The Sprint Against Progress: How Sport is Being Weaponised to Maintain Social Hierarchy

The myth of the demonic trans person who simply transitions to dominate women’s sports is perhaps one of the most effective fables about trans people. It is so dominant that—and those who have incentive to spread this—even allies and sympathisers to the cause of transgender civil rights sometimes have a hard time stomaching the idea of a transgender sportsperson.

But it is exactly that: a myth. A myth’s inherent power lies in its ability to replace reality with ideology and imagination. It is able to play on an individual’s worst fears, and enables them to fill in an unknown outcome, even if there is already evidence for that outcome that already exists, yet the individual does not think, or does not wish to look for that evidence.

Yet, it is not simply average or uneducated individuals who buy into this red herring. Medical transition, with roots in Weimar Germany, has existed for roughly a century. Transgender individuals have competed in sports of their true sex and gender for at least half a century. The case of Renee Richards—a trans woman who competed at the US Open in the women’s category, and, might I add, did not win—is irrefutable evidence of this fact.

Nevertheless, organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and the British Football Association have taken the gutless decision to institute an outright ban on transgender athletes from competing in the women’s category.

Well, one might think, there must be just cause for this decision. In the history of the Olympics, only a single trans woman has competed in the women’s category. Laurel Hubbard, an athlete from New Zealand who competed in 2021, is that single athlete, who happened to be trans, that has been selected to compete in the Olympics by her country. Trans people have been eligible to compete since 2004, with strict criteria in place. 

If trans women are so dominant in women’s sports, I ask, why were women’s Olympics teams not packed full of transgender women? 

The glaringly obvious answer is that it is a myth. Neither Renee Richards nor Laurel Hubbard won gold in either of these competitions.

A further myth—that men transition so that they can dominate women’s sports—is utterly preposterous. The idea that someone would willingly live in the body of the wrong sex simply to win a sporting competition, does not hold up to scrutiny. What individual—trans or cis—would willingly live in a body of the wrong sex?

Previous rules and proposals have stated that no athlete may compete in the women’s category if they went through male puberty; yet, those same legislators and ruler-writers create a Catch-22 for trans people by banning puberty blockers and transition under-18.

Coupled with a misunderstanding of the effects of HRT—which has been shown in studies to equalise the performance of a trans woman so that it is comparable to that of a cis woman—another form of prejudice is also relied on for this myth to hold its weight: misogyny.

The idea that women who happen to be trans are men, and that men are so superior to women—not simply physically, as demonstrated by the governing bodies of snooker and darts (hardly the sports requiring the most physical prowess), but in every competitive way conceivable—are the premises relied upon to justify these compounding, discriminatory bans. 

Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, the harm induced by these bans are not simply limited to trans women. Cisgender intersex women, like Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya, are proof of this.

Despite being cisgender, because she was intersex, Imane Khelif, who represented Algeria—a country hardly renowned for its sexually liberated and strong LGBTQ+ culture—was subjected to untold amounts of abuse for being too successful at the 2024 Olympic Games. Self proclaimed guardians of women’s rights, JK Rowling and Elon Musk, were both named in a cyberbullying lawsuit filed by Khelif, in France.

Semenya has been primarily impacted by a different kind of difficulty—a physical one imposed on her by immutable, binary ideas of what sex is. Semenya was compelled to take contraceptive pills to alter her naturally high testosterone levels, which she said made her feel “constantly sick” and gave her panic attacks.

Trans women do not conclusively have a noticeable physical advantage; some cisgender intersex women do, but so what? If sport is not about natural physical advantage, then what is it about?

The harm of the obsession over one’s chromosomes, genitals and hormones is not simply confined to transgender and intersex women; the IOC recently announced the reintroduction of sex tests—which were discontinued for a multiplicity of factors, including both false positives and natural variations. Their reintroduction is akin to a witch hunt, and does not benefit anyone. Going exclusively after athletes competing in the women’s category, and punishing them for being different for something outside of their control, only serves to pacify those reactionaries who cry out for a Salem Athletics Trial targeting women who do not fit their fictitious worldview.

Anti-social justice warriors, like JK Rowling, are so consumed by their hatred of trans people that they either refuse to see or refuse to care about the harm it causes women and other vulnerable minority groups. 

These people are simply reactionaries masquerading as ‘true’ progressives who, rather than dismiss the rhetoric and ideals of liberal egalitarianism, take its rhetoric, strip its spirit, and repurpose it to uphold rigid social hierarchies and control others’ bodies.

Any individual or group who purports to care about minorities, yet demonises the most vulnerable of all, is no defender of minorities but a foe of them.

Image: Flickr/Andy Miah

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