On April 18th, the Florida House passed HB1475, cleverly named the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.” It would make participation in student athletics contingent on “biological sex,” a much-disputed term referring to sex assigned at birth.
This bill would allow genital examinations of high school athletes. It is horrific, demeaning, and an infringement on their right to privacy. The bill requires that schools resolve disputes regarding a student athlete’s sex by “requiring the school or institution to request a certain health examination and consent form or another statement from the student’s health care provider to verify the student’s biological sex under certain circumstances.”
I was a student-athlete in high school and college, and would have been furious over having to submit to a physical examination of my private parts. I would feel like a piece of chuck roast under inspection at a meat market. Imagine the feeling of embarrassment, humiliation, and shame that would be imposed on high school athletes, trans or cisgender.
Florida House sponsor Kaylee Tuck (R-Lake Placid) argued that the bill doesn’t ban transgender students from participating in sports specifically but requires they play based on their biological gender. Central to Tuck’s argument is the age-old notion that males will always hold a competitive edge over females in playing sports. Tuck stated, “This is about giving women and girls an equal chance to succeed.”
The myth that women are the weaker sex and not as competitive in sports is still at the forefront of these bills. However, this commonplace notion is not based on fact, but rather on a prevalent gender bias that has persisted for centuries. Men indeed tend to weigh more than women, they generally have greater muscle mass, 40–60% greater upper-body strength, and 25–30% percent more lower-body strength. Although there is a relationship between muscle size and strength, there is not a direct correlation, because other factors are at play in athlete strength such as genetics, age, limb, and muscle length. Adhering to the adage that women are fragile flowers and not as strong as men in sports is not based on fact.
For example, female powerlifters who train and follows an appropriate diet, have narrowed the gap between men in actual strength from 0-8%. Other studies have shown that women’s lower-body strength in leg-presses surpasses that of men, and although the average man is stronger than the average woman in terms of absolute strength, many women are much stronger than the average man. When it comes to extreme endurance sports such as long-distance running, women excel over men hands down. Research has shown that the greater amount of estrogen and body fat seems to play a role in giving women the advantage in endurance sports, especially marathons and ultra-marathons.
A study of the performance of men and women in the 2003 Boston Marathon revealed that women performed identically to men, and women’s times were 5 minutes faster than men’s times for the top 207 runners. Other studies have shown that men on average have a harder time keeping up with women in ultra-endurance running events of 55 miles or more. Another interesting note is that in Alaska’s Iditarod, the 1,200-mile dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome held each year, is often won by women. Susan Butcher dominated the Iditarod in the late 1980s, winning in 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1990. So, women are not the weaker sex, but our physiology does give us an advantage in particular sports.
With the passage of HB1475 and other similar bills, there is one basic problem; there is no actual scientific evidencewhen it comes to any advantage transgender girls have over cisgender girls in sports. If there were, I would imagine that lawmakers would cite this data at every turn. In almost every case, where these bills are being debated, sponsors cannot cite a single instance in their own states where the participation of transgender athletes has caused issues. And let’s look at the data. According to a 2016 census, transgender adults make up a very small portion of the US population, approximately 1.3 million out of 328.2 million.
According to Dr. Joshua Safer, who serves on the Endocrine Society’s Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons Clinical Practice Guideline Task Force states that “A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance.” He also added, “for a trans woman athlete who meets NCAA standards, “there is no inherent reason why her physiological characteristics related to athletic performance should be treated differently from the physiological characteristics of a non-transgender woman.”
The myth that girls’ high school sports are under attack from trans athletes is just that, a myth. Trans athletes vary in athletic ability just like cisgender athletes. A long-distance runner may be slim and have long legs, a gymnast may be short and stout, a football defensive guard may be over 200lbs, or a volleyball player may be six feet tall. These physical characteristics are not tied to XX or XY chromosomes, they vary due to other genetic and environmental factors.
When I played soccer for my high school, I was a bit short at 5’6”. I wasn’t fast but I had staying power. I remember going up against two girls (who happened to be twins) on the opposing team, they towered over me like skyscrapers. Even though these fullbacks were cisgender girls, just like me, we differed greatly in body build and muscle mass. So, using the same logic as the Florida lawmakers, I did not have an “equal chance to succeed” in getting the ball past these two girls. They were big, fast, and it took them about one second to hip-check me and steal the ball.
So, let’s cut the bull. Even if more transgender students did join high school athletics, there is no evidence that they would pose any threat to cisgender athletes or any danger to the “quality” or “fairness” of women’s sports. HB1475 is fueled by myths about women’s athletic abilities and extreme prejudice against transgender girls.
Last year, Idaho signed into law a similar bill. This year more than 20 state legislatures have bills to ban transgender girls from participating in high school girls’ sports. It doesn’t matter if you are trans, gay, cisgender, tall, short, black, or white. Kids should be able to run on the cross-country team, play volleyball, or soccer without having to be subjected to the humiliation of a genital exam and the outdated notion of the “weaker sex.”
Many thanks to Thomas Campbell for editing this blog post.