Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Policies that impact the practice of trans women in competitive sport emanate from the parallel history of efforts to define the female category in ways that excluded those women whose bodies were deemed to not conform to normative standards of femininity.

The women's sports category is the result of the historical exclusion of women from competitive sport, which was underpinned by pathologizing discourses about their bodies and the harms of their participation in physical activities.

Forbidden to take part explicitly in sports from the end of the 19th century, women organized their own competitions during the 20th century and gained some access to sports that were prohibited to them (Prudhomme-Poncet, 2003; Rosol, 2004; Vilain et al., 2017).

Like the organization of the Women's World Games in 1922 by the FSFI (International Women's Sports Federation) in response to the ban on participation for women in many Olympic events (Castan-Vicente et al., 2019).

Throughout this period, women athletes were subjected to a "virilization trial" (Bohuon, 2008): the accusation of not sufficiently meeting the socially expected criteria of femininity, not being enough of a woman by society standards because of traits like -

having muscles, wearing sportswear deemed masculine, or because of their hairstyle or body hair (Bohuon, 2008; Vilain et al., 2017).

This virilization trial, which is found in discourses and the exclusion by sports organizations from allowing some women to compete in their competitions gradually became systematized by the femininity test (Bohuon, 2012; Sullivan, 2011).

Behind the pretext of protecting the women's category from potential impostors, sports federations sought to establish sex/gender control to police femininity and performances (Bohuon, 2012; Hargie, 2017; Sullivan, 2011; Vilain et al., 2017).

In this context, being a woman is understood as having physical capacities inferior to men as evidenced by the sex controls. At the 1966 European Athletics Championship, the athletes were subjected to an anatomical and physical test attesting that they were women.

Therefore, if their body matched medical expectations and if their performance were lower than men's, they were cleared as women for the event (Bohuon, 2012; Sullivan, 2011).

Since 1966 we have witnessed different waves of femininity tests implemented by sports organizations (Bohuon, 2012; Hargie, 2017; Sullivan, 2011; Vilain et al., 2017).

Anatomical at first, then genetics, and now hormonal. All tests were inconclusive because contrary to the medical assumption that led to these tests men and women are not dimorphic and show overlap in all those areas (Pape, 2017).

Instead of considering non-dimorphic data as part of the diversity of human bodies, these findings when they are related to women’s bodies are pathologized, excluded from scientific studies results, and policed in sports regulations (Pape, 2019).

Today, in line with medicalization and control of women’s bodies by sports institutions, policymakers still (erroneously) assume & insist that: human bodies are dimorphic, T is a male hormone, testosterone is the key to winning competitions, women are inherently weaker than men.

These assumptions are implemented without tangible evidence as a way of maintaining patriarchy and the domination of men over women. (Erikainen, 2020; Karkazis and Jordan-Young, 2018; Pieper, 2016; Sanchez et al., 2013; Sullivan, 2011).

Systematic gender testing was canceled in 2000 (Sullivan, 2011). But the controversy around Caster Semenya’s victory at the 2011 Athletics World championship re-actualized the debate about medical regulation of women’s athletes.

"Visual" doubts, therefore, external criteria of racialized cis-heterosexist femininity have been used to enforce gender testing.

Resulting in the fact that almost all women targeted by those tests in the 21st century are racialized women from the Global South (Bohuon, 2012; Karkazis and Young, 2018).

Making gender testing a way of maintaining power on the geopolitical and racial organization of women athletes’ bodies (Bohuon, 2012; Karkazis and Jordan- Young, 2018).

With a regulation like the 2012 IAAF Statement on Hyperandrogenism, racialized athletes from the Global South are sent to the Global North to be "treated", "saved" and taken in charge for their "diseases" (namely having a testosterone level above the expected average by women)

created by Western medicine and which do not present any danger for the athletes (Karkazis et Young, 2018).

Sex/gender regulation policies are produced by sports organization in the name of fairness without taking into account the living conditions of marginalized women (racialized and/or trans) that actually constitute the opposite of an unfair advantage given the lack of access

to resources to train (Erkainen, 2020; Karkazis and Jordan-Young, 2018; ).

There are many social factors involved in keeping the women’s category of sport inferior to the men’s.
Women are banned from sports competitions. For example, women’s marathon was absent from the Olympics Games for 84 years (Vilain et al., 2017).

Women were excluded from Olympic boxing until 2012. Women were not allowed to take part in the Olympic ski jumping event until 2014.

We can also give the case of the Olympic Skeet event which was originally mixed-gender but, after the victory of a woman - Shan Zhang - in 1992, women were banned from this event at the 1996 Olympics.

