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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| I find it appalling, disturbing, and wholly outside the jurisdiction of any sporting or other organization that they would possibly believe and then integrate sex testing into any operations of their organization. What in the world could ever justify you knowing someone else sex chromosomes, OR even more what makes you think YOU could label and gender someone else. It’s truly disgusting, annoying, perverted work. It’s literally no one else’s business what gender you or I am. So its actually crazy to me this was considered normal procedure in numerous sporting organizations. I would give sex testing a -5 star review. Burn it.
As for some of the specifics of the podcast, I really appreciated the insight of Doctor Ferguson Smith and how he pointed out that the real reason for sex testing was because these organizations had gotten it stuck in their heads that men were trying to sneak into the competing women’s categories. When in reality this was never happening, it was not a norm and it is not an issue of emergence or endangerment. And the procedure just went on to hurt women and will go on to hurt trans and non-binary athletes. Further, I appreciated hearing the the doctor who had created the test in Ontario went on to send a letter to a sporting organization and called their use of his test an embarrassment.
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B) Timeline of History
Exercise 2: Notebook Prompt
What other significant case/milestone would you add to this timeline? Note it in your notebook along with a brief (one or two sentences) explanation of why you feel it is important.
| I’m not sure if its written on the timeline but more vaguely, but I would add ‘nude parades’ before 1968 to the timeline. I think history and how theses tools and tactics change is interesting and worth being a part of this timeline. History likes to repeat itself so calling out past acts like nude-parades and the damage they have already done hopefully will make it so we understand not to implement them again.
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C) Gender coding in Sports
Exercise 3: Notebook Prompt
Has the gendering of sport ever been a constraint on your involvement? How?
Or, if not, why do you think this is?
| I grew up playing hockey and soccer, the programs I was in were small but wanted to grow their girls programs. I think the only time I feel constrained by the gendering of sports was when I registered for my high schools hockey course. This was a course known for being a “boys class”, of literally 50 teenage boys, and it was normal for no girls to take it in a year. My year we had less than 10 girls who signed up and we were constantly picked on by boys in class. Because of how the sport of hockey has been gendered they found no problem in considering us girls ‘bad’ at hockey or unable to take a hit or compete. It was these constraints, or societal norms projected by these boys in their comments, that actually made me work harder and be a better player.
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D) How is sport gendered in the popular imagination?
Exercise 4: Padlet/Notebook Prompt
While most sports are in fact unisex, gender coding remains pervasive, particularly at the professional level, although with a foundation established in youth competition. Participate in the poll below to share your views on how popular sports are gendered in the popular imagination. Also feel welcome to add or suggest sports that you feel strongly conform to the gender binary!
After you contribute to the padlet prompt, record your response in your notebook AND briefly discuss in two or three sentences how these responses and the polling figures in general confirm or contradict your assumptions about gender-coding and sports. Did anything surprise you?
Softball: voted Female, 60%
Gymnastics: voted Female, 96%
Hockey: voted Male, 85%
Volleyball: voted Female, 73%
Basketball: Voted Female, 3%
Power lifting: voted female, 3%
Soccer: voted female, 8%
Football: voted male, 100%
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Section Two: Breaking it down
A) Title IX
Exercise 5: Notebook Prompt
In a longer version of the interview excerpted in the video above, Leah Thomas states “Trans women competing in women’s sports does not threaten women’s sports as a whole because trans women are a very small minority of all athletes and the NCAA rules around trans women competing in women’s sports have been around for 10+ years and we haven’t seen any massive wave of trans women dominating”?
Do you agree with this statement? See also the image above suggesting that the issue may be overblown by politicians and influencers who don’t actually care that much about women’s sports.
