The biggest loophole in trans rights that even the most well-meaning so-called allies – both queer and cis het, fall for and give in to trans-exclusionary arguments is gender and sports. Biological advantage is something that is cited as the immediate go-to answer. Transphobes like Elon Musk, JK Rowling, and Kangana Ranaut already have their antipathy towards trans people made clear. However, many “liberal” identifying opportunists and queerphobic homosexuals who enjoy social media clout have also expressed their trans-exclusionary views.
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.
Firstly, trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people are valid and awesome as well. Gender is a social construct.
Going further, biology is not as neat a binary as one makes it out to be. It is just as complex. Many intersex people 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 women and high estrogen levels in women) are more common than expected, and if factored in, accounts for more intersex people than those who exist.
If erased intersex people are considered, then being intersex may not be a one-off variance but a more common occurrence. Many such intersex players include Caster Semenya who was asked to lower testosterone, whereas, Martinez Patino and Santhi Soundararajn had XY chromosomes and complete insensitivity to androgens.
Trans women are competing with cis women?
Coming to trans feminine individuals competing with cis women, it is important to primarily understand that Trans women are already subject to multifarious forms of systemic violence and abuse. If at all they get past these barriers and bag opportunities to participate in sports, the vicious lies around their participation discourage them and put them down.
Secondly, there are enough publications by reputed entities like the Canada Center for Ethics in Sports (CCES) that 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 trans 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 freestyle swimming and uphill cycling, only lightweight people are at an advantage. Trans women may or may not have an advantage in these sports depending on their muscle masses.
It is very likely muscular cis woman very much endosex, can defeat a lean endosex cis man.
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 ongoing furore around trans women in sports, they may even declare that people with PCOS and high androgen profiles can’t fight cis women without giving the unproven claim of “testosterony advantages”, even if they are cis het women themselves. Besides the whole idea of a “normal testosterone level” for women is itself very white-centric, and this often leads to black women being 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, and 50% less lactic acid production than the average competitors. Yet no one has pointed out this biological advantage. Usain Bolt had 75% more 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 woman is far smaller than that between the weakest and strongest cis males and the weakest and strongest cis women. Very tall and very short women are allowed to compete 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.
It isn’t as if very large competitive examples are rejected, as long as the person isn’t remotely queer.
Sports do not categorise 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, an anti-womanhood decision when trans women were banned in even in sports like Chess. 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 less intelligent 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 women’s brains were similar to those of animals. He blabbered on, that like animals, women’s “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”.
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. This is the same nonsense peddled by TERFS today. It is just repackaging the same sexist bio-essentialist binary arguments.
When you don’t find a trans woman, misgender a cis woman
In a paper titled ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough‘, Dr. Mireia argues, ‘Intersex management policies in sports and the clinic have not ‘progressed’ to become more ‘refined’ or ‘inclusive’; but have rather mutated in accordance with the relevant discourses of each moment, with the underpinning core principle remaining the maintenance of the gender binary and the surveillance of intersexuality as gender transgression.‘
While targeting trans women is extremely bigoted and yet sadly common, transphobic people have started labeling cisgender women as trans women, or worse still men if they refuse to find actual trans women. The biggest contenders for this category are cis women who don’t fit into white conventions of beauty and are largely women of color. 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 women are not only denied space but have been mob lynched, misgendered, and abused with vile terms.
Right from Martinez Patino in 1980 and Serena Williams in 2012, to current sports stars Caster Semenya, and Santhi Soundararajan, athletes 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) which has cut ties on grounds of corruption.
The hate received by Imane is far more senseless, considering she is from Algeria, where being trans is a crime.
The hate received by Imane is far more senseless, considering she is from Algeria, where being trans 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 to emerge from non-white nations and fail to fit into shallow white beauty standards.
There are so many other underlying truths that have been brought to light in this whole ruckus of mudslinging and bigotry while no one is bothered about the lack of safety, hygiene, and adequate remuneration that Indian sportswomen can access. According to an article by 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.
The most jarring contraindication is that the same uproar that was created against Imane wasn’t 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.
The most jarring contraindication is that the same uproar that was created against Imane wasn’t created against the allowance of convicted child rapist and pedophile Steven Van De Velde in the Olympics or against Brij Bhushan.
A lot of people need to be sensitised about basic biology. For those who think that only so-called “male gonads” create testosterone in people assigned-female, ovaries and adrenal glands do produce small amounts of testosterone.
Cases like these demonstrate how white, cisgender, bourgeois women make a perverse mockery of feminism. JK Rowling who has minted money in millions, says that she finds a financially struggling cis woman of colour who has fought tooth and nail to make it here – a threat to women. She has no understanding of how class, racial, and national privilege work. The account Islamic Person, who goes by @khalidinyaqub, rightfully points this out ‘Imane Khelif is the daughter of a welder from a rural village in Algeria. She was declared female in a country where homosexuality is a crime (and so is being trans). But the great feminist has decided she’s “a man” because a white woman cried that she’s too strong…‘
Transphobic people are not closeted but open misogynists. They believe women should fit into 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.
As always, people with privilege have managed to make the Olympics a popcorn-eating and watching event for themselves while making it traumatic for trans* and intersex folks. It would be good for people to take a few minutes out to introspect on how hard they make the world for trans and non binary people to live in.
