By Sydney Pike, Staff Reporter
In the last decade, members of the LGBT+ community have garnered support across the nation. However, there have been concerns regarding transgender women in womens sports. Many have been left wondering whether or not male to female transgender athletes have an unfair advantage in womens sports. Transgender women should not be allowed to participate in women’s athletics as it hinders the equality and integrity of womens sports. By allowing them to compete, it challenges opportunities for cisgender women and their ability to succeed.
Several different organizations have been open to allowing transgender women to participate in athletics. In 2016, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) established that athletes were allowed to compete with the gender they identify as. Furthermore, High schools around the country have begun to allow this as well. With these rules in place, more cisgender female athletes, from highschool to professional teams, have come forward with the own opinions on the subject.
One of these women is Martina Navratilova, a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion for tennis and an avid LGBT+ advocate.
“A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies,” Navratilova said.
Transgender women pose an unfair advantage over cisgender women on the basis that biological men tend to be stronger and have a sturdier build than cisgender women because of their anatomy.
According to the Journal of Applied Physiology (JAP), men have an average of 26 more pounds of skeletal muscle mass than biological women. Not only that, but their higher levels of testosterone give biological males greater muscle mass and strength as well as bone growth. It was also concluded that biological women have about 40% less upper body strength and 33% less lower body strength than men.
Levels of testosterone increase athleticism and give biological males an advantage in competition against biological women. It has been argued that transgender women could go through hormone therapy or take testosterone suppressants to even out the playing field. However, according to the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), the guidelines to allow transgender women to compete by obtaining a testosterone level below 10 nmol/L is still significantly higher than those levels of biological women.
Because of this, transgender women are stronger, faster, and have more stamina than biological women.
According to the JME, “Science demonstrates that high testosterone and other male physiology provides a performance advantage in sport suggesting that trans women retain some of that advantage. We conclude that the advantage to trans women afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Further, a study found that biological males “did not lose significant muscle mass” when taking testosterone suppressants.
“Biologically, men are stronger, faster, and larger than women, so having them compete with women in sports is unfair to say the least,” senior Kennedy Volleyball player Caitlyn Sasaki said. “Although one may identify with their chosen gender, it does not give them the right to compete with those they have a strong physical advantage over.”
Allowing transgender women to compete limits the opportunties for women in their sport. It is only fair and just for all women athletics to not allow transgender women to compete in female athletics. It would instead be more appropriate for them to have a league of their own in order to give them the opportunity to play.
Comments