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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| After listening to a podcast about Maximila Imali, a Kenyan athlete with differences in sexual development (DSD), I’m still trying to process everything I learned. Before this course, I had no idea what DSD even meant or that athletes like Imali face such intense scrutiny just to compete. What really shocked me was hearing about the regulations that require some athletes to lower their natural testosterone levels through medication if they want to compete in certain events. I can’t believe it’s even legal to blackmail someone into altering their body like this. Imali refused to take testosterone-lowering drugs, and I admire her courage so much. But it’s wild to think about how much pressure she must have been under. It feels so unfair that athletes like her are being punished for something they were born with. On top of that, I learned about the history of sex testing in women’s sports, which makes it even worse. During the cold war, they used chromosome tests, looking for Barr bodies in cells to determine if an athlete had XX chromosomes. If you had Barr bodies, you got a “women’s card” to prove that you could compete as a women. But these tests are inaccurate, they completely ignore the complexity of sex and gender, like conditions where someone might have XP chromosomes but still develop as a female. What’s even more frustrating is that these test wouldn’t solve the problem of men masquerading as women to win female sports. There’s no evidence of this ever happening, and no documented cases of men sneaking into women’s categories to win. It feels as though these policies are targeting the wrong people entirely, while ignoring how discriminatory are harmful they are. The whole idea of fairness starts to feel more like control when you hear about stuff like this. It’s upsetting to realize how much athletes like Imali have to go through just to do what they love. This was eye-opening and truthfully disturbing. |
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.
| The 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” was more than just a tennis match, it was a cultural moment that challenged gender stereotypes in sports and beyond. When Billie Jean king beat Bobby Riggs, it proved that women could compete at the highest levels and deserved equal respect. Her victory made her a symbol of gender equality and pushed conversations about equal pay and opportunities for women in sports to the forefront. It wasn’t just about tennis; it was about fighting for women everywhere. |
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?
| The gendering of my sport has never been a constraint on my involvement. In equestrian show jumping, the sport is predominantly women, and the playing field has always been fairly equal in terms of gender. What has been a constraint though, is the financial side. Show jumping is an expensive sport, everything from the cost of the horse, training, competitions, and gear adds up. Success often depends on how much money you can invest, which creates a divide, but that divide isn’t based on gender. I think the lack of gender constraints is because equestrian sports focus on the partnership between the horse and rider, making gender irrelevant to performance. |
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?
| Figure Skating – F
Rugby – M Tennis – N Swimming – N Cheerleading- F Baseball – M Softball – F Gymnastics – F Volleyball – N Hockey – M Basketball- M Power Lifting – M Soccer- M Football – M The responses from the polls were less than shocking. The responses confirm, generally, what gender people think a sport is coded by and how common it is to associate a sport with a gender. I was however pleasantly surprised to see some answers favouring neutral because when I think of swimming or tennis I can not picture one specific gender performing that sport. |
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.
| Leah Thomas makes a point that trans women are a small minority in sports, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the issue isn’t valid. Male puberty leads to lasting differences in muscle mass, bone density, and lung capacity, which don’t fully reverse with hormone therapy. I believe trans women may have an unfair advantage, especially in strength-based or endurance sports. At the same time, stigma likely discourages some trans women from competing. However, the lack of trans women doesn’t prove fairness, it may just mean few trans women compete at the elite level. While politics can inflate the debate, fairness in women’s sports is a legitimate concern that should be addressed with input from scientist and other athletes. |
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 has discussed how the idea of an “unfair advantage” in sports is complicated. She points out that all athletes have advantages, some based on biology, and others on access to resources, training, or even luck. While concerns about trans women competing often focus on physical differences from male puberty, Eveleth argues that sports have never been perfectly fair, and advantages exist in many forms. For example, Micheal Phelps has an unusually long wingspan, double jointed ankles, and produces less lactic acid, which helps with endurance. Usain Bolt’s unique stride length gave him an edge especially for sprinting. Even factors like early access to elite coaches prove to be an advantage. This shows that sports have natural and circumstantial inequalities which begs the question of where do we draw the line on fairness. |
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 completely agree with Katie Barns, sports are never truly fair. In my experience as an equestrian show jumper, there are huge disparities based on money, access, and even judges biases. Someone with an $80,000 horse, bred and trained by professionals will always have an advantage over someone with a $10, 000 horse without elite bloodlines. Even if the less expensive horse is just as talented, judges tend to favour the more polished, high end horses and riders with expensive gear. Beyond equestrian sports, other examples include athlete who can afford top-tier coaching, private training facilities, or even just the ability to dedicate their lives to sports without financial struggles. While rules try to create fairness, sports have always had built in inequalities. |
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 is arguing that debates about trans women in sports aren’t really just about fairness or competition, they’re more about larger societal attitudes toward trans people. she suggests that the intense scrutiny of trans women athletes isn’t applied equally to other unfair advantages in sports, like financial privilege or genetic gifts. Instead, she believes these debates are being used as a way to question and challenge the legitimacy of trans women in general, rather than purely focusing on athletic fairness . I can see where she’s coming from, especially since there has been a long history of questioning women’s identities in sports, like invasive sex testing of female athletes. |
