“Transsexual and Transgender Policies in Sport”, Essay

Everyone has a gender. It is something we are born into, and has an impact on every aspect of our lives. It affects how we walk, talk, and act on a daily basis. What truly is gender though? Gender is what defines many facets of our culture, and differentiates the roles people take on as men or women. Today, most countries define gender as the genetic and biological traits we are born with. However, what if someone felt they were supposed to be the opposite gender of the one they were born into? That is precisely the feeling that transgenders have from a young age. The feeling of not belonging in their own body and wanting to be someone else. To make things even harder, what if they were also an athlete? Not only would they feel like they don 't belong in their own body, but the sports they want to play or already play would be affected. With that, this paper will look at and discuss eligibility in sports, equality in the locker room, and self worth both on and off the field for transgender athletes.

“It’s frustrating, but that’s just the way it is now,” Kate Hall said after losing to an opponent. Hall had just been stripped of her two-year reign as state champion to a transgender female (male-to-female) athlete in a high school track competition. Transgender women should not be allowed to compete with biological females. Every time a trans female makes the team a biological female is stripped of their chance to be on the team and every time a transgender female athlete places in an event another female loses the opportunity to achieve their goal of success. Recently, many transgender athletes have been competing alongside the gender with which they identify themselves, instead of competing with their biological equals. The differences in male and female physiology are the reasons why men and women compete in separate events in sports. If it is unfair for men to compete against women then how is it fair for men who identify as women to take on biological females.

In, “Homophobia Is Rampant in Professional Sports,” Ford speaks about how in male dominated sports coaches or other team players have tendencies to shame athletes by calling them names such as “sissies” or “girls” (paragraph 1). Ford later talks the causes of homophobia being hyper masculinity and the humiliation that players were put though as children and teenagers in school teams to get short term gains (paragraph 14). The author also states that someone in a professional team could come out on a major team and survive, if they have the team support (paragraph 16).

Transgendered people in America have made many great strides since the 1990s. They have encountered violence, lack of health care, and the loss of homes, jobs, family and friends. There have been many phases of the struggle of being transgendered in America over the years. The current phase we must be in now is equal rights. There are many variations of discrimination against the transgendered community. In our society we simply do not like what we do not understand. It is easier to discriminate than to try and understand. We are all created different and we should appreciate our differences. The change must come by addressing the views of the public. There is much justification in the unequal rights of transgendered peoples. The Human

However, women’s sport has always been criticized for not being considered an actual sport, but rather a softer version of a man’s sport. As a result, women who were very successful were questioned in regards of their true sex. Santhi Soundarajan was a female competitor in the 2006 Asian Games for the 800-meter race. Soundarajan was successful as she received a silver medal for her efforts, however, she was highly disturbed by the “sex testing” which she was required to go through prior to participating in the Olympic Games (Schultz, 2014). Eventually, it was determined that Soundarajan did not fit into the category of female as her testosterone levels were too high and the Olympic Association had taken away her medal. The idea that femininity is a direct link to being female is an imagined paradigm created by society to dominate women and the notion that women are allowed to compete as long as they appear feminine and act feminine is comical. The reason that this idea of femininity exists is because masculinity exists and if an individual is not feminine then they must be masculine. Therefore, sport is considered a masculine space and to be good at sport one must attain masculinity which can be demonstrated through speed, strength, bulging muscles, bravery, and is coupled with having high levels of testosterone. All of these characteristics are the opposite of the feminine embodiment which includes being poise, pretty, having a slender waist with wide hips, and low amounts of testosterone. Currently, the IAAF states that the amount of testosterone allowed within the blood to be able to compete as a female must be no more than 5 nanomoles per liter (Chiu, 2018). This is almost about half of what the pre-existing limit was before this announcement was made, the monumental discriminatory remarks directly affect women

Programs should be established on sound medical advice that shows male-to-female transgender athletes do not have any automatic advantage over other women and must be recognized on the educational values of the sport (NCAA Inclusion, p.10).

Women’s equality is an issue that has been around for awhile. While women have been given many rights to increase equality, including the right to vote and go to college, the problem hasn’t completely vanished. One area that still sees this is in sports. Women’s sports do not draw nearly as many fans and are not covered in the media as much as men’s sports, pay differences between male and female athletes are large, and female athletes have to wait longer to start their professional career than men, which risks their professional career before it even starts.

