Safety, fairness, and inclusion
by J. Pharoah Doss, For New Pittsburgh Courier
Recently, varsity swimmer Lia Thomas became the first known transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I championship. This reignited the debate over whether it’s unfair for a male that transitioned into a female to compete against cisgender females.
I said reignited because there was a controversy concerning unfairness when transgender runner CeCe Telfer placed first in the 400-meter hurdles during the 2019 NCAA Women’s Division II Outdoor Track and Field Championship.
Here there are two different matters of unfairness that can’t be reconciled.
1). If a male that transitioned into a female is banned from women’s sports, the ban would constitute unfair treatment vis-à-vis discrimination against the transgender athlete.
2). If a male that transitioned into a female is allowed to compete in women’s sports, their allowance is unfair to cisgender female athletes, who will be at a competitive disadvantage.
From a legal standpoint, if the NCAA banned transgender athletes from women’s sports, the probability is high they lose a discrimination lawsuit. On the other hand, if cisgender females brought a lawsuit against the NCAA for placing them at a competitive disadvantage, the cisgender plaintiffs will have high levels of difficulty meeting their burden of proof.
So, the NCAA didn’t discriminate.
As of 2019, the NCAA rules stated, transgender student-athletes can participate in the women’s sports category after completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.
After Telfer’s victory, Telfer told an interviewer that testosterone didn’t give her an unfair advantage over cisgender female runners because she was on hormone therapy for “quite some time”, and her testosterone levels were lower than the average woman’s as a result. However, the next year, Telfer was not allowed to compete in the women’s 400-hurdles 2020 Olympic trials because of her testosterone levels.
What happened?
Did the NCAA and the Olympic trials have different rules and regulations, or was it something else not necessarily understood at the time?
Champion Women, a non-profit legal advocacy group for girls and women in sports, became the first major women’s organization to address transgender athletes competing in women’s sports following the Lia Thomas controversy.
The CEO of Champion Women stated:
If a biological woman tested positive just two times for testosterone, she would be banned for life because the World Anti-Doping Association knows that prolonged steroid use provides legacy effects that aren’t diminished just because someone stopped taking the drug. Lia Thomas still benefits from 10 years of male puberty. If there were hormone suppression regimes that effectively eliminated the male-puberty advantage, I would think trans women’s inclusion was fair.
But what Lia Thomas has shown us is that the research is correct, and it is not possible for trans women to roll back male puberty. She may lose V02-Max as her hemoglobin drops, but she retains most of her strength, all her height, bigger lungs, hands, and body proportions that favor male physiology in most sports.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ resolution. There are three considerations: safety, fairness, and inclusion. I would prioritize them in that order. But a transgender woman doesn’t make swimming more dangerous. It matters tremendously in combat sports, where men have a 160-percent advantage over women in the punching motion.
Incidentally, this whole transgender controversy first gained national attention in combat sports. In 2013, it was discovered that 37-year-old mixed martial artist Fallon Fox was competing against women but neglected to inform the MMA officials that she was born a male. Fox won all of her fights in the first round, 3 in the amateurs and 2 as a professional. Fox also won her next fight in the first round, but this time her opponent left the ring with a damaged orbital bone and a concussion.
It’s important to note that in 2019 CNN reported, on average, 13 male professional boxers die in the ring each year. MMA is more violent than boxing for males and females.
Last year, Alana Mclaughlin, a 38-year-old mixed martial artist who transitioned from male to female in 2010, became the second openly transgender individual to compete in MMA. After winning her match, Mclaughlin said, “I’m following Fallon’s footsteps.”
In combat sports, these footsteps can lead transgender women to glory, but these footsteps can also lead their opponents to an early grave.