Transgender athletes continue to face scrutiny in professional sports

Transgender women succeeding at the highest levels of sports have faced scrutiny and vitriol, an example of the pitfalls of professional athletics relying on outdated measures of gender and sex.

March 31 is the International Transgender Day of Visibility — a day to celebrate trans people and bear witness to the barriers they face. Dr. Travers is an SFU Sociology professor who says transgender women and girls have particularly been targeted in sports because of the assumption “girls and women are weaker and inferior athletes.”

“There just isn’t any evidence to support the argument that it’s unfair for transgender women to compete against cisgender women.”

Related Article: Penn’s Thomas becomes first transgender woman to win NCAAs

The few trans women who come out on top at the most competitive levels of sports have faced scrutiny and transphobia. Most recently, American Lia Thomas made history in her win being the first known transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship.

Thomas beat out three Olympic medalists in the women’s 500-yard freestyle and even had nine seconds behind the collegiate record holder, Katie Ledecky. But her national championship did not necessarily spark a triumphant moment in the battle for civil rights.

University of Pennsylvania transgender athlete Lia Thomas competes in the 200 freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships Friday, March 18, 2022, at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Thomas finished tied for fifth place. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Instead, her win was met with protest.

Outside the Georgia Tech facility in Atlanta, Georgia where she won, 10 demonstrators gathered and some carried banners that read “Save Women’s Sports” in the stands.

“I try to ignore it as much as I can,” Thomas said. “I try to focus on my swimming .. and just try to block out everything else.”

Travers adds that they find that those who are not supportive believe Thomas’ success was based on an unfair advantage because she was assigned male at birth.

“Which isn’t actually the case,” they insist, adding the rules governing trans athletes are socially constructed.

“Any kind of test, any kind of measurement that is designed to draw a clean clear barrier between people who are female, people who are not female – it doesn’t exist, the science doesn’t support it,” Travers said.

“We see incredible variation among people who are considered to be female. And transgender women are not outliers in this regard. Transgender women fit within the so-called “normal range” of people who are assigned female or who identify as female. So it’s really sort of like a dog whistle to anti-trans attitudes,” they added.

In 2016, the Olympics stopped requiring trans athletes to have had genital surgery. Just last year, it eliminated the testosterone level rules.

In Canada, trans rights have advanced in the last decade, from the dropping of the sex reassignment surgery requirement in B.C. to recognizing gender identity and expression in the federal human rights act.

Vancouver human rights lawyer, Dustin Klaudt, says these legal protections extend to sports in Canada.

“At the international level, unfortunately, there isn’t the same human rights rubric and understanding that we have in our domestic courts in Canada,” Klaudt said.

But even with the progress that’s been made, he admits there’s still a long way to go

“I consider in the next year … there’s more hearts and minds that are swayed towards recognizing the inherent dignity of trans people, and that people have a further understanding and appreciation of the harms of outing, of the harms of misgendering folks,” Klaudt said.

“The more and more people that accept that the more and more exposure and access that trans individuals get towards society, where they continue to be denied would be a win.”

Even though the Olympics has made strides to include trans people, other international sports organizations like the NCAA and World Athletics are still holding onto their testosterone rules.

– With files from Nikitha Martins