The BBC reported that British sports officials have proposed that transgender women (born male) compete in the men’s division in sports, to protect women’s sports.
UK Athletics wants a change in legislation to ensure the women’s category is lawfully reserved for competitors who are recorded female at birth.
The governing body says all transgender athletes should be allowed to compete with men in an open category.
Chair Ian Beattie said the governing body wanted athletics to be a “welcoming environment for all”, but added it had a responsibility to “ensure fairness” in women’s competition.
However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it was “disappointed” UKA chose to publicise “inaccurate advice” and questioned its interpretation of the Equality Act 2010.
UKA disagrees with the use of testosterone suppression for transgender women, saying there is “currently no scientifically robust, independent research showing that all male performance advantage is eliminated”.
UKA added it has seen “no evidence that it is safe for transgender women to reduce their hormonal levels by testosterone suppression”, and that there is “insufficient research to understand the effects on transgender women if such testosterone suppression is carried out suddenly”.
Therefore it would instead like to reserve the female category for those who were recorded female at birth and have not undergone transition.
UKA does not believe the ‘sporting exemption’ introduced in the Equality Act 2010 allows them to lawfully exclude transgender women in possession of a Gender Recognition Certificate from competing.
However, the UK government disagrees with UK Athletics’ stance that the law does not allow it to ban transgender women from female events on fairness grounds.
It believes the 2010 Equality Act does allow sports to protect the female category by putting restrictions on the participation of transgender athletes.
What do you think? My view is unformed. I don’t know enough. My bedrock view is that the tiny number of people who are transgender should not be demonized nor used as a political pawn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
New York Road Runners (NYRR.ORG) created a non-binary category. One attempt at a solution.
Allow me to help. Gender plays no role in sports classifications. All of those are by sex (male/female, boy/girl). (Some genteel people would rather not use the word sex and substitute gender and that is a mistake.)
If someone undergoes a sex change operation (no medical procedure addresses gender), the critical aspect, for sports, is whether or not they have gone through puberty first. If a boy goes through puberty and then undergoes a sex change operation, then he will basically have a boy’s/man’s body/musculature going forward. Fairness issues then abound, so just labeling someone as “transgender” answers no questions.
A possible better way to address these issue is use performance milestones for competitions, rather than sex. This is complicated by youth sports which like having a great many categories of competition because that means more trophies are given out and that is seen as encouragements for the youths to keep competing.
Some of the countries in northern Europe have solved this (Norway? Finland, can’t remember) by not staging competitive events for children. All sporting events are participatory with “results” not published.
I am similarly uninformed. Still, I am reminded of the dual nature of the communist issue in the fifties. There were two separate issues then. Earl Latham, who wrote about this some years ago, said there was the communist problem and the communist issue. The problem was, that the Soviet Union was attempting to usurp freedom around the globe through its operatives. The issue was a very different thing. Political leaders were trying to gain an advantage over their opponents by accusing them of being communist and equating almost any political stance with communism.
We are in the same position with transgender athletes. There is the possible problem that might exist that a period of time with male attributes might create an unfair advantage. That is a sport problem. Then there is the issue. Political leaders are trying to woo a public afraid of any issue concerning sexuality, so they introduce laws to “protect” girls, even though protecting women is distant from their real intent.
What is the opinion of female athletes about competing against transgender athletes? Should female athletes have a voice? Should the “rights’ of transgender athletes prevail over female athletes? I don’t know, and, the number of transgender athletes is minuscule, a sideshow in the culture wars.
The earliest trans competitor I remember is tennis player Renee Richards. The media constantly opined that she would dominate the women’s circuit, when in fact she was no threat to the likes of Chrissy Everett or Martina Navratilova. This whole discussion is a waste of time and tax payer dollars. It says a lot that the creators of Brexit are following our right wing down this rabbit hole. They are simply trying to distract their citizenry from the fact that 21st century conservative economic policy is a bust.
Richards was 43 when she joined the women’s tennis tour and had never played professionally as a man (although she was a very good player at Yale as a man) . She reached a ranking of 20 in the world (at age 45) and almost beat Martina in a very close doubles final at the US Open.
Richards says that if she had transitioned early and joined the women’s tour in her 20s, she would have dominated the tour. There’s no way to know but it doesn’t seem improbable to me.
Martina won 56 grand slam titles. My point is that we are wasting time and money on a non-issue.
It’s a non-issue to you and me, and to most people, but not to everyone.
