Female athlete offers rebuttal supporting transgender athletes in competitions

I am a cisgender female cross country and track and field athlete on scholarship at the University of San Diego. I was born here in Boise, and after moving across the Midwest for some years, my family was happy to move back to Boise to call home once and for all.

The Boise foothills have become my favorite place to run after countless journeys through their trails. The sport of running has given me so much, and I hope to continue racing for years to come. Like so many other athletes, I want to share my sport with others, in the hope that they, too, can find the joy I have found in competition. While there are several other ways to express oneself and find community, participating in sports is a path chosen by so many, and I firmly believe that the choice to participate in sport should be available to all athletes, regardless of gender identity or expression.

It is clear from the recent passing of the House Bill 500 by the Idaho Legislature and signed by Gov. Brad Little and from recent articles in the Idaho Statesman that not all feel this way. The reasoning most often cited is the “unfairness” imparted upon cisgender female athletes when “forced” to compete with transgender female athletes, due to the assumed greater average strength, speed and endurance inherent in an individual assigned the gender of male at birth. I will provide a few rebuttals to this claim, in the hopes that this attempt at anti-transgender legislation will end as quickly as it started.

First, there is an erroneous assumption that cisgender female athletes have a sort of right over transgender female athletes in female athletics. Proponents of this viewpoint tend to claim that the equal opportunity in sports afforded to women by Title IX is diminished by the participation of transgender female athletes in sports. The root of the problem here is the clear lack of acknowledgement that transgender women are, in fact, women. The argument against the horrific denial of trans peoples’ existence by cisgender individuals is simple.

Just because a cisgender person feels that they were assigned the correct gender at birth does not mean that everyone feels this way. Of course, it is very difficult for someone who has not felt this way, including myself, to understand exactly how a transgender person may feel, and I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of these feelings, as I have not felt them myself. However, the lack of these experiences in myself and other cisgender individuals does not invalidate these experiences for others whatsoever.

Now that we have taken the step of recognizing that transgender women are women (and similarly of course that transgender men are men), we notice that Title IX refers to women as a whole, and thus transgender women are subject to the equal opportunity afforded to all women by Title IX.

We can now examine the claim that transgender women have an unfair advantage over cisgender women due to supposed greater average strength, speed and endurance. The NCAA allows female transgender athletes to compete after undergoing two years of hormonal treatment. While there is always room for improvement in such legislation, I believe that this is a good start for equal opportunity in competition for transgender athletes. The transitional hormonal treatments ultimately have the effect of reducing a transgender female’s testosterone levels to those within the range typical of cisgender females’ testosterone levels after approximately a year of treatment, leading us to the conclusion that these athletes must have no advantage over their cisgender competitors after this time period.

The final argument is that of the simple fear of a sheer greater number of people against which one may be competing for scholarships, varsity spots, conference titles, and so on, with the inclusion of transgender athletes in the pool of competitors. Those who feel this way do not truly know the spirit of sport, which welcomes any and all competitors regardless of background. I hope that cisgender athletes welcome our transgender teammates, competitors, coaches, rivals and friends, and all that they have to teach us about the sports we all hold so dearly to our hearts.