The possibility for women participate in event was reinstated in 2000 with a woman-only category and with different shooting criteria, making it so the performance of men and women were not directly comparable.

During the 2021 Olympic canoe-kayak championship, women did not have races longer than 500m, while men’s races were 1000m long - another example of differences between men’s and women’s sport which have the effect of maintaining the positioning of men’s and women’s elite sport.

Other social factors have been forgotten in most articles about competitive differences between men and women: lack of women teams depending on sports and geographical positions; disparities in access to sports facilities for women teams; lack of financial resources

(gender pay gap); lack of staff (including medical staff).

Sexism in sport impacts women’s participation at each step of the game, including on restrictions in muscle/strengthening exercise because of the social representation of what women should look like.

Women have had to quit sport, change clubs/trainer, practice in deteriorated conditions due to sexual violence (Ohlert, 2020), lesbophobia (Griffin, 1998), classism, racism, and intersexphobia (Karkazis & Jordan-Young, 2018), or transphobia (Cohen et Semerjian, 2008;

Hargie et al., 2017; Ivy, 2020; Jones et al., 2017; Lenskyj, 2018; Tagg, 2012).

Faulty and/or absent data about trans women’s performance makes transphobia especially present and prominent in this context of scarcity and scrutiny for women in elite sport.

Trans women are subjected to discrimination and violence. The living conditions of trans women are the result of downward social mobility and the many cissexist discriminations we experience in this context.

Surveys on the living conditions of trans women in Canada show a strong limitation & discrimination in access to vital spaces (housing, health care, work, public space including sports facilities, etc.) meaning that they can be subjected to violence in every aspect of their life.

Trans women are disproportionately affected by unemployment and homelessness (Rotondi et al., 2011). Almost half of trans people who responded to the Trans Pulse Survey earned less than $ 15,000 annually (Rotondi et al., 2011).

Trans women are disproportionately remote from salaried employment (Rotondi et al., 2011).

Discrimination at work encompasses harassment, physical and mental violence including sexual violence (Grant et al., 2011).

More than half of trans women say they feel uncomfortable going to see a doctor (Bauer et al., 2015). Discriminations in this context include refusal to provide care by a medical professional (Bauer et al., 2015).

Transphobia impacts access to public spaces - 97% of trans people in the Ontarian studies reported to have avoided at least one type of public space (gyms were the second space most avoided after public washrooms) because of their trans status (Scheim et al., 2014).

These discriminations are incredibly salient to the question of ‘fairness’ regarding trans women athlete’s inclusion in elite sport.

There are some ways discrimination impacts trans women's access to sport directly (such as administrators’ varying or absent standards of safety and/or availability of necessary sport spaces such as change rooms, training facilities, and washrooms),

and others which are a bit more complex but incredibly relevant (for example, the impacts of lower income or availability of secure shelter on participation and/or excellence in sport).

All of these factors ought to be taken into account when thinking through the questions of what makes sport ‘fair’, and are important to understand the context of trans women’s participation.

This evidence suggests there needs to be more focus on intervening with discrimination against trans women as it appears in elite sport.

There are myths surrounding trans women in sport. It is a myth perpetuated by and through sport that trans women are akin to cis men.

Biomedical studies that inform trans sport policies have cis men as a proxy to trans women in comparison with cis women and use terms like “biological male” or “transitioning males” (Hilton and Lundberg, 2020; Sutherland, 2017).

In other words, trans women are assimilated to cis men. The debate is framed not with the concern of trans women's participation in sport, but with the supposed place of a man in the women's category even though trans women's bodies and living conditions are not comparable

to cis men’s (Ivy and Friedlaender, 2020).

Trans women are assimilated to the stereotype of the cheater who would enter women's competitions with the sole aim of exploiting a single-sex space reserved for women (Hilton and Lundberg, 2020; Sutherland, 2017) – another myth with deep impacts.

This fear is unsubstantiated and completely ignores the material living conditions of trans women and the conditions in which women participate in sport.

Trans women’s status as trans, is often utterly misunderstood (at best) in sport discourse as a deliberate choice rather than a necessity for an individual’s survival, despite strong evidence that affirming one’s gender identity is important to health & well-being.

These kinds of presumptions and misunderstandings (again, at best) play into the same unsubstantiated transphobic fears that cis men choose to transition solely to gain advantage in elite sports.

However, the discrimination and violence experienced by cis and trans women in sport and everyday life expose the dangerous dismissive attitudes in sport towards trans identities as well as some the contradictions, ignorance, and violences imposed in requiring trans women to

adhere to specific medical transition guidelines in order to participate in sports competitions.

