Transgender sports bans misguided

Posted April 1, 2022

By Tristan Hansen

Staff Editor

Our nation’s recent spattering of transgender sports bans address a nonexistent issue by denying transgender individuals validation and can’t be decoupled from the climate of blatant transphobia they’re packaged in and serve to reinforce.

Over the past few years the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports has become an increasingly contentious and oft-discussed issue in the ongoing culture wars, with efforts to bar transgender women from competition intensifying in recent months. 2022 has thus far seen five states successfully pass legislation on the matter, making a total of 14 who have taken this step and no longer allow transgender individuals (particularly women) to compete on teams consistent with their preferred gender identity.

Supporters of such laws often depict women’s sports as a field of competition fraught with unfair domination by transgender women, whom they claim possess an intrinsic athletic advantage over cisgender women, owing to physical superiority afforded them by their birth sex. The reality, however, is more nuanced and significantly less emphatic. While there is little information on exactly how many transgender athletes are actually competing in women’s sports at the the moment, the answer is likely very fiew. In a letter explaining his decision to veto Utah’s trans sports ban, Republic Governor Spencer Cox claimed there was only one(!) transgender student playing women’s sports in the state. “Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few,” he said. And while conservative media is eager to regale viewers with tales of dominant transgender athletes like Lia Thomas, most are not this exceptional. For instance, a school in Los Angeles won a girls’ state tennis championship a few years back with a transgender athlete on the roster. She did not actually play in the championship, however, because she was not considered one of the top 11 players. Moreover, a 2017 meta-analysis found “there is yet to be any direct or consistent research suggesting transgender women possess an athletic advantage over cisgender women at any stage of their transition.”

The most enduring consequence of bans on transgender participation in sports will likely be the ostracization and demoralization of a vulnerable population who already struggle mightily with acceptance and self-esteem. Over 40% of transgender individuals report having been threatened or physically harmed due to their identity and a similar number report having seriously attempted suicide at one point in their lives. When the identities of transgender individuals are affirmed and respected, however, suicide rates drop dramatically - some studies have suggested they’re cut in half. Given the rarity of transgender participation in sports and uncertaintly over whether transgender competitors actually wield a meaninful advantage over their cisgender counterparts, validating the identities of transgender competitors seems a much more important goal at present.