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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| In the podcast episode they revealed that during the 1960s female athletes who passed the sex verification tests were issued “femininity cards” as proof of their eligibility to compete in womens events. These athletes were required to carry the cards to all competitions to verify their sex.
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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.
| Another significant milestone that I would ass to this timeline happened very recently. Within the last 2 weeks, Donald Trump has signed an order banning transgender women from playing in female sports. This will mean that no individual born male, and transitioned to female can participate in sports, unless it is a male team. Additionally, he has given the go ahead for the Department of Education to investigate schools that are being non-compliant.
Some say that this has restored fairness to sport. While that can be considered true in some cases, there are a very little percentage of transgender woman dominating in sports, and making them play on a male team can be seen as discriminatory. There will never be a way that all transgender and cisgender people will feel supported, but its important to find a way to come to an agreement where peoples rights aren’t being taken away.
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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 have only participated in sports as a part of school curriculum, or as my job teaching babies very surface level rules of soccer, basketball, badminton, and hockey.
However, watching sports is a big thing in my family. Almost everyday theres is a game of something on. The gendering of sport has made it a lot more likely for me to watch male sports teams, rather than women. For a while womens college basketball was very popular on the internet because of caitlin clark, but the extent of me watching womens sport ends there. Doing this assignment made me consider why I dont watch womens sports teams as much, and how I can actively work on doing so.
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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?
| I ended up voting male for a lot more sports than I originally thought. Soccer ,Hockey, Basketball. Baseball, Football, nearly every mainstream sport. Something that surprised me was my peers didn’t chose neutral for some of the same things I did. If they didn’t pick neutral, they often chose male over female.
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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 with this statement. I have been hearing a lot of talk about trans people in sports in the news lately because of new American rules. However, I am hearing more about these rules than actual trans women dominating in sports. Why is this such a large topic in politics and in the sports scene when there aren’t actually very many trans women in these sports. Additionally, I agree with the comment “the issue may be overblown by politicians and influencers who don’t actually care that much about women’s sports” as most of these politicians and influencers have never posted about female sport until the great trans debate started. If they had thousands of testimonials, and spent an abundance of time watching and being involved in women’s sport maybe the conversation would be different?
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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 argues that the concept of an “unfair advantage” in sports is arbitrary because it targets only gender-related traits while ignoring numerous natural and circumstantial factors. She explains that sports favor attributes like height, a high muscle-to-fat ratio, and strong cardio-respiratory capacity—qualities often seen as “masculine.” When a female athlete displays these traits, she faces unfair testing that limits her performance. Meanwhile, natural advantages such as Michael Phelps’s unique lactic acid production, Messi’s remarkable agility, and high-altitude adaptations are celebrated rather than penalized. Showing that athletes possess unique genetic and environmental gifts, making sport unequal yet thrilling. |
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.
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.
| Robins argues that the act of transvestigating an Olympic athlete isn’t really about sports, fairness, or even the status of cis women. Instead, it’s used as a political tool to question and undermine transness and the public expression of transfemininity. In other words, rather than addressing genuine concerns about athletic performance or equality, this interest is a way to undermine the legitimacy of trans women. It shifts the focus from ensuring fair competition to reinforcing cis definitions of womanhood, thereby marginalizing trans women in the process. |
