“Are you ready?” the doctor asked, and the syringe calmed down. “Yes,” I replied tentatively. “1 2 3.” He put my right thigh into my muscles. I was getting ready for this but I had never had a shot on my leg before. Almost immediately, it felt pain. As the first drop of testosterone hit my bloodstream, I violated my women’s hockey league rules, said goodbye to my life as a professional hockey player and said my identity as an elite athlete. it hurts.
As a child, I always played women’s sports. I didn’t really think about how men and women are divided into track and field. I was celebrated as a female athlete, and the more I achieved it, the more it was interwoven with my own identity and my place in the world. However, as my understanding of my gender identity as a transman began to grow, my identity as an athlete on the part of a woman began to contradict those who knew I was within me. I knew I was taking testosteroneIt was what I wanted and ultimately needed for society to see me as a person. It is important to note that this is my own unique vision for my future. Not all trans people feel the need to follow this path or “pass” as cisgender, and that works. But for me, it was essential, but not an option for me while I was still playing female hockey.
By 2016, when I was playing professionally in the NWHL Buffalo Beauty (National Women’s Hockey League), I felt more and more struggling with double life outside of the Rink, waiting for real life to begin after the sport. I didn’t want to hide it anymore and came publicly as a trans man through an ESPN article that went viral. I had not yet been able to physically transition, but in the hockey world, I was able to do a social transition by changing my name and pronoun. However, constant failure and being held back by the legal names of assigned women outside the link is why I encouraged me to retire from women’s hockey sooner than I had if I weren’t trans. Immediately after announcing my retirement New York TimesI knew the time was coming, so I finally got the courage to call my doctor about testosterone and pursue a medical transition. It was very important to me to abandon women’s hockey, and even save lives, but I was finally able to start living as my true self, but it was still unbearable to have to make that call.
Sports, especially hockey, save my life and I really believe I am not here without sports. It was a space where I gained confidence, friendship, self-awareness, discipline and find pride in what my body can do. Many sports are places of joy and refuge from the stress of life, and are now taken away from the groups of people who need it the most. .
Today, gender divers people, athletes and non-athletes are equally faced with an unprecedented threat to their presence. This includes the right to play sports on a selected team. The debate is full of misinformation and misinformation that even attracts the attention of people they say they support LGBTQ+ Rights. And the worsening struggles of transathletes occur while access to proper health care is eroded. The world of sports has become the latest battlefield for the battle for equality.
Here I draw my book Play: Win the battle for gender-varied athletes, I wrote it with my sister Rachel Brown., Here are five myths takedowns that permeate the debate about transathletes.
Trans women and girls are not threats to female sports. They also do not control.
From the recent protests against trans women’s participation in sports, trans athletes have been participating in sports tailored to gender identity, with little controversy or pushback, from the recreational level to the Olympics. Sports regulators and organizations such as the NCAA had implemented policies to help include trans athletes. That wasn’t until Leah Thomas, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, became the first trans woman to win the NCAA Division I Championship title that was slandered by trans athletes in 2022.
However, Thomas’s story proves that inclusion policies work, rather than trans women’s threats to women’s sports. Thomas won a single race 1.75 seconds each, and came last in another race. Thomas was angry with all the NCAA rules of the time and is a case study of why exclusions are not necessary. It is important to note that these policies are intended not to prevent transathletes from excelling in the sport, but to promote fair competition.
Trans women rarely beat their cisgender counterparts. To this day, no trans woman has won an Olympic medal in the women’s category. Trans women and girls make abundantly clear that they are not “dominated” in female sports at all levels.
When trans women are surrounded by unfounded fear of dominating women’s sports, they easily lose sight of the vast majority of sports who don’t want to become elite athletes. Most people play for exercise, community and joy. Trans women and girls, like all athletes, are motivated by their love for sports, not a singular desire to win.
