Every time the Olympic season comes along, there is an inevitable conversation about whether transgender women deserve to compete in women’s sports. On the surface, those who oppose the inclusion of trans women seemingly make good points but the topic of biological sex is far more complex than people realize. Scientific consensus simply does not support exclusionary policies against trans women.
Many people believe that biological sex is a strict binary, meaning a person can belong in only one category and each category has no overlapping characteristics. This idea is applied to sports, as we have separate leagues for men and women. Under the binary system, the statements that all men have superior muscle mass and all women are shorter than men would be true, because no characteristics can overlap. But this line of thinking quickly breaks down. Some men have a lot of muscle mass, some don’t; some women have more muscle mass than some men, and some men are shorter than some women.
That is why most biologists view biological sex as a spectrum, with men and women sharing overlapping traits. This habit of human biology, to be diverse and difficult to define, creates issues when trying to define who is a woman and who is a man on a physiological level, as a woman can have a range of “masculine” traits and a man can have a range of “feminine” traits. The point here is that the definition of “man” and “woman” is more complicated than it seems on the surface and involves more than just the genitals with which one is born. Instead, secondary sex characteristics such as height, muscle mass, flexibility and endurance must be taken into account when individuals are competing against each other. When a particularly strong or tall cisgender woman is competing in sports, there is no questioning if she has an unfair advantage or deserves to be competing against other women. But once a similarly built transgender woman competes, there is suddenly an issue.
Along with making arguments utilizing an outdated conceptualization of biological sex, many people who oppose the inclusion of trans women in sports claim that men have an inherent advantage over women in sports. On average, this is true. However, trans women are not men; they are trans women. Most athletic governing bodies, like the ones at the University of Central Missouri, have rules dictating that trans women must undergo Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for a particular duration before being allowed to compete in women’s sports. For UCM students, this is one year. According to page 13 of the UCM’s Student Athlete Handbook, it is stated, “A trans female (MTF) student-athlete… may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.”
Though studies comparing the athletic performance of trans women and cisgender women are rare, the scientific consensus is that there is little to no meaningful difference between the performance of a trans woman who has undergone HRT for a minimum of one year and a cisgender woman.
This is clearly evident when looking at the performance of trans women competing in women’s sports. For example, Lia Thomas was a trans woman athlete who competed in an NCAA Division 1 swimming championship. She received strong backlash for competing against women, many citing that she had an unfair advantage over the other swimmers. However, in reality, she did not compete that well. She won one race and placed fifth and eighth in her other competitions. So even when trans women enter women’s sports, their performance is often on par or even inferior compared to that of their cisgender peers.
Since trans women have elected to undergo Gender Affirming Care to present as the gender they identify as, it would only be fair to the trans competitors to compete against cisgender women, as they are more similar in a biological sense. Again, as seen in most highly publicized cases of trans women “dominating” in women’s sports, like the aforementioned Thomas, there is no meaningful difference. The fairest thing to do is to have trans women compete against cisgender women.
