Case Study 3: Transgender Athletes

First brought to the forefront in the 1970’s by tennis athlete, Renée Richards, transgender athletes have been an ongoing controversy ever since. Many people argue that such athletes should be barred from competing due to their competitive advantage, specifically those who convert from male to female. However, science provides that hormone therapy typically involves a testosterone-blocking drug plus an estrogen supplement which in-turn decreases muscle mass, bone density, and the proportion of oxygen carrying red cells in the blood. Collectively, these changes lead to a loss of speed, strength and endurance – all major components that quantify athleticism.

Joanna Harper, a long distance runner who started hormone therapy in 2004, found the differences to be quite dramatic. Only a year following her sex change, her 10 kilometer race time was almost a full five minutes slower than the time she posted two years previously as a man. Over the next several years, Harper collected 200 race times from eight different transgender women to verify if her experience was typical. Her study, published in the Journal of Sporting Cultures and Identities, “found that collectively, the eight subjects got much slower after their gender transitions and put up nearly identical age-graded scores as men and as women, meaning they were equally – but no more – competitive in their new gender category.”

These results are supported by the IAAF, which allow anyone who is legally and hormonally female to compete in women’s events. Since 2011, the NCAA requires female athletes to wait a full year after beginning testosterone suppression before they can compete. The International Olympic committee may modify its rules to require an additional year of hormone treatment before the transgender athlete can become eligible.

The controversy whether transgender athletes should be able to compete in the opposite sexes sport, is further discussed in the article: . , a martial arts fighter, states: “I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because she was born a man or not, because I’m not a doctor. I can only say I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life, and I am an abnormally strong female.” Brents also states that the woman Brents was referring to isn’t a woman at all, but transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox, who fights as a woman against women. “What Brents reportedly experienced at Fox’s hands was a concussion and a broken orbital bone that required staples. In other words, this woman was savaged by an opponent that was genetically advantaged with a thicker bone structure, longer reach, and denser musculature—or, put more simply, was a man. This is one of many accounts that are out there, however, science rules over personal experiences and opinions.

Recently, The Guardian posted an article explaining how during the Rio Olympics, transgender athletes were allowed “without restriction” to compete in any sport during the event without the need of surgery. “ athletes should be allowed to compete in the Olympics and other international events without undergoing sex reassignment surgery, according to new guidelines adopted by the IO.”

The regulation establishes that any female to male has without any restriction the right to compete, in the other hand male to female needs to provide the accurate levels of testosterone according to the IOC. “To require surgical anatomical changes as a precondition to participation is not necessary to preserve fair competition and may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights,” said the IOC.

According to Arne Ljungqvist, a former IOC medical commission chairman, the nonstop social and political changes had a lot to do with these regulations. Ljungqvist further states: “We had to review and look into this from a new angle. We needed to adapt to the modern legislation around the world. We felt we cannot impose a surgery if that is no longer a legal requirement. It is an adaptation to a human rights issue. This is an important matter. It’s a trend of being more flexible and more liberal,” according to Ljungqvist.

These issues came into place when South Africa's Caster Semenya underwent tests to demonstrate her gender after winning the 800M race in London during the 2012 Olympics. She was eventually cleared to compete, but the scandal created a large amount of discussion among the public.

It is official; Nike is the athletic wear company making history by signing the first transgender athlete. Chris Mosier has made the United States national team in events such as triathlons and also helping with the aid of Nike to break the fourth wall and forcing the conversation on the issues surrounding transgender athletes (SBJ, 2016). The commercial appeared during Rio’s final night of NBC’s primetime coverage.

The Women’s Sports Foundation, founded by Billie Jean King also supports the inclusion of transgender participation in sports. The Women’s Sports Foundation supports the right of all athletes, including transgender athletes, and believes that schools must be prepared to fairly accommodate these students and their families in athletics as well as other school programs. The Foundation created the position paper to help equip schools and transgender student-athletes with the information they need to ensure fair access and integration into sports and physical activity. The foundation poses five questions that schools and transgender athletes should assess about the program they want to integrate:

· Are schools obligated to accommodate transgender athletes?

· What types of physical accommodations must sport governing bodies make to ensure the inclusion of transgender athletes is fair and appropriate?

· Do male-to-female transgender athletes have a physical advantage in competition against non-transgender females?

· What obligations do sport governing bodies have to educate their members about the rights of transgender athletes?

· What are the elements of sound school policy on transgender athletes?

· What about issues in youth and high school sports related to transgender athletes? They are separate and specific.

The aforementioned instances lead us to ask many other questions related to this topic: What should be the deciding factor to decide if one plays on a male or female team? Should there be a hormone level that must be met? Should transgender athletes who choose not to go through surgery and/or hormonal therapy still be allowed to compete? Must everyone on the team have the same anatomy? What’s the off-field dynamic if they still have the opposite genders anatomy? Should they be placed into a separate locker room? What possible advantages are there for transgender males playing female sports and what potential setbacks could there be? What type of punishment would one receive if these gender-specific rules were broken? The answers to many of these questions may surface in the near future.