Gender stereotyping in sports media is something we see everyday in magazines and on TV. Since sports were invented, males have dominated one of Canada’s largest pastimes. Reasons for this being physicality and strength, but as time progressed women began to become more involved in the culture of sport. Today there is almost an equal amount of women participating in sports as man, yet women are still not being represented with the same approach as men. About a month ago I found a video online that followed a sports reporter who was trying to make a point about gender stereotyping within sports media. He would interview professional male athletes but rather than ask them the typical interview questions we see in male sports, such as “has your workout routine changed since…” but rather asked them questions that are typically related to female athlete interviews such as one that was asked to swimmer Michael Phelps “Shaving your body hair gives you an edge in the pool, but how about your love life”, or “any comments about reports about your girlish figure”. At the end of the video they show real women athletes being asked these types of questions in real interviews. The men’s reactions of embarrassment to disgust vs. the women’s reactions of showing no surprise to being asked these derogatory questions, says it all. It is no surprise that the sexualization of female athletes is something all too common in sports media. We’ll be looking into the idea of sexualisation in

While the topic of gender has become a hot debate today in society, many people have doubts on whether or not transgender people should be allowed to play professional sports. More specifically, in the Olympics where recent changes in ruling have created various opinions on the topic. While there is great evidence for both sides of the argument, there is a physical advantage for transgender people in sports. There are both genetic structure advantages and hormone benefits that transgender athletes have over born athletes of their gender. The current rules in place were incorrectly made and has changed the Olympics future for the worse.

“Intersex” conditions can create extreme disparities in sports. We segregate men and women in sports to eliminate unfair genetic advantages. Is it then unfair when a genetically female athlete with an intersex condition wins an event? Foddy and Savulesco (2010), offer an option for dealing with natural variation in testosterone. Instead of separating men and women, define a limit based on the level of testosterone in an individual’s blood. Above the limit athletes would compete as men and below the limit athletes would compete as women. This would create a “hormonal level-playing field”. Foddy and Savulesco don’t argue for or against testosterone segregation, they simply discuss the option.

When a person of a specific gender enters a non-traditional sport for their gender/sex, many social and moral issues will arise challenging that person involved in that particular sport. The intentions of the individual will be questioned as well as their personal interest in the sport. Before any of these questions are asked, there must be a redefinition of gender roles, femininity, and masculinity. In order for a person to enter a non-traditional sport for their gender/sex without being criticize about gender morality, society must set flexible definitions for femininity and masculinity.

American society bases a shocking amount of gender norms on sports. From day one, boys are given infant-sized jerseys and rattles shaped like footballs and girls wear cute ballerina dresses; if you don’t empathize with your given sport as you grow older, then you’re in danger of being taunted as a homosexual. People don’t always realize that lesbians are more marginalized thanks to the ever-present patriarchial opinion. Susan K. Cahn explores the sociology behind female athletes and sexuality in “From The ‘Muscle Moll’ To The ‘Butch’ Ballplayer: Mannishness, Lesbianism, and Homophobia In U.S. Women’s Sport.”

Homophobia is not talked about as much as it should be, especially in sports. Homophobia is prevalent in sports because of three main types of conformity: normative conformity, informational conformity, and internalization. Homophobia in sports is not going away anytime soon, but by showing athletes they don't have to do what the group is doing. By giving athletes enough information they need to make the right decisions about conforming and by making the environment safe for people to show thier true sexualites in is just a small step to ending homophobia in

Dominant groups in society often set up normative ideas about bodies, genders and sexualities in order to preserve the societal hierarchy that greatly benefits them. White, cisgender, heterosexual males are often at the top of this hierarchy and are the active perpetrators of their imposed rigid standards. Categories are created by these dominant groups to exercise their control and those who do not fit or refuse to categorize themselves are punished, either metaphorically or literally. In the sports realm, these norms are ubiquitous. However, in this paper, I argue that sports can both uphold and challenge these normative ideas about bodies, genders, and sexualities through normalized practices it normalizes that are considered to be different from the outside world. Sex-tests and gender policies in sports competitions uphold the idea that there is a biological difference in genders and rigidly implement the gender-binary. On the other hand, the practice of contact sports and the use of locker rooms as a voyeuristic experience challenge normative ideas about bodies, genders and sexualities. These practices are standard in the sphere of sports a