How did the trans sports debate become such a hot topic this election season?

When nonbinary ESPN journalist Katie Barnes played sports as a gender-bending kid, they were called “a boy” because of their haircut and because they liked to lift weights. They were also called “a lesbian” for playing sports at all. Their experience is common to many athletes assigned a female sex at birth. But that was long before 26 states adopted anti-trans sports bans that allow adults and competitors to challenge other kids’ genders.

Many states passed their bans while Barnes was busy writing their book, Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates, which came out in September 2023. Many of the bans were authored by the anti-LGBTQ+ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and some of them affect not only grades K through 12 but also competitive university teams and co-ed intramural recreation leagues.

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Simultaneously, numerous international sports organizations, including the Olympics, have increasingly restricted their guidelines for trans women’s participation too. These restrictions have resulted in the increased scrutiny of trans and cisgender players at non-elite levels, Barnes says, even when no scholarships or other consequential awards are on the line.

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“The legislation that has passed in this country is not the same standard as the Olympians — it is more strict in that it is rigid and permanent,” Barnes tells LGBTQ Nation. “Even with World Aquatics, if you transition young enough, theoretically you would be able to swim in the women’s category…. [but] If you are in Texas right now and you are a transgender kid, it does not matter — whatever your birth certificate says is where you must play by law, and that is permanent. There is no means by which you could become eligible to compete in the sporting category that aligns with your gender identity.”

Trans athletes already face numerous barriers to just playing as their authentic selves. First, they must have supportive parents and access to gender-affirming care. Then, they must have state laws allowing them to change their birth certificate or state policies allowing them to play school sports. All of these whittle the number of trans athletes down, making trans student-athletes fairly rare, even before half the states in the country passed bans on trans girls participating in school sports.

Despite this, the topic has become highly contentious, especially during this election year. While Republicans have uniformly passed the state bans, majorities of Americans oppose trans participation in sports, and the sides of that debate don’t break down cleanly along ideological lines. The debate may not even be solved by future scientific studies on the issue since people tend to cherry-pick or misinterpret such evidence to suit their views.

Meanwhile, Barnes says they’re interested in these laws’ effects: What it means to be a girl playing in a high-scrutiny environment? How are people’s genders challenged? What are the requirements for trans athletes to qualify for competition under state law, high school association policy, or NCAA policy?

“I don’t know that we have fully grappled with what that fallout [from these laws] will look like,” Barnes says.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

LGBTQ Nation: Why have women’s bodies in sports been policed much more than men’s?

Katie Barnes: Women’s sports were designed to be a category that needed to be protected, right? If we think about the broad history of sport, sports were largely created by men, for men. In fact, women historically have not been allowed to participate in those original sporting experiences…. It speaks to just the ways in which men’s sports has been seen as the default….

From that perspective, men’s sports has never had any kind of sex verification component.. Yes, there’s tests for doping…. but there’s never been any kind of a test where you have to prove that you’re male enough to be eligible for men’s sports because … from a competitive balance standpoint. It’s the women’s category where the athletes are “lesser.”

For men’s sports, the thought is that if you’re elite enough to be there, you’re elite enough to be there, whereas in women’s sports, there is such an idea of being “too good of an athlete,” being “too strong,” “too fast.” And so, therefore, the boundaries placed upon that category have always been regulated and policed.

It seems like there’s a lack of scientific studies on trans athletes. Why is that?

I do think that we’re going to get a bunch of data within the next, like, four or five years that is going to address some of the lack of data that we have now…..Of course, there’s a wealth of data around elite cisgender women versus elite cisgender men, and that data is often misappropriated to describe perceived and unexpected outcomes for transgender women in women’s sports.

That is not to say that there is no data surrounding the impact of transition on athletic outcomes. That does exist. [There are a] couple of studies [looking at things like trans people’s muscle mass and their bodies’ oxygen use during intense exercise]…. But all of the other data that we have around transgender people performing athletic feats, even if it’s not around transgender athletes specifically, would indicate that physiologically, transgender women are different from cisgender men.

We know way less about transgender athletes specifically and the ways in which various medical transition approaches affect athletic performance outcomes…. A big part of that is that doing a longitudinal data set… would require a certain number of athletes, [and] there just aren’t that many. And it’s kind of a new area of study. Those sorts of things take time…. Science takes time, and that is inconvenient for where we are at, from a legislative and a policy development standpoint.

You’ve noted a study that found that Connecticut’s best-funded schools typically win more state sports titles. Beyond funding, what other sorts of advantages do people typically overlook in sports?