- Sports was never “fair” in the first place
The rallying cry of people opposed to the participation of trans women and girls in women’s sports is that it is not fair. This assumes that sports are at their core, pure and equal to all. This is not the case for men’s and women’s sports. Looking at sports teams and events, athletes come in a variety of sizes, skill sets and other different attributes that contribute to their success and longevity as athletes. However, the biggest and most specific factors that contribute to an athlete’s superior capabilities are access to financial resources and community support. Hockey, for example, has many barriers in place, including equipment, training, coaching costs, commitment to practice and tournament time. Players who can afford all of this and have caregivers who can help promote it automatically have a greater advantage over everyone else. This is a reality for many other sports.
If politicians and supporters really care about protecting and promoting women’s sports, they will fight for equal resources in training facilities and equipment, as well as equal pay for professional athletes. They will talk about fairness through the lens of socioeconomic equality. The conversation about trance participation in sports was not about true fairness. It is to eliminate and support the current situation in favor of gender binary and the wealthy people.
- Biology and hormones do not automatically lead to the benefits of exercise
First, everyone of all genders has estrogen and Testosterone in their bodies. Hormones are neither female nor male in nature. Hormonal levels, and the degree of testosterone-driven adolescents, exaggerate the competitive advantage. Research shows that testosterone levels do not predict excellent athletic ability, and it is not true to say that one element of the body is the only contributor to athlete success. A focus primarily on biology and hormones overlooks the importance of natural talent, hard work and access to training resources. Think about it. Tennis star Serena Williams was able to beat most people who had experienced testosterone-driven adolescence. This mentality overlooks the pure talent and hard work that cisgender women welcomed to excel in their sport.
There are also several sports, such as swimming and long distance running, where cisgender women have proven benefits over cisgender men. The reality is that there are many factors that contribute to motor advantage, from biology to sociology.
- The exclusion of trans women is harmful to all women, especially cisgender women of color.
Hysteria around trans women participating in sports not only affects trans people, but also affects cisgender women, especially those of color. Gender identity is classified according to the spectrum rather than binary. So there is no way to define what makes someone a woman. It can be complex and subjective. Thus, when sports regulators tried to impose elite athletes with gender testing and validation methods, this resulted in increased surveillance and policing of women’s bodies, primarily performed by cisgender men. You never see such testing efforts being enforced for men, it is just a woman ever. There is a very troublesome history of “gender verification tests,” including genital checks of female athletes dating back to the early 20th century. Today we have seen the revival of such archaic and invasive practices proposed for children and young people. In 2022, Ohio politicians sought to promote laws requiring genital checks for suspected trans student-athletes. The proposal didn’t gain traction, but as of this year, similar proposals are being pursued for high school students in Florida.
The idea that women’s sports need to save only reinforces the harmful stereotypes of women being weak and helpless. Efforts to ban trans women from sports in the name of protecting women’s sports will reduce the safety of sports for everyone.
- The separate categories of trans-athletes and non-binary three are not the answers.
Some sports regulators and policymakers around the world suggest that trans and non-binary athletes can play in their own separate categories. On the surface, this may seem like a solution that everyone can board as a way to resolve tense discussions on this topic. However, this only leads to further discrimination and alienation among diverse athletes of gender. When it comes to funding and resources, we already know that there is a huge discrepancy between male and female sports. For athletes in this open category, that contradiction will be much worse. Moreover, most transathletes do not argue that such a third category is the ultimate solution for all sports.
In 2023, the World Body for World Aquatics world began the open category for the Swimming World Cup in Berlin in response to swimmer Lia Thomas’ NCAA Championship title. Just Zero Athlete signed up for this and the category was cancelled. If trans people really wanted to participate in the sport just for medals, wouldn’t it have made sense for at least one person to sign up in this category and perhaps win very easily? At the end of the day, most trans people don’t want to be considered “other.” They want to be seen as themselves, which means participating with athletes who are tailored to their gender identity.
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