Transgender player Leah Thomas supports transgender children and fights for their right to play sports.
12-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson lived in the world as a girl before she really understood what the word "transgender" meant.
In elementary school, Becky was a member of the school cheerleading team. After entering middle school, Becky joined the school's girls' cross-country long-distance running team under the influence of her family, who loved running. But Becky's U.S. state of West Virginia passed a law in 2021 that states that only "biologically female" can compete on women's sports teams in state public schools. In this law, the structure of an individual's reproductive system and genetic status at birth are the criteria for gender judgment, and Becky, who is a transgender woman, cannot continue to train with the women's team.
In 2021, Becky's Virginia state passed a law stipulating that only "biologically female" can participate in women's sports teams in state public schools. Becky and her mother then sued West Virginia in federal court, and on April 6 this year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied West Virginia's request, and Becky was finally able to continue training with his teammates.
To retrain with the women's cross-country long-distance running team, Becky and her mother sued West Virginia for incompatibility with the U.S. Constitution. A federal district court temporarily halted the law in July 2021, while West Virginia continued to file an emergency motion restricting transgender athletes from playing sports. On April 6, the U.S. Supreme Court denied West Virginia's request for an emergency motion, and Becky was finally able to continue training with his teammates.
Becky isn't the only transgender woman who can't participate in sports because of gender identity and gender inconformity. Outside of West Virginia, 18 other states in the United States have restrictions on transgender participation in sports, and the requirements for transgender women are particularly strict, such as Iowa, which completely bans transgender women from women's sports, and Oregon, which requires transgender female athletes to receive hormone therapy for at least one year.
On the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected West Virginia's request, the Biden administration also released a draft that would require transgender people to participate in U.S. government-funded school sports. While the draft states that schools cannot "one-size-fits-all" deny transgender athletes access to sports, it also leaves room for denying transgender athletes participation when transgender athletes may unfairly play the playing field.
In recent years, despite the increased visibility of sexual minorities, including transgender people, there are still many debates about whether transgender women can legitimately participate in women's sports teams and compete with cisgender women. When a transgender female athlete wants to participate in women's sports teams and compete in women's competitions, she will inevitably encounter scrutiny, restrictions and even criticism. For cisgender female athletes, the arena that belonged to them is also no longer calm due to the arrival of transgender female athletes.
Out-of-balance balances
While there are obstacles for Becky and other transgender women to gain access to sports, transgender female athletes have been featured in both the Olympics and the NCAA. Of course, the appearance of these transgender female athletes is often accompanied by controversy.
In June 2021, the New Zealand Olympic Committee announced the list of weightlifting events for the Tokyo Olympics, and a competitor named Laurel Hubbard stood out. That's not because Habard has ever finished runner-up at the World Championships, or because at 43 she is the fourth oldest weightlifting competitor in Olympic history, but because she will become the first athlete in history to compete in the Games as openly transgender.
While Habard has the support of the New Zealand Olympic Committee and LGBTI advocates, her participation in the Olympics as a female athlete still raises more questions.
According to the IOC's guidelines for transgender athletes at the Tokyo Olympics, transgender female athletes need to control their testosterone levels within 10 nanomoles per liter for at least one year before they can compete as female athletes. Although Habard meets this requirement, some argue that Habard, who has competed in high-level weightlifting competitions as a man, has both physical and psychological advantages, and that competing with female athletes is unfair to women. Habard's compatriot Tracey Lambrechs, also a weightlifter, has publicly stated that if Hubbard wins gold, another gold medal will be needed for athletes whose biological sex is female.
Lambrechz's fears did not materialize at the Tokyo Olympics. Habard's trip to the Tokyo Olympics ended hastily with three failed snatches, while China's Li Wenwen won gold in the event Habard registered (women's over 87kg). Habard's appearance at the Tokyo Olympics did not open the door for more transgender women to compete. Instead, the controversy over the participation of transgender female athletes in women's competitions has since intensified.
Outside of Hubbard, American transgender female swimmer Lia Thomas is being seen for her significant improvement in her performance rankings after gender transition. In March 2022, Thomas won the NCAA Division I Championship Women's 500-yard Freestyle Championship, becoming the first transgender athlete to win the NCAA Division I event. The NCAA Championship is also Thomas' last college swimming competition, and she plans to compete for an Olympic spot at Team USA trials at Paris 2024.
