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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
The length of the battle against sex testing in sports, more than thirty years of athletes, journalists, and scientists fighting back against invasive and frequently capricious regulations, is one unexpected lesson to be learned from this story. The fact that these rules still exist in spite of previous attempts to do away with them shows how pervasive gender policing is in sports.
I discovered that different athletes affected by DSD regulations have rather diverse strategies; some follow the rules to keep competing, while others, like Maximila Imali, legally contest the system. This emphasizes how complicated and individualized these choices are, since they have the potential to significantly impact an athlete’s identity and career.
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.
| August 2nd, 2021 – Laurel Hubbard made history by being the first trans woman to ever compete at the Olympics and the first openly trans athlete to compete in an individual event at the Summer Olympics.
May 2023 – Emily Bridges has been competitively cycling since she was ten years old ad she joined the Great Britain cycling team in 2020. In 2021, she left the team and took the year off to focus on her transition journey. In 2022, she was eager to rejoin the team in hopes of reaching her goal and participating in the 2024 Olympics. However, the next year, British Cycling banned transgender women from competing in the women’s category. February 5th, 2025 – President Donald Trump signed an executive order preventing trans women from competing in women’s and girls sporting events |
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?
| For about ten years I did Jui-Jitsu which is a type of martial art. That is a typically male-dominated field, and we tend to picture a male fighter if asked, affirming our assumptions about gender-coding and sports. I never felt unwelcomed, however, there are different narratives that are set around women versus men in this sport, a double standard. One example being that if a man signs up for martial arts, it’s “badass” and if a woman signs up it’s for her protection and self-defence. It is hard to remember the dynamics as I was very young, but I know that some women have expressed feeling sexualized, shamed, criticized, weak and subordinate to men in the dojo environment. I remember that people thought my involvement was “cute”, and I was never taken very seriously, my involvement wasn’t harming anyone, and I wasn’t a threat or a competitor as I was a girl.
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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?
| Football:
I voted – male 99.5% – male
Powerlifting: I voted male 74.1 – male 24.9 – neutral
Soccer: I voted – neutral 52.7% – neutral 41.3 – male
Tennis: I voted neutral – 75.2 Female – 20.2 Male 4.7
Rugby: I voted neutral – 36.8 Male – 54.7 Female – 8.5
Figure skating: I voted female – 81 Neutral – 19
Volleyball: I voted – female 65.7 – female 31.3 – male
Basketball: I voted neutral – 27.6 Male – 70.9
Hockey: I voted – male – 77.7 Neutral – 20.8
Gymnastics: I voted female – 88.9 Neutral 11.1
Softball: I voted female – 70.4 Neutral 18.6 Male – 11.1
I believe most of my assumptions were correct on which gender my peers would associate with each sport for example football, basketball and hockey for men and figure skating, gymnastics and volleyball for women. However, the majority of votes for tennis were neutral which was expected, yet, I was shocked to find that some of my peers associated tennis with women more than men. This could be due to the fact that prominent figures like the Williams sisters have had such success and made an impact in the tennis sphere. I was also surprised to see that for rugby, aside from the majority of votes being for men, 36.7% was voted “neutral”. I feel as though I do not see much about rugby daily but if you were to ask me who the most prominent figure is in the rugby world, I would have to say Illona Maher who played for the USA women’s rugby team in the 2024 Paris Olympics. She has been an amazing advocate for women who participate in male dominated sports.
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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.
| When it comes to trans women in athletics, Leah Thomas makes a strong argument. There is more anxiety than facts to support the notion that trans women represent a serious threat to women’s athletics. She points out that while trans women only make up a relatively small portion of athletes, their presence does not significantly change the competitive environment. Trans women would have already dominated women’s sports over the last ten years if they had a significant edge, but this hasn’t happened.
In order to maintain fair competition, the NCAA and other regulatory organizations have also put in place rules. For example, they mandate that trans women have hormone therapy in order to counteract any potential advantages associated with testosterone levels. The integrity of women’s sports has been unaffected by these regulations for many years. Training, skill, and dedication are just a few of the many non-biological aspects that affect athletic performance. Despite their inherent physical advantages over rivals, many cisgender women are accepted for their participation. Promoting inclusivity and upholding fair competition should be the main priorities. Sports organizations should keep improving their regulations based on empirical data and practical results rather than speculative concerns, rather than barring trans athletes on the basis of presumptions.
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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?
| Rose Eveleth, host and writer of the CBC Tested podcast, examines the idea of “unfair advantage” in sports in Episode 5, “Unfair Advantage,” and asks what we actually mean by fairness. By emphasizing how sports have always entailed inherent and contextual differences between players, she counters the notion that trans women have an innate and overwhelming edge in women’s sports. According to Eveleth, the discussion of fairness frequently overlooks the numerous additional biological and environmental elements that provide some athletes an advantage—advantages that are generally acknowledged and uncontroversial.
There are numerous instances of distinct biological or contextual advantages in sports that are unrelated to gender. For example, one of the greatest swimmers of all time, Michael Phelps, has a remarkable physiology: his joints are hypermobile, his wingspan is larger than his height, and his body produces less lactic acid than other people, which speeds up recovery. Similar to this, Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mäntyranta benefited from an endurance advantage due to a genetic abnormality that raised his red blood cell count. Circumstantial benefits also come into play. Richer athletes frequently have early access to better coaching, training facilities, and nutrition, which has a big influence on their performance. These benefits are rarely viewed as “unfair,” which begs the crucial question of why gender-related benefits are subject to such intense scrutiny.
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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 agree that we frequently tolerate some types of unfairness without inquiry and that “sports, by design, are not fair.” Due to environmental, socioeconomic, and genetic factors that give certain athletes an advantage over others, sports are fundamentally uneven at the elite level. But society has a tendency to focus on some forms of perceived injustice, like those pertaining to gender identity, while neglecting others that are equally, if not more, significant.
For instance, East African athletes, especially those from Kenya and Ethiopia, have dominated the elite marathon running scene for many years. According to research, their performance may be attributed to a combination of genetic traits, high-altitude upbringing, and a cultural emphasis on running. However, their domination is not viewed as “unfair” in the same manner as trans women’s involvement in women’s sports. In a similar vein, highly skilled tennis players who have access to the greatest instructors and facilities from an early age have a significant edge over similarly gifted players who do not. Even though sports use rules and regulations to try to be fair, total fairness is impossible. We should acknowledge that inequality exists in sports and strive toward inclusivity while upholding fair competitive rules, rather than concentrating only on exclusionary measures.
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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.
| According to Evan Robins’ article “Maybe the Real Victims of Transphobia Have Been Cis Women This Whole Time,” the criticism of trans women in sports serves to reinforce societal fears about trans identities, especially transfemininity, rather than to promote justice or level the playing field. According to her, the so-called “investigations” into whether an athlete is trans (also known as “transvestigations”) are meant to delegitimize trans women’s very existence in public life rather than to safeguard women’s sports.
According to Robins, invasive gender policing has historically been used to even cisgender female athletes, especially those who don’t fit the stereotypically Western ideals of femininity. This implies that discomfort with anyone who deviates from strict gender norms is the true problem, not fairness in competition. By portraying these discussions as being about “protecting women,” opponents frequently fail to acknowledge that trans and cis women who don’t conform to rigid ideas of femininity are disproportionately harmed by this scrutiny. In the end, Robins contends that rather than actually addressing justice in athletics, the debate around trans women in sports is being utilized as a larger platform to cast doubt on the legitimacy of transgender individuals in society.
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