It would not be a non-issue to me if I had a daughter who didn’t make the college tennis team because a trans woman got the last spot.
It might not be a non-issue to me if I had a transgender daughter who was barred from playing women’s tennis because of a rule that required people to have two x chromosomes to play women’s sports.
Yes, it’s a small issue in the whole scheme of things and receives outsize attention because of the culture wars. It will probably get even more attention if trans women continue to be allowed to play women’s sports in high school and beyond.
I am not well versed in transgender issues either. What I do know is that males have roughly twice as much upper body strength as a female. In certain sports a transgender athlete would have an advantage. When transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas from U. Penn, competed as a female, she immediately started winning her races, and she was not the winner when she competed as a male. Transgender women seem to still have a strength advantage even after they transition.
My own view is that sex is more or less irrelevant until puberty. Boys and girls are of similar athletic ability. If anything, girls are larger and possibly stronger. I’m basing that on my own observational experience; maybe I’m wrong.
But around the age of puberty, it would seem sensible and fair for sports leagues to require people who want to compete against women to have two X chromosomes.
The number of athletes who don’t fit into the XX/XY chromosomal scheme is extremely small and I’m sure a common sense rule could be developed to handle those edge cases.
Diane is correct that this is a problem that affects almost nobody in real life. But it does affect some people. And every high profile case like Lia Thomas or Fallon Fox guarantees that this very rare scenario becomes a continual supply of fodder for the culture wars.
Fun fact: Renee Richards was playing on the women’s professional tour in 1976 when Richard Carlson, a tv reporter and anchor in San Diego (a la Ron Burgundy), broke the story that Richards was a transsexual women whose birth name was Richard Raskind. This led to professional tennis associations requiring players in women’s events to take a chromosome test. Richards filed a lawsuit and the rest is history.
The “fun” part is that Richard Carlson is Tucker Carlson’s father.
The very sad thing is that there are A LOT more trans kids playing sports and NOT “beating all the females born with XY chromosomes”.
Many of them have been playing on girls’ sports teams for years WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING! Rumor has it they have been famous actresses WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING.
Furthermore, one study showed that “One in 15,000 males is born and grows up as a girl. And neither these girls nor their parents know it. These girls do not discover anything different until puberty. ‘Girls born with XY chromosomes are genetically boys but for a variety of reasons – mutations in genes that determine sexual development – the male characteristics are never expressed. They live their lives as girls and then women…”
The number of trans male athletes in their prime who – after developing the male physiques that help performance – then choose, while still in their prime, to change genders and compete as women is almost non-existent. Those exceptions could be dealt with in a NON-political way if the right wing had not chosen to turn a non-issue into an issue.
And Lia Thomas still isn’t as fast as the fastest women. She won an NCAA championship. Other trans athletes swam on college teams or competed in college sports and some did well and some didn’t.
But all of that could and should have been addressed without politicizing it, just like it was when Renee Richards competed.
USA FENCING Elizabeth Kocab first competed as a transgender epee fencer in 2010, regularly medals at national and international events.
USA Fencing has recently updated its inclusion policies for athletes as young as 10 to veterans over 80: https://www.usafencing.org/transgender-and-nonbinary-policy
And here is the NCAA statement re transgender inclusion:
Click to access 2bc3fc_4a135824fabc462183c71357c93a99b4.pdf https://13248aea-16f8-fc0a-cf26-a9339dd2a3f0.filesusr.com/ugd/2bc3fc_4a135824fabc462183c71357c93a99b4.pdf
It could have and should have been addressed without politicizing it, but unfortunately it hasn’t been.
USA FENCING
Elizabeth Kocab first competed as a transgender epee fencer in 2010, regularly medals at national and international events.
USA Fencing has recently updated its inclusion policies for athletes as young as 10 to veterans over 80:
https://www.usafencing.org/transgender-and-nonbinary-policy
And here is the NCAA statement re transgender inclusion:
Click to access 2bc3fc_4a135824fabc462183c71357c93a99b4.pdf
I still like a solution proposed by the British publication The Economist. Have one division for people born female and the other division be open to anyone.
I agree with Steve Ruis’ post (second one on the list). Once a boy reaches puberty, the narrative has to change.
Although there will (and have been) be exceptions to the rule (especially in some of the less strength demanding sports), a fully developed and trained male body has an advantage over that of a female.
While not of importance to most; the physical differences will put many female athletes who are interested in competing in professional sports at a disadvantage.