Leah Thomas (left) with one of her opponents, Riley Gaines, who has publicly pointed out her unfair treatment of Thomas by the NCAA.
However, in June 2022, FINA set strict standards for transgender female athletes to participate in international competitions, requiring transgender women who have completed gender transition before the age of 12 or have never experienced the second stage of male puberty under the Tanner standard, and who need to control testosterone levels in their bodies. Thomas, who only started gender conversion with hormone replacement therapy at the age of 20, naturally did not comply with FINA's new rules, and her Olympic dream ended before it even began.
Although the IOC's new 2022 framework of rules on gender identity and gender transition clearly states that transgender identity and appearance do not assume that certain athletes have innate advantages, athletes should not receive "unnecessary" medical treatment to meet the criteria for competition. At the same time, however, the decision on whether transgender athletes can compete remains with individual sports associations.
Following in FINA's footsteps, IAAF updated its rules for transgender athletes in March 2023 to prohibit transgender female athletes who have experienced male puberty from participating in international events administered by the IAAF.
Although the IOC advocates inclusion and diversity, individual sports associations, including FINA and IAAF, can only make choices in diversity in order to ensure the fairness of the competition. Transgender female athletes are like adding an extra weight to the balance of women's sports, and no matter how much leverage is adjusted at this stage, the balance cannot reach a state of equilibrium. Cisgender female athletes worry that the playing field will become uneven by the inclusion of transgender women, and transgender female athletes want equal opportunities to compete in women's competitions at all levels.
The long-standing "gender concern"
Protecting the living space of cisgender women in women's sports is not a demand that only surfaced with the emergence of transgender athletes. Long before Hubbard and Thomas, women's sports actually faced "gender concerns." Such concerns are particularly evident in athletics.
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Helen Stevens of the United States and Stella Walsh of Poland, who won gold and silver medals in the women's 100m, were questioned for their gender. Stephens was also tested for gender and was eventually identified as a woman. After Walsh's death in 1980, she was found to have some male sexual characteristics. This condition is now known as diverse sex development (DSD), or intersex or intersex. Abnormal levels of chromosomes, genes, and hormones in individuals may present a diversity of sexual differentiation.
▲ South African sprinter Caster Semenya (Caster Semenya) has become the most concerned "individual" in the 21st century.
Because many track and field athletes were involved in the "gender doubt" like Stephens, the IAAF introduced gender testing for female athletes from 1966, and the International Olympic Committee began to conduct gender testing since the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. But amid controversy and allegations of discrimination, in 1992 and 1999, the IAAF and the International Olympic Committee suspended gender testing in favor of only individual contestants in dispute. South African sprinter Caster Semenya has become the most talked about case in the 21st century.
At the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, 18-year-old Semenja won gold in the women's 800 meters and attracted attention to her unfriendliness because of her physique and facial features, as well as her rapid improvement. The IAAF tested Semenya for gender after the tournament and finally approved Semenya to continue competing in July 2010.
Shortly after Semenya returned to racing, the IAAF issued a rule in 2011 for athletes with hyperandrogenism to compete in women's competitions, which specified that athletes participating in women's competitions must have testosterone levels below 10 nanomoles per liter. Testosterone can give a person muscle mass, strength and hemoglobin content, which plays a vital role in improving athletic performance. In general, testosterone levels are below 2.4 nanomoles/L in women and 10-35 nanomoles/L in men. The IAAF also requires that athletes whose hormone levels do not meet the standards need to be suppressed medically, otherwise the athlete will not be able to participate in the women's competition.
The IAAF rule was suspended in 2015 after an appeal by India's Dutee Chand at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which also asked the IAAF to certify the effectiveness of testosterone testing athletes within two years. A 2017 study commissioned by the IAAF and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that sampled more than 2,000 athletes at the 2011 and 2013 World Championships found that athletes with higher testosterone levels did have a "clear competitive advantage" in the 400m, 400m hurdles, 800m, hammer throw and pole vault.
After the study was published, the IAAF revived and adjusted the "testosterone rule" in 2018. The new rules require DSD athletes with testosterone levels above 5 nanomoles per liter to be under drug control for at least 6 months before they can compete in the women's middle distance track. Semenya, who was "hit with precision" by this rule, tried to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but was unsuccessful. Since 2018, Semenya has never competed in the middle distance at the World Championships or Olympics.