Please share any thoughts you have in your Notebook by clicking on the audio button above or writing a few sentences.
| I agree slightly with this comment on the surface, but I think its important to consider this quote more and the problem it addresses. I think no matter how big or small the number of trans women athletes involved in sports, that organizations, politicians, and influencers need to butt out of trans peoples business. I am a woman who has played sports all my life, and I feel no threat at all to the sports I play by having trans woman teammates or competitors. Trans women in sports do not threaten cis-women in sports, cis-women don’t need protecting from trans women, trans women are just as deserving of space in sports as anyone else. It is cis-people in power, who feel like their privilege is being revoked and threatened simply by the participation of trans women in sports. These are the exact people who need to get comfortable being uncomfortable and make space for trans people in all aspects of our lives like sports.
So to say that there are not enough trans women athletes involved in organizations like the NCAA for this to really be such a point of discourse, yes I can agree with that, but further I believe there really is no amount of trans women involved in sports for them to be labeled ‘a problem’. Trans women are not a ‘problem’ to solve or ‘deal’ with. Trans women are people, and our society, and our sports, need to quickly realize that and get in line. |
B) Unfair Advantage?
Exercise 6: Notebook Prompt
What does the host and writer, Rose Eveleth, have to say on the issue of unfair advantage?
Can you think of other examples of unique biological or circumstantial advantages from which athletes have benefitted enormously that have nothing to do with gender?
| First of all the World Athletics is disgusting. Calling the mandatory medications your organization wants to force certain female athletes to take for lowering testosterone levels ‘gender affirming’ is such a cognitive dissonance narrative holy. Especially when I could guess that the research they use to define a women’s typical testosterone levels was mostly likely conducted with a majority white women testing group, as that is how Western medicine has historically operated. And now you want to apply that genetic ‘norm’ onto radicalized women, who do not see it as gender affirming care, who do not get a choice in whether that is gender affirming care, simply because your majority white organization wants to deem these women as having ‘unfair advantages’.
Anyway, Rose Eveleth discusses issues of unfair advantage as intertwined to sex, saying something along the lines of “We divide sports by sex not proportions, blood mutations etc. so sex is fair game in discussion so fairness.” So the differences within the sexes have been made into the fighting ground for sporting discourse, with a special focus on women, because of course, and then dissecting and inserting ignorant regulations onto more marginalized groups like trans women and women with DSD.
An example of a biological or circumstantial advantage that an athlete could benefit enormously that has nothing to do with gender could simply be playing a sport like volleyball and being of a typically taller height, giving you an easier ability to reach above the net, give you more leg muscle to jump higher etc. Or being a smaller person in gymnastics with a lower center of gravity thus a better/easier ability to stabilize oneself on the balance beam.
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Again, let’s turn to Katie Barnes who points out that we tend to forget amidst all the debate that “sports, by design, are not fair” (235), that “the reality of sports is that we accept unfairness all the time” (235).
Do you agree? Why? In your experience, how fair are sports? Feel welcome to add a video response in the padlet and provide an example if you’re willing. Make sure you include a screenshot of your response in your notebook.
| I think sports are made fair with the incorporation of rules, but that our bodies have natural limits that some may mistaken for disadvantages. Further, if someone else does not have that same natural limit and are even naturally born with characteristics that make them excel then that has now been considered or interpreted as an ‘advantage’. To me, if it is not something you can control, like testosterone levels, then how can we call that an advantage? It cannot be controlled so I cannot say it is fair to bar someone who cannot control something like that from a sport. I saw another padlet post suggesting that instead of focusing on sports fairness we should focus on sports equity, and I think that is a much more productive an sustainable way of framing the future of regulating sports. Equity is controllable, rules are controllable, how people live and exist, are born into this world, is not controllable and thus it is not fair to regulate a sport based on those uncontrollable traits simply because it is in the name of ‘fairness’.
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B) The Paris Olympics
Optional Response:
What does Robins mean when she argues that:
“The aims of transvestigating an Olympic athlete are not, in any meaningful sense, anything to do with sports, or fairness, or even with women (cis women, at least) as a social category. Rather, they have everything to do with transness, and the public expression of transfemininity.
For my money this has never been about sport.
What it has always been is an excuse to publicly relitigate the existence of trans women.”
Make a note in your Notebook.
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