“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is poised to sign a bill barring transgender youth from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity.
“The measure requires public schools from elementary to collegiate levels to assign athletes based on the sex noted on their birth certificates 'at or near the time of birth' …
“State Senator Charles Perry, a Republican from Lubbock who sponsored the bill in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, defended it, Austin's KVUE-TV reported, by asking, 'What if a boy decided that day he was a girl, just to get a nefarious advantage?'”
(Dan Avery. “Texas bill banning transgender students in school sports heads to governor’s desk.” NBC News. October 18, 2021.)
So, I thought about Senator Perry's hypothetical question. Perry expressed a representative argument: when transgender girls compete on girls’ sports teams, cisgender girls can’t win. I decided to research in an effort to uncover the truth.
Already, 2021 has been a record year for anti-transgender legislation – especially when it comes to school athletics – and one group is taking a stand. To date, 28 states across the country have taken action to introduce, pass and sign anti-transgender bills, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The majority of these bills are attempting to exclude transgender athletes from school sports and deny gender-affirming health care to youth.
And, you should know that policies permitting transgender athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity are not new.
The Olympics have had trans-inclusive policies since 2004, but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify.
California passed a law in 2013 that allows trans youth to compete on the team that matches their gender identity; there have been no issues. U SPORTS, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S.’s National Collegiate Athletic Association, has allowed transgender athletes to compete with the team that matches their identity for the past two years.
(Jack Turban. “Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams.” Scientific American. March 16, 2021.)
The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports.
Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal.
Anthropologist and bioethicist Katrina Karkazis – the Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College and senior research fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University – is an expert on testosterone and bioethics.
Karsazis explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.
Karsazis says that testosterone is a very dynamic hormone – it's actually responsive to social cues and situations. For example, if a coach gives you positive feedback, that can raise your testosterone level. Testosterone affects muscle but research has shown that it can affect different muscles in the body within the same person quite differently. Where we run into trouble is trying to make comparisons across individuals based on testosterone levels. Sometimes it’s individuals with lower testosterone who do better. So it’s not as simple as saying more testosterone equals better performance.
Karkazis concludes the idea of a true sex – “a single biological criterion by which to exclude some women from the female category” – is mistaken …
“What is clear is that testosterone is not the unique essential ingredient for success across every conceivable sport. Labeling women 'biological males' draws a dubious connection between sex, testosterone, and athleticism that relies on long-discarded ideas that men and women can have a 'true sex,' that testosterone is a 'male sex hormone,' and that testosterone is the key to superior athleticism. None of these are true, and it’s long overdue that people stop saying they are.”
(Katrina Karkazis. “Stop talking about testosterone – there’s no such thing as a ‘true sex.'” The Guardian. March 06, 2019.)
To be fair, research carried out by Dr. Timothy Roberts, a pediatrician and associate professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City found thattrans women who underwent hormone therapy for one year continued to outperform non-transgender women, also known as cisgender women, though the gap largely closed after two years. But even then, trans women still ran 12% faster.
Roberts, however, suggested the difference in running times needs additional perspective. "It was a 12% advantage after two years in run times. But to be in the top 10% of female runners, you have to be 29% faster than the average woman. And to be an elite runner, you've got to be 59% faster than the average cis woman.”
(Timothy A Roberts, Joshua Smalley, Dale Ahrendt. “Effect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislators.” British Journal of Sports Medicine 2021;55:577-583.)
Another study, carried out by sports scientist Tommy Lundberg, found that trans women who underwent feminizing hormone therapy generally maintained their strength levels after one year.
Senator Perry must realize that claiming that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in sports also neglects the fact that these kids have the deck stacked against them in nearly every other way imaginable. They suffer from higher rates of bullying, anxiety and depression—all of which make it more difficult for them to train and compete. They also have higher rates of homelessness and poverty because of common experiences of family rejection. This is likely a major driver of why we see so few transgender athletes in collegiate sports and none in the Olympics.
