Is it Fair to Competitors for Transgender Athletes to Compete in Elite-Level Sports?
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Danica Joyner
Recently, the media has blown up after a transgender female athlete, Lia Thomas, competed in a women’s swim competition and won. One of Thomas’ competitors, Riley Gaines, was very distraught about competing against a transgender female. In an interview with Fox News, Gaines says, "We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room we turned around, and there’s a 6’4" biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia.” Her discomfort with the locker room situation, and inability of coaches and officials to attend to her and other female athletes’ concerns caused Gaines to speak out publicly about the injustice she and other female athletes are facing.
Riley Gaines wrote an opinion article for Fox News titled, “I am a 12x NCAA All-American swimmer. Female athletes should compete on the basis of sex, not gender.” She wrote, “Lia Thomas is a 6’4" biological male who swam for three years on the men’s team at University of Pennsylvania before switching to the women’s team. Thomas was ranked 462nd nationally (at best) as a male before becoming the fastest female in the country and winning a national title just one year later.” Gaines continues to write about the unfairness of competing against a “biological male” and wrote, “Ignoring these biological advantages possessed by males is to undermine the half-century fight of ensuring girls and women have the same access and opportunities as males do in regard to sport.” She states that women are not inferior to men, but men have advantages when it comes to strength and athleticism.
Gaines is completely right. There are biological differences between men and women, including transgender women. A Big Think article includes a study of biological advantages for transgender women even with hormone therapy. It explains the study by saying, “Researchers at the University of São Paulo assessed the strength and aerobic ability of transgender women undergoing long-term hormone therapy as well as those of cisgender men and women matched by age and physical activity levels.” Results showed that transgender women using hormone therapy that had the same testosterone levels as cisgender women had 40% more skeletal muscle mass, were about 19% stronger, and had 20% greater cardiopulmonary capacity. Researchers noticed that transgender women’s athletic markers fell directly in the middle of cisgender men and women.
Currently, the NCAA allows transgender female athletes to compete if they have been on hormone therapy for at least a year and have testosterone levels below the maximum level accepted for the sport (Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy, 2022). However, only one year of hormone therapy is not enough to make the competition an equal playing ground. Researchers from the study of the effects of hormone therapy said “long-term estrogen exposure and testosterone suppression were not enough to completely shift the body composition of transgender women to the female pattern, despite their direct and indirect effects on fat and lean mass” (Pomeroy, 2022). This means transgender women will still have a biological advantage over cisgender female athletes. Researchers concluded that even transgender women undergoing long-term hormone therapy, with similar testosterone levels as cisgender women, have an advantage in raw physical ability over women born biologically female. By current NCAA and Olympic rules, these women are allowed to compete in women’s sporting events.
In a Fox News article by Charles Creitz, he noted that “Thomas had previously been an average male swimmer under the name Will Thomas,” and there was a clear difference in performance when competing against biological females. Creitz also included a quote from Riley Gaines, “If you're looking at this just off sheer statistics — nothing opinionated about this — Lia Thomas, the year before, when competing as Will Thomas, was ranked in the 500s at best.” Thomas then became the 1st ranked swimmer in the womens’ swim division. While Lia Thomas identifies as a woman, she still has the biological sex and characteristics of a male. Thomas has physical advantages that put her above the rest of her competition, even with hormone therapy.
Gaines claims, “We should not have to add the term ‘biological’ in front of the word women to address differences in performance and our separate categories.” She believes sports are important for everyone and aid in development and fundamentals. However, she wants competition to be fair. Transgender athletes, specifically transgender females, are biologically different from cisgendered women. As stated before, their athletic markers are in between markers for cisgender men and women. So where do transgender athletes compare to the competition? With hormone therapy they are behind in men’s competitions, but still maintain a biological advantage in women’s competitions. In the future, there may not be a spot for transgender athletes in high-level, elite sports.