If you come from a higher socio-economic background, you’re more likely to have the ability to access sports than somebody who does not….. We accept that if your family has the money to pay for a quarterback coach when you’re 12 years old, then that is something that is fair to do, but it’s objectively not fair in the sense that not everybody can afford to do that.

And… [there’s] interest in what sports are selected for participation, what sports are fielded…. My high school [was] a huge hockey school, huge lacrosse school, we have a rowing center, we field the polo team. And if you are a student at my high school…. then [you] could have access to collegiate opportunities around those sports that kids down the street at Knox High School just don’t have, right?… [Without that,] how do you develop the skill to be competitive in your sport of choice?….

Separate from that, when we look at elite athletes, they’re all physiological anomalies. That’s the point, right? Their bodies do different things from the rest of us. It’s one of the reasons why they’re such successful athletes, and we don’t have data that quantifies one being more advantageous over the other, and how that then compares to the perceived advantages of transgender athletes and transgender women … in women’s sports.

That’s a data set that I would be very interested in knowing: How much of an advantage is being tall in being a sprinter and swimming compared to having flexible joints? I think about Gretchen Walsh, phenomenal sprinter. She has incredibly flexible joints, and her underwater [movements] are incredible. And it is largely I’m sure it is aided by the fact that her elbows bend way further than they should.

How has this issue become one of the top ones this election season?

Sports… is one of our most emotional touch points as Americans. Broadly, we love sports and we love to hate sports and hate each other because of who we root for. And you know, sports and fandom is something that is both developed through participation and also is hereditary. You know, I grew up rooting for Ohio State football because my dad loves Ohio State football…. These fandoms and rooting interests create cultural bonds, and they are deeply, deeply meaningful to a lot of people in this country.

And then when you overlay that with ideas about gender norms… where folks have feelings about the way that things should be in this world, and that is being refracted through the dual lens of gender and sport. And when you couple that with a very clear argument from those who are in favor of a restrictive policy that “boys shouldn’t play girls sports,” well, that is going to get a lot of people going, right?

You’ve said there might not be a policy on trans inclusion in sports that will politically satisfy everybody. But is there a policy that you would consider fair, even if just for elementary, middle, and high school athletes?

Stakes matter a lot in what I think and what I personally view as good policy…. [My stated position is that] for K-12 sports, a restriction is inappropriate. Kids [should] play where they want to play. One of the reasons why I say this and believe this is because even at a high school level, I just can’t get to a place morally and philosophically where I think requiring student kids and minors to medicate in order to play sports in accordance with their gender identity is appropriate. There are times where that is physiologically messy; I recognize that. But for me, that’s where I’m at.

And for young people, it’s like, why does it matter where seven-year-olds play soccer? Why does it matter where 10-year-olds run on a track? I don’t really think that it does, especially from a stakes perspective. These are school sports, and it’s not that high school championships don’t matter — they matter a lot.

I think as we move further up the ladder, restriction is fine as long as there is a path to participation for transgender women and women’s sports at all levels, even at the Olympic level. It’s not like you can’t have hoops, but people need to be able to jump through those hoops, and their participation needs to be accepted as fair and valid once they do jump through those hoops.

There’s a large swath of folks who are in favor of restrictive policy, for whom any policy that allows for a trans woman to participate in the women’s category is seen as a failure of policy. I don’t think the science backs that at this time, and I reserve the right to change my mind.

You’ve noted a lack of empathy on this issue. How might an increase be fostered to help move the conversation forward?

Folks spend a lot of time talking past each other on this topic. It doesn’t matter where you stand. I certainly, I think that is generally true. And so whether we’re talking about or thinking about an athlete who’s at the center of a controversy, such as, you know, athletes I’ve written about — like Mack Beggs, Andraya Yearwood, Lia Thomas, who’s experiencing a tremendous amount of public scrutiny — I often think about how they feel. I don’t know that everybody does.

For athletes who are fearful of what it means to play with and or against a transgender athlete, what are their concerns? How do they feel? Why do they feel that way? I don’t know that there is an interest from some folks in hearing that perspective … if you don’t agree with that perspective, I don’t know that there is a desire to think about why that athlete may feel that way or what’s driving them to share their perspective and to speak.

So there’s just so much tension and difficulty, and just a lack of nuance around this topic that I think it really strips people of their ability to, you know, quote, unquote, walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes. And I think we would all be better served as we’re having this conversation culturally in doing that.

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