It is a myth that trans women ‘dominate’ (i.e. win) all sports. In response to the literature review on trans athlete’s participation in sport by Jones and al. (2017), Richardson and Chen (2020) report a lot of false information without scientific precautions.

For example, the fact that several trans women have been the subject of media coverage is used to argue that there are frequent and massive occurrences of trans women athletes winning sports competitions when, in fact, the literature shows that no trans woman has ever won an

Olympic medal ever since they have been allowed to compete in 2004 (Ivy and Friedlaender, 2020).

Trans women are over-sensationalized in media due to the moral gender panic that surrounds their experience (Espiniera, 2015).

Qualitative studies with trans women athletes show that trans women face a lot of discrimination while participating in sport.
Negative experience and exclusion of sport participation for trans women are highly reported in the academic literature

(Cohen and Semerjian, 2008; Barras, 2021; Devis-Devis et al, 2020; Elling-Machartzki, 2017; Hargie, 2017; Jones et al., 2017; Tagg, 2012).

Studies with trans women athletes reveal the anxiety-provoking climate and constant surveillance with which trans athletes must contend at all stages of practice: locker rooms, teammate, opponents, staff, dress codes, supporters,

obtaining a license, physical & verbal violence (Jones et al., 2017).

This leads to a phenomenon of disengagement from the practice of physical activity and sports in the trans population (Cohen and Semerjian, 2008; Devis-Devis et al, 2020; Elling-Machartzki, 2017; Hargie, 2017; Jones et al., 2017; Tagg, 2012).

In addition, discriminatory policies have a role to play in maintaining the climate of violence that trans women experience (Jones et al., 2017). As well as being outed (McClearen, 2015), violence from staff, the public, and being pushed out of sport (Cohen, 2008) and,

be faced with having to choose between continuing to play or transitioning (Lucas-Carr et al., 2012).

Discrimination shapes sport participation making the trans population proportionally and on average less engaged in sports activities trans cis people (Muchicko et al., 2014).

The literature on trans sport policies, their implementation, people who write them & apply them, consequences for athletes, & the debates they frame is constitutive of the social hierarchy of knowledge & the discrediting of some sciences for the benefit of others (Pape, 2019).

Biomedical studies are overvalued in sports policies in comparison to social sciences studies (Pape, 2019).

Research in science and gender and in particular the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling have shown that sex is gender-dependent and that the gender system modifies so-called biological sex (Ritz, 2017).

The exclusion of certain types of knowledge from the restricted definition of ‘scientific’ by the sport’s governing bodies makes it possible to obscure the power relations at play in the creation,maintenance, and legitimization of regulations (Pape, 2017, 2019).

Thus, the literature insists on looking at regulations not only at a biological scale, but on the social and political climate that creates them.

This analytical framework makes it possible to highlight the links between some sports organizations, studies in biomedical sciences, and groups with an anti-trans agenda.

Scientists working in this field have organizational ties that suggest particular ideological commitments (Itani 2020, Pape, 2019, Pearce et al. 2020).

Moreover, some biomedicals scientist that publishes academics paper on trans women participation in sport to advise sports organization are part of anti-trans activism.

For example, in the United Kingdom (UK) since 2017 and the plan to reform the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (very expensive, invasive, medicalized, and long process to change the gender marker on the birth certificate), some women’s trans-exclusionary organization -

such as Fair Play for Women - expanded their movement (Itani, 2020; Pearce et al., 2020).

The science is used by this group strategically (using only the data that suit their view) to asset their essentialist agenda that sex is immutable.

These organizations use sports as a strategy because preconceived ideas about trans individuals can spread quickly through sport due to the sensualistic medical treatment.

Sports are used as a strategy because it emulates strong debate. This allows them to quickly spread their agenda as their target does not look at how the science they used is constructed (Lefebvre, 2019) and

rely on misinformation regarding then the implementation of sport policies (Pape, 2000).

For example, we can see that there is data that is systematically overlooked, like the diversity advantages that one can have while playing sport. For instance, financial material resources: access to infrastructure, equipment, nutrition, time to train, salary, etc.

Yet these resources are not subjected to regulations and are not framed by sports organizations to ensure fairness (Karkazis and Jordan-Young, 2018).

It is therefore important to consider the differences in considerations by the governing sports organization between all the sports advantages that may exist and the fact that only biological factors are policed on women’s bodies.

Because while Michael Phelps (long limbs and flexible joints) is celebrated for his physical advantages that allow him to compete and be successful at the highest level of sport, women (cis, trans, and intersex) are scrutinized and have their performance medically restricted

(Jones et al., 2020; Karkazis and Jordan-Young, 2012, 2018).