One post on the administration's executive order banning transwomen and girls from women's sports does not seem sufficient. I have so many things to say. I will do a separate post on the NCAA on the path it chose in issuing its own ban; and then probably another one on the all the contradictions contained in the ban; and then another about this bullshit discourse on the protection of women (the photo of the bill signing with a group of young white girls surrounding a sexual predator is gag-worthy); and the mess that is trying to categorize things as sex or gender.
Here though I muddle through some initial (though not new) thoughts.
I am on sabbatical this semester trying to complete a project on the influences of feminist ideologies of the 1970s (US context) on women's sports. And being (re)immersed in this literature has been somewhat surreal given the current discourse. Gender as a concept was not in circulation in the 70s but arguments over the role of culture, biology, political structures divided and re-divided and spawned different groups and activism within the movement that began in the late 1960s as women's liberation. Here we are, still focused on women's bodies and their boundaries and what makes a woman. (And here I thought Simone de Beauvoir had answered that question ages ago 😉.)
Ideology is always a great place to start though and so I start with the strongest of recommendations for anyone who wants to more fully understand the weaponization of trans people via a "gender ideology" discourse and who wants to be prepared to fight against this weaponization.
Read Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender?. And take notes. It is smart smart smart. They lay out how and where and who began peddling gender ideology. And if you are afraid of Judith Butler--don't be! It is a pretty accessible book--on purpose I surmise. Also--you can skip the things you don't understand. There is a lot to take from it--some of which I will share here (and certainly use in the future).
First, I dislike have to enter into debates about biological fairness when we are talking about trans participation in sport. I have talked about this elsewhere: sports are not fair on many levels (biological, economic, political). And none of these things are regulated or paid much attention.
But this emphasis on one aspect of biology --the thing that we call sex--compels me to address it. One, it is no longer clear which specific aspect of sex is being referred to. Certainly we are not talking about genitalia even though that those are--the majority of the time--what determines sex assigned at birth. And sex assigned at birth is the term being used to categorize children in this new ban.
Hormones, specifically testosterone, had been used as a marker of sex categorization despite 1) its inaccuracies in determining "sex" and 2) no strict relation to athletic performance.
The complexity of biological processes has been lost, discarded, ignored despite the fact that all the proponents of these bans hang their hats on biological fairness and then change their minds about what part of biology counts. Duke law professor Doriane Coleman was interviewed for a docuseries episode called Defending Champions (by Vice Investigates and available on Hulu) in which she agreed with testosterone regulations to determine sex for the purpose of sport. But she, professor of a Sex Law course, has changed her mind (along with the other Save Women's Sports folks) and say male puberty is now the standard. (Note that the executive order is simply sex assigned at birth regardless of puberty. Also important reminder: intersex athletes have been left in a dangerous place by the ongoing misbelief that sex is binary and best determined at first glance.)
Let's see what Butler has to say about puberty, based on actual science.
"If we claim that a person is born with a specific hormonal constitution, or we identify what happened in infancy or in puberty, and conclude that what happens later in life--in sports, example--is determined by those prior levels, we fail to account for all the interactions that activated and made sense of those hormones in specific social relationships."
Just like genes--hormones are not destiny. And hormone levels are so variable even among elite athletes meaning that "those who claim that trans women have an advantage on the playing field because of their hormonal constitutions do not take into account the complexity of hormonal interaction with the environment or the range of endogenous testosterone levels. Undergoing male puberty does not suffice to make anyone into a great athlete."
And in reality, we're not talking--for the most part--about "great" athletes. We are talking about children and young adults who want to participate in school-sponsored sports. [Also enough with the talk about scholarships being stolen when 1) there are sooooo few scholarship dollars and 2) men's sports still (illegally) receive the majority of those scholarship monies.]
I wrote all this but no one who is supportive of these bans cares about any of it. This is another reason why I dislike being pulled into a biology debate. So few people are participating in good faith. As Butler writes "what drives the exclusion of trans athletes from sport seems driven by other sorts of passions, ones unsupported by the science at hand."
But in case anyone is trying to talk about this in classrooms, with friends, family, etc. I hope this offers something--if nothing else a great book recommendation. Science-y folks with a platform--please help dispel the many myths about "biological sex" so we can all shift this discourse.
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