by: Nelson Kramer 

Editor-in-Chief

It begins with a group of parents protesting outside a high school track and field meet, objecting to a transgender athlete competing against their daughter. What starts as an isolated event escalates into the normalization of discrimination against the transgender community. Have we, as a nation, not learned from our past of hate and bigotry? Protecting the freedoms of any individual is a fight to protect these freedoms for all people. As a society, we must confront hate and violence directed at transgender people in athletics and beyond, fighting against the dehumanization disguised as civil and righteous protest.

As a cisgender male, it is clear that my individual perspective cannot capture the lived experiences of transgender people. But as I look out toward a country in outrage, with fireballs of hate speech flying from political catapults, I am struck by how polarized our society is becoming. It goes without saying that trans athletes are human beings, deserving of dignity, fairness, and the opportunity to compete and belong. They desire inclusion and acceptance in athletic spaces and physical competition just like any other athlete, transgender or not.

Now playing out online and across college campuses nationwide, the debate sparks controversy for being used as political fuel to bolster “conservative” campaigns, but is it always a genuine “question of fairness,” or does the deeper discomfort with gender nonconformity often taint it? In recent news the supreme court upholds state laws that bar transgender participation in athletics setting a precedent for states to make these decisions without productive conversation. Beyond the anger and indignation that often stem from bringing up transgender people in conversation, when it comes to sports, questions of fairness remain meaningful. The calls for solutions must be answered to ensure a civil future between opposing groups. We must create a space where people can set aside hostility and converse honestly. To debate any topic, we need to include both sides of the issue. So why do we seem to exclude the transgender viewpoint? Why are their voices and opinions shut out? Their lived insight is critical to a conversation about inclusion. Society must set aside fears of transgender people selfishly “favoring themselves” in any discussion and instead recognize that building trust between both sides is critical when creating humane policies.

How can we start to have effective conversations on the topic of transgender people? How do we answer the question of what is fair? The answer is simple: we include those who are transgender from the start.

There have been few studies on hormone therapy’s effects on athletics in the context of including transgender people, and the conclusions are mixed. Research shows a range of answers with regard to the biological fairness of including transgender athletes in general competition. The truth is that we can’t find an obvious answer to what is fair. Excluding transgender athletes until we have a “definitive” answer only guarantees that the rules and social standards we create will be incomplete, biased, possibly harmful, and ultimately unfair. Fairness might not be something we find in a lab report; similar to our past civil movements, it’s something we build through dialogue, empathy, and the willingness to understand experiences beyond our own.

(Sources: Big Think, National Library of Medicine, NPR, The Atlantic).