(Jack Turban. “Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams.” Scientific American. March 16, 2021.)
Scientific American reports that Idaho’s H.B. 500, which was signed into law but currently has a preliminary injunction against its enforcement, would essentially let people accuse students of lying about their sex. Those students would then need to “prove” their sex through means including an invasive genital exam or genetic testing.
And what happens when a kid comes back with XY chromosomes but a vagina (as occurs with people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome)? Do they play on the boys’ team or the girls’ team? This is just one of several conditions that would make such sex policing impossible.
And, good God, Mr. Perry, are you an advocate of the old “separate but equal” argument? Do you believe transgender athletes should be forced into their own leagues? Women’s sports leagues certainly show that separate is not equal. Female athletes consistently have to deal with fewer accolades, less press coverage and lower pay. A transgender sports league would undoubtedly be plagued with the same issues.
There's even a more wicked and hypocritical reason for laws to limit transgender women's participation in sports, especially at the high school level. Consider appearance and all the negative LGBT stereotypes.
Dr. Eric Vilain, a pediatrician and geneticist who studies sex differences in athletes, advised both the International Olympic Committee and the NCAA that these laws generally aren't based in scientific evidence but rather "target women who have either a different biology or ... simply look different."
In sports, there's a long history of discrimination that targets women that look different. Again, the science of whether testosterone in real life is actually providing an advantage in competition is not clearly established. But more disturbingly is that all these rules at the elite level have affected women – not all women, but women with a Y chromosome. And often, it's triggered by women who look different.
The National Women's Law Center wrote a brief against a bill in Idaho (2020) that seeks to ban transgender girls from participating in youth female sports. And in it, they wrote "the law allows anyone for any reason to question whether a student athlete is a woman or girl. And then the student has to verify her gender by undergoing invasive testing, which could include a gynecological exam, blood work or chromosome testing."
And one of the plaintiffs in this brief is named Jane Doe, who was a cisgender female athlete, but she didn't normally wear skirts or dresses and had an athletic build. Under a law like this, somebody could insist that this athlete undergo one of these exams to prove her gender – that's inherently harmful and serves no legitimate purpose.
The Law Center concludes that history and modern experiences show how [Idaho’s anti-trans law] will disproportionately harm Black and Brown women and girls. Black and Brown women and girls are routinely targeted, shamed, and dehumanized for not conforming to society’s expectations of femininity … By allowing coaches, administrators, and other athletes to become the arbiters of who “looks like” a girl or a woman, [this law] will rely on and perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes.
(Cassandra Mensah, MARGARET Fund Fellow, Education and Workplace Justice, Sunu P. Chandy, Legal Director. “NWLC Leads Amicus Brief Against Idaho Law That Targets Trans Women and Girls and Harms All Female Students.” National Women's Law Center. December 21, 2020.)
Such marginalization can have devastating effects on trans teens. In response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of nearly 132,000 students, 27% of those who identified as trans said they felt unsafe at or traveling to or from school, and nearly 35% said they’d attempted suicide.
Response To Transgender Bills
In response to bills like those of Texas,the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s (NCAA) Division III LGBTQ OneTeam Program and members of the NCAA’s Division III LGBTQ Working Group condemned the newly proposed laws in an open letter.
The LGBTQ advocacy group in April released a letter titled “An Open Letter in Support of Transgender Student-Athletes,” which called upon elected officials to put an end to legislation aimed at “excluding transgender youth and young adults from equal and equitable participation in sport.”
“We have decided to use our collective voice to condemn such actions,” the letter reads. “We cannot, in good conscience, fail to speak out at this critical moment.”
The letter was signed by more than 50 other facilitators of the NCAA Division III LGBTQ OneTeam Program, including Timothy R. Bussey, associate director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Kenyon College.
“These laws really play off of those myths and misconceptions about the trans community, and this proposed legislation really weaponizes that misconception and that lack of understanding of science in a way that seeks to exclude trans people and ultimately causes harm to trans folks on a number of levels," they said.
