitive sports state that it is fundamental to the mental and physical health of transgender persons.
To read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jan/22/transgender-athletes-joe-biden-executive-order
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/02/fact-check-biden-executive-order-discrimination-transgender-women-sports/6686171002/
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