In March, the IAAF's new rules made DSD athletes more stringent. The upper limit of testosterone levels for athletes was lowered to 2.5 nanomoles/liter, the control period was extended to 2 years, and the coverage of the rules was expanded from the middle distance to all track and field events.
From gender testing for Stephens and Semenya to increasingly stringent testosterone rules for DSD athletes, the "gender concern" in athletics is not based on gender itself, but more about abnormal testosterone levels in some athletes and their impact on their performance.
Former women's marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe spoke in her testimony in Duti v. IAAF and the Indian Athletics Association about her views on testosterone levels affecting competitive fairness, and her thoughts represent the concerns of many female athletes. "Higher testosterone levels have a more profound impact on the fairness of the game than the difference in talent and effort. Athletes with higher testosterone levels react differently physically than regular women in training and competition, and they are also stronger, which also makes the competition inherently unfair. ”
The "nowhere to be" for transgender female athletes
Just as the rules of IAAF and FINA always mention the requirements for DSD athletes and transgender athletes side by side, the concern that transgender female athletes are physically unfair to female competitive sports is in line with the concern that DSD athletes are predominantly due to excessive testosterone levels.
While Leah Thomas showed amazing dominance in college games late 2021 and kept approaching the college record held by Olympic champions Katie Ledecky and Missy Franklin, the NCAA received an anonymous letter from the parents of Thomas' teammates. Parents believe that Thomas who has passed male puberty has a physical advantage over cisgender women, and transgender women tend to have longer limbs, larger hands and feet, and higher bone density and lung capacity, which are also traits that favor swimmers.
One parent also said in an interview with Sports Illustrated that they did not support Thomas's transgender identity, but simply complained about the unfairness she brought to women's sports. "We support Leah and hope she has a happy life, but what we can't stand is that she keeps rewriting records and knocking 'biological women' out."
Sure, Thomas is a prominent example of a transgender female athlete, but does that mean trans women have a universal advantage in competitive sports, as their teammates say?
The American journal Science cites two studies showing that the existing research on transgender athletes is not enough to support the development of relevant rules and policies, and that the "physical advantages" retained by transgender women may not be as obvious as people think, and some advantages will indeed disappear as the transgender process progresses.
Interestingly, the IAAF spokesperson defended its stance on transgender female athletes with the same logic. The IAAF decided to ban all transgender female athletes who have gone through male puberty from competing internationally precisely because "there is not sufficient evidence that the original male advantage of transgender women will disappear."
Protesters on the sidelines of the NCAA against transgender women's participation.
In a chaotic situation where the fairness of the event is constantly disputed and there is no reliable basis, most individual sports associations adopt the same approach as the IAAF to isolate transgender women from the competition with the strictest possible standards to maintain the fairness of competition in women's events.
In contrast, transgender athletes compete with few rules for men. In addition to avoiding the influence of male puberty as much as possible, individual sports associations with clear access rules for transgender athletes also put forward requirements for transgender female athletes to control testosterone levels in the body. Starting in the 2022-23 school year, the NCAA also requires transgender athletes to record their testosterone levels at various times before, during, and before the start of the tournament.
But for transgender women, trying to integrate themselves into these rules that uphold fair competition is nothing short of fit. The FINA and the Athletics Federation only allow transgender athletes who have not experienced male puberty to compete, without acknowledging that the decision to make a gender transition for minors is itself controversial. The use of drugs and other medical means to artificially reduce testosterone levels will also have an impact on the athlete's body, and DSD athletes such as Semenya who are born with high testosterone levels have also mentioned that controlling testosterone drugs have brought abdominal pain, nausea and other uncomfortable symptoms.
The new IOC rules framework, which now seems inclusive and caring for transgender athletes, is actually not a safe island for transgender female athletes, like the Biden administration's "leeway" plan. Most transgender women, unable to enter and compete on teams that align with their gender identity, are reluctant to return to the men's division or compete in the "open group" that is not gender-specific. Until scientific evidence is found to support the rule making of transgender athletes, sports will likely remain a "no-brainer" for transgender female athletes.