In June, Gov. Ron Desantis signed into lawthe Fairnessin Womens SportsAct, a bill that makesathletesinK-12womenssportsineligible to compete if they were not assignedfemale at birth. Atitssigning, Desantis said,In Florida, girls are going to play girl sports and boys are going toplay boysports, echoing age-old transphobic rhetoric.Texas State Rep. Valoree Swanson, who introduced House Bill 25,which works ina similar wayto the Florida bill and was recently passed by Gov. Greg Abbottsaid,House Bill 25 is one of the greatest victories for equality for girls since Title IX passed 50 years ago.
But do these laws actuallyguaranteesome sort of fairness in sports and is there any biological advantage for trans women to begin with?
Valerie Starrattisa professor in thedepartment ofpsychology andneuroscienceat Nova Southeastern Universityandspecializesin evolutionary psychology and sexual conflict.
The things that people say are the reason why they implement these bills, I dont think always necessarily coincides with the real motivation behind it, and I dont think, always necessarily coincides, Starratt said.
Although thelaws are advertised to be about fairness, thereal issue regarding trans women in sports is all about hormonesand how they affect the human body.
From the biological perspective, the issue is not actually male, female or otherwise. The issue is people who live in bodies that have been affected by testosterone and people who live in bodies that have not been affected by testosterone,saidStarratt.The developmental effects of testosterone cannot just be undone.
There are certainreportedadvantages that fully developed trans women who transition later in life have asopposedto those who transitionprepubescentlyorcisgenderwomen.According tothe academic journalCurrent Sports MedicineReports 2016 article titled Beyond Fairness:The Biology of Inclusion for Transgender and Intersex Athletes.
There are a number of sports where anatomical and biological features, such as size, muscle mass, and even lung capacity would be an obvious advantage,the article states.
However,according toa studyperformedby Louis J G Gooren and Mathijs C M Bunck in 2004,going on hormone replacement therapy for about a year puts testosterone and hemoglobin levels for trans womenat around the same level for cisgender women.A 2019 study from Endocrine Reviews found thatMTF trans people reported a loss of muscle mass, an increase in fat mass, and a decrease in bone mineral density.
Potentially due to datasimilar tothis, in2015the International Olympic Committee allowed transgender athletes to compete in the Olympics afteronlyone year of hormone replacementtherapy.
Even though the dataright nowshows that biological differences in adult trans athletes are minimal,these bills are targeted at trans children and teenagers, who have had little to noeffectsof long-term testosterone.
Ifweretalking about prepubescent athletes,theresno effect of testosterone.Theresno differenceofadvantage or disadvantage, its irrelevant. It only becomes relevant when you see the effects of testosterone or not. said Starratt.
This raises questions about if these bills willfacilitateanti-trans discrimination, something thatZachary Scalzo,adjunct professor of gender studies at NSU,saidhas already begun.
If you start on a gender affirmative path like hormone therapy early or prepubescent then it mitigates a lot of the physiological changes that a lot of these laws are focusing on as the clear biological advantage, said Scalzo, adding that, regarding discrimination, We also have totake into accountthings like school environments have often facilitated lots of anti-trans bullying and behavior and aggression.
The focus on sex assigned at birth instead of gender also encourages a dangerous discourse for public schools.
Researchfromthe University of Oxford in 2018 found thatwhen132 college studentsarepresented withinformationthat either bases gender on sex or social terms, the students who receiveda social view of genderwere more opentoviewing trans women as women but students who received thesex-based information were more likely to see trans women as men, saying that, ultimately, The findings suggest that essentialist claims that ground the male/female binary in biology may lead to more transprejudice.
According to Scalzo, these bills are insisting that in some way trans women are not real women and just shouldnt be able to engage in public forum practices,adding that we are also now expanding this to be an act of aggression on gender variant minors.
According toCurrent Sports Medicine Report, when discussing the concept of gender, a surveys respondentsoverwhelmingly agreed thatan athlete gender wasa suitable replacement for male/female binary sports. For those who disagreedwith the proposal, their main argument was that biological differences between males and females remained even after the transition.
As for now, the bills stand in the states previously mentionedand other, but the debate surrounding transathleticsis far from over.
I think the billsare further confusing what gender actually is,said Scalzo.
Related
The rest is here:
Anti-trans sports bills: Protecting women or discrimination? - The Current - The Student-Run Newspaper of Nova Southeastern University.
