Is it fair for female transgender athletes to compete in women’s elite sport? Today, transgender females are allowed to compete in women’s sport, but the trans athletes would have needed to have either gone through sex reassignment surgery or have taken hormone therapy for over a year. This heated debate has separated the sporting community for many years now and will for many more to come. It is widely believed that it is unfair for female transgender athletes to compete in women’s elite sport. In this article, I will be discussing firstly all the advantages that men have compared to women in sport; then, I will discuss what transgender athletes believe; next I will discuss what female cisgender athletes believe; finally, I will discuss the difference between professional female sport players to professional male sport players.
differ much in strength, speed or accuracy, however once boys have gone through puberty, they gain all their advantages. After going through puberty, boys “are automatically able to become taller,” says Linda Blade, a coach and president of athletics Alberta. Not only do boys become taller, but their lungs also get larger, their muscles become more developed and larger, their hand span is larger, their waist becomes slimmer, their heart becomes bigger, and their bone structure becomes longer and larger. All these characteristics are advantages for male athletes compared to female athletes. This demonstrates why female transgender athletes have an unfair advantage in women sport, because male athletes have all of these extra characteristics that allow them to become stronger, faster, and more accurate than the women against whom they are competing. Males having larger lungs means that they will not run out of breath quickly and can take in more oxygen at any given time compared to females. Males having a smaller waist means that they would be able to fit on a bike more easily compared to females. These are all unfair advantages if the female transgender athlete has gone through puberty as a male. Therefore, as men are stronger, faster, and more accurate at throwing than woman they have
Firstly, it is scientifically proven that men are stronger, faster, and more accurate at throwing than woman. So surely, a female transgender athlete, who was born male and who has gone through male puberty, has all of those unfair advantages against their female competitors. Carole Hooven, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, said that; “At age 15, boys beat girls in the 30meter dash by more than four seconds on average.” This shows us that, even at the early age of fifteen, boys show huge advantages against girls their own age. Prior to puberty, boys and girls do not 6