(Kiara Brantley-Jones. “NCAA group condemns anti-transgender sports bills in open letter.” ABC News. April 6, 2021.)
“The important question isn't, “Do trans women have advantages?” What really matters is can trans women and cis women compete against one another in meaningful competition. There's no indication that trans women are anywhere close to taking over women's sport, it's not happening now. It's not likely to happen anytime in the future.”
– Joanna Harper, one of the world’s leading researchers on transitioning athletes who has advised the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other sporting bodies on gender and sports
Dear Texas State Senator Charles Perry
I see you are a member of the Education Committee and former President of the Lubbock Boys and Girls Club. You evidently have a great interest in the youth of your state and in public education. I suggest you do your own research on the answer to your question: “What if a boy decided that day he was a girl, just to get a nefarious advantage?”
You are on the wrong side of the research. And, Senator Perry, besides the imperative to protect Texas youth, your state does not even have a way of tracking how many transgender athletes are currently participating in sports across Texas. Instead, your legislator seems to simply speculate on some false idea of “fairness” and take pride in passing discriminatory bills without any concern for the impact on Texans and the state’s growing negative national reputation.
The debate around this legislation had already negatively affected transgender youth, impacting mental health and perpetuating negative stereotypes and discrimination against them.
Here is a fact for you to consider:
“Between January and August, when bills targeting transgender Texans were being debated in the statehouse, calls from LGBTQ young people to a crisis hotline skyrocketed by 150 percent, according data released by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization. About 4,000, or 36 percent of all contacts from Texas, came from transgender or nonbinary youths.”
(Dan Avery. “Texas bill banning transgender students in school sports heads to governor’s desk.” NBC News. October 18, 2021.)
Senator, I suggest you stop being influenced by those like Mary Elizabeth Castle with Texas Values, a group supporting the ban. I know Castle claimed more than 22,000 emails have been sent to Texas lawmakers “in support of this legislation that will protect female sports” (though she did not indicate how many messages were from state residents).
Castle and others in Texas Values – a so-called “sincere religious public policy organization ” that sued to invalidate all pro-LGBTQ ordinances in Houston – have their panties in a twist with concerns about changes in birth certificates and males competing in female sports. They claim …
“Save Women’s Sports commends Texas for tackling this sensitive issue. We should not wait idly until females in Texas are injured or all of their records are held by males, to do something. If we continue to allow males to compete in female sports it will be the demise of female sports.”
(Beth Stelzer, founder of Save Women’s Sports and professional powerlifter who testified at the Texas Capitol in favor of HB 4042)
Senator Perry, perhaps you should consider the real “injury” on young Texas women and worry less about “records” of those you cannot even verify were set by cisgenders in what you consider “fair” competition.
This is just like your defunct 2017 legislation that would have prohibited transgender Texans from using public bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. It's another “bathroom” bill. It's rooted in homophobia, largely unenforceable, economically damaging, and highly discriminatory while robbing LGBTQ people in America of their basic rights.
And, dear Texas, you, of all states, should know that states that pass anti-transgender legislation suffer economic, legal, and reputational harm. After all, during that fight over the anti-transgender bathroom bill in 2017, the Texas Association of Business estimated $8.5 billion in economic losses, risking 185,000 jobs in the process due to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and professional sporting event cancellations, a ban on taxpayer funded travel to those states, cancellation of movie productions, and businesses moving projects out of state.
(Alexa Ura. “Businesses say anti-LGBT bills could cost Texas billions.” The Texas Tribune. December 06, 2016.)
The answer to your question, Senator Perry? The only “nefarious advantage” you should consider is your own unbending will to appease Republicans – you will not do anything that could be construed as supportive of LGBT issues for fear of being challenged by far-right voters. Oh, I get it: the eyes of Texas are upon you. However, you should consider the vision of the LGBTQ community instead of wanting to peek down their pants.
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