Hate and discrimination toward transgender athletes is the latest development in a rich history of harmful gender segregation in sports. In early February, President Donald Trump’s administration issued an executive order that effectively bans trans athletes from women’s sports in federally funded programs, such as public grade schools and universities, by threatening to withdraw funds. Soon after, the NCAA, which governs all three divisions of college athletics, also changed its policies to ban trans women from women’s sports. More recently, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) teased a new bill that would codify Trump’s executive order, further oppressing trans women in sports.
These changes, fueled by an ultraconservative administration, threaten equality in sports from youth to professional levels. Trans, nonbinary, genderfluid and gender non-conforming people exist and must be permitted to live and function in a world that is not structured around a binary to which many do not conform. If Americans want to eliminate the current discrimination against trans athletes, then we need to let go of our historic allegiance to gender binaries in sports.
Fundamentally, arguments for gender segregation in sports are grounded in the fairness of competition, which is sustained by modern capitalistic systems. In a market-based global economy, making a career out of sports means you must be as good at your trade — your sport — as possible, further intensifying its competitive aspect. The Trump administration and NCAA want to shut trans and gender non-conforming people out of sports because of the notion that being the best in a competition is the only positive outcome that one can achieve. While competition is undoubtedly a key aspect of sports, it is not the only way athletes grow and better themselves — boosted self-confidence, physical health and mental well-being are all benefits of participating in sports. Trump and his allies in the NCAA claim that their new policies promote “safe and fair” sports environments, but irony drips from those words. Trans and gender non-conforming athletes have been displaced from an environment already structured in a discriminatory way.
In 1936, track and field athlete Helen Stephens was the first female Olympian to be accused of “being a man in disguise.” After winning the 100-meter dash against the reigning champion, Polish runner Stella Walsh, Stephens was hounded by journalists for not presenting as sufficiently feminine — despite the International Olympic Committee forcing her to undergo sex testing prior to the competition. Driven by stereotypical ideas of femininity, separating sports by gender has never been in the service of women. Our current system only developed due to our global idealization of femininity, in sports and otherwise, as well as male insecurity toward competitive female athletes.
That’s why I laugh at critics who defend gender discrimination toward trans athletes as advancing and uplifting cisgender women. If our system of sports segregation was not already forcing women into boxes and prescribing women feminine qualities, perhaps these current conflicts over gender identity would not exist.
With the new policies from the NCAA, the few trans women competing in collegiate sports are targeted — and this is not limited to only public universities with federal funding. Even Emory University’s collegiate sports are subject to the new gender discrimination policies. So, in the face of the NCAA folding to an oppressive U.S. government, I have a question for Emory, who declined to comment on this article: Will you fold? Peer institutions like Stanford University are giving into the pressure from the NCAA and the Trump administration, seemingly posed to follow the policy and ban trans women from participating in female athletics. Whether or not we have genderqueer or trans athletes at Emory, our administration must take a stand to support them, lest we foster an environment where they are not welcome.
Enough evidence dismissing concerns over trans women athletes dominating women’s sports has been propounded that it is clear these policymakers do not truly value equality in sports. The time has come for the NCAA, professional sports organizations, the federal government and even Emory to rethink how we segregate our sports based on gender. Mixed-gender sports, such as medley swimming, have seen a rise in support — even with persisting critiques of competitive fairness, younger generations generally agree on the benefits of co-ed sports, including promoting gender equality. Our university, as well as us as students, have a duty to pursue the change that we hope to see in the world of collegiate sports.
Take Emory’s Gender Expansive and Women’s Ultimate frisbee team (EGEWU) as an example of how club sports, and perhaps eventually other teams on campus, can make athletic spaces more inclusive. EGEWU promotes its group as a “welcoming space for LGBTQ and trans athletes” and “the first of [its] kind at Emory.” The benefits of mixed-gender sports are apparent: Instead of forcing a genderqueer student to reckon with a gender binary to participate in sports, you embrace openness with co-ed opportunities. Gender has riddled sports competitions for years, but we have not yet attempted to change the system — instead, we’ve allowed athletes like Lia Thomas and Imane Khelif to be publicly harassed. For Thomas and Khelif, their apparently controversial gender identities overshadowed their journeys to peak athleticism. Although it may intimidate some proponents of gender-segregated sports, overhauling this discriminatory system needs to start from the ground up — once we prioritize gender inclusivity in student-run sports, there will be more pressure and precedent for change beyond.
We are so preoccupied with artificially designing fairness by segregating by gender that we miss the opportunity to make collegiate, recreational and professional sports truly fair. By remaining desperately attached to gender segregation in sports, we threaten the integrity of competition — throwing out athletes like Thomas and Khelif, who have worked as hard as their competitors and deserve the same chances to excel in their sports. To create a better world for trans athletes, we should start here, at our university. Fostering inclusive environments is easier said than done, and standing up to an institution that wields power is scary. But, at the end of the day, trans, nonbinary and genderqueer students should all feel included and safe on our campus — our athletes should sweat over their sports, not over their identities.
Ellie Fivas (she/her) (26C) is from Cleveland, Tenn., and is majoring in political science and history on the pre-law track. She manages the Wheel’s opinion section and the Editorial Board. When she is not writing for her political column Electoral Ellie, she works in prison education, leads a human rights club and works at the Emory Writing Center. In her free time, you can find her reading trashy romances and The New York Times, basking on the Quadrangle and doing crossword puzzles.
