In recent years, legislation has taken aim at restricting access to public life for transgender people, including sport and recreation. These policies rely heavily on disinformation about transgender people.

Here, clinical and sport psychologist Dr. Tess Kilwein offers a summary of the facts about transgender athletes. 

-WE Staff

DEFINITIONS

• Transgender: A term to describe individuals whose gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth. 

• Gender Identity: One’s deeply held core sense of being a woman, man, some of both, or neither. One’s gender identity does not always correspond to sex assigned at birth. Awareness of gender identity is usually experienced very early in life, but may also shift over the course of one’s lifetime.

• Sex Assigned at Birth: The sex that is assigned to an infant at birth, usually by a doctor or medical staff, based on the infant’s visible sex organs, including genitalia and other physical characteristics. Classifications made are most often male, female, or intersex.

FACTS ABOUT TRANSGENDER ATHLETES

Experts including doctors, academics, and sports psychologists provide evidence that:

1. Inclusion of transgender athletes benefits everyone. Excluding transgender women from women’s sports invites policies that subject all women to invasive tests or accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” woman. It reinforces stereotypes that women need to be protected. Inclusion of transgender athletes promotes values of non-discrimination and inclusion among all athletes.

2. Transgender athletes do not have an innate unfair advantage in sports, as they vary in athletic ability just like everyone else. A person’s genetic make-up and reproductive anatomy are NOT useful indicators of athletic performance.

3. Transgender girls are girls and transgender women are women. There is no one way for women’s bodies to be, as all women have a range of different physical characteristics.

4. Transgender athletes belong on the same teams as other athletes. Transgender athletes have competed on teams at all levels - youth, collegiate, Olympic - with no disruption to women’s sports. Excluding transgender people from athletic spaces is harmful to all athletes.

5. The differences between men and women in sport are smaller than most people think they are. There are far more variations among men and among women in athletic ability. Thus far, there is not clear evidence that transgender women are operating at an advantage in women’s sport categories.

6. Once transgender athletes start hormone therapy (transgender women take estrogen and transgender men take testosterone), their body significantly changes. Transgender athletes at the collegiate and Olympic levels who start hormone therapy essentially go through pubertal changes opposite of their sex assigned at birth before they can compete. In fact, transgender women are required to consistently maintain a low testosterone level to participate in women’s sports at those levels. This testosterone level is lower than many athletes assigned female at birth.