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eft foot forward. Right foot forward. While that may well be the mantra playing in 18-yearold Caster Semenya’s head as she flies furiously down the length of the track towards the finish line, the spectators watching her would be lucky to be able to distinguish between her feet as she runs. Her high speed reduces her muscular figure clad in a South-African-colored uniform to a blur of green and yellow as she finishes almost a full second before her closest opponent at the World Championships in the 800 meter race. Semenya didn’t just win her event —she dominated it. But later that fateful night in 2009, instead of being celebrated for the young phenom that she had trained arduously to become, Semenya came under fire for potentially having an unfair advantage as the public began to question her biological sex. The intrusive testing and inquisitions that followed affected Semenya’s ability to compete, but she did her best to hold her head high and carry on as people picked apart her prowess. Semenya’s case was just one of many that deals with the complicated role of gender in sports, a topic that becomes increasingly relevant as athletic science improves and athletes of all genders become faster and stronger than ever before. When people think of sports, their mind often divides men’s sports and women’s sports into two separate entities, with the athletes within them as strictly binary. Sports have been categorized this way throughout history with the intention of ensuring that competition that ensues will be “fair.” But how do we define “fair,” and will this rigid separation continue to be the norm in the future? In some sports, such as distance swimming, the average percent difference between men and women’s times is a slim 5.5%, according to a 2010 study in The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. In other sports, such as weightlifting, this difference is more significant at 36.8% according to the same source. Because each sport is unique in the physical challenge it presents to athletes, the same standards for legislation and rules regarding
Photo courtesy of Sydney Claire www.sydneyclairephotography.com @___sydneyclaire gender and “fairness” cannot be applied universally. Recently, there has been an increase in discussion surrounding transgender athletes competing in the gender category that best matches their gender identity. While some push back against trans inclusion in situations such as the Idaho bill passed in March that enforces genital and hormonal testing of athletes, others fight for equality in sport. Harvard graduate Schuyler Bailar — a trans swimmer who was accepted onto the men’s team and found great success and joy in living life as his most authentic self — is one of the athletes leading the fight for gender inclusivity in sports. The role that gender plays in sports is already complex—the way gender and sports will interact in the future is even more so.
Anti Inclusion Legislation
Despite a social movement towards increased transgender inclusion and a general heightened understanding of what it means to be transgender, many major sports leagues, such as USA Powerlifting, have chosen to keep their original policies in place. In a statement of the organization’s transgender participation policy, the USA Powerlifting league cited both the physical advantage of males and a ban on the androgens often used to transition from female to male as reasons for their stance. “While the term discrimination is used to catch the attention of the public, it is most often misused,” the statement read. “We are a sports organization with rules and policies. They apply to everyone to provide a level playing field.” While some question whether the USA Powerlifting policies are discriminatory against transgender athletes, the organization said it is fair in a sport largely based on physical strength and compared gender discrimination to policies surrounding age restrictions. At the high school level, some athletes have protested transgender participation in the gender category of
their choice. Recently, at a high school in C onn e c t ic u t , the families of female track runners filed a lawsuit against the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, arguing that their female children competing against runners with male anatomy could hinder their personal chances of earning track titles and scholarships. Those who share the same opinion as those parents have formed conservative groups and are supported by legislators throughout the states that are looking to ban participation of transgender athletes in both men’s and women’s sports. For example, the Idaho state Senate recently passed Republican-sponsored bill 24-11. If signed, this bill would prohibit both trans and intersex girls from competing in the girls heats of high school and college sports. If a female athlete’s sex is questioned by a coach, parent, or administration of the other team, the future of that athlete’s participation depends on if their biological sex is confirmed by “a signed physician’s statement that shall indicate the student’s sex based solely on: The student’s internal and external reproductive anatomy; the student’s normal endogenously produced levels
@vikingsportsmag
| MAY 2020
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