Transgender women have been subject to increasing discrimination in sports under the guise of protecting opportunities for cisgender women to compete fairly and safely. However, banning transgender women serves no real purpose in protecting cisgender women; transgender women deserve the right to participate in women’s sports.
Firstly, transgender women are women. While transgender women have different sex chromosomes than cisgender women, they are more similar to cisgender women than to cisgender men because genes are not always expressed as traits. After transitioning, the primary sex characteristics of transgender women would be removed or changed through surgery, and through methods like hormone therapy, they would have similar or the same secondary sex characteristics as cisgender women.
For example, the relative muscle mass, fat mass percentages, and muscle strength corrected for the lean mass of transgender women are no different from cisgender women after hormone therapy, according to the study “The Impact of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy on Physical Performance” by the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Also, there were no meaningful differences between transgender women’s and cisgender women’s hemoglobin profiles, hemoglobin being essential in the transportation of oxygen to the muscles, according to the study “Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study” by the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
While not all traits of the average transgender woman, like hormone levels, may completely fit the average cisgender woman, these same traits vary within cisgender women; not all cisgender women are the same. Some cisgender women naturally produce more testosterone and have more muscle mass than others.
For instance, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), an endocrine disorder causing increased levels of androgens like testosterone, affects around 10% of reproductive-aged women, according to the study “Female hyperandrogenism and elite sport” by Swedish gynecologist and obstetrician Angelica Lindén Hirschberg. Cisgender women athletes with PCOS are more anabolic, have greater muscle mass, and have higher bone mineral density compared to women without PCOS, according to the same study.
The outrage over the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports has never been based on evidence or fairness. In a society that prides itself on equality and justice, transgender women deserve the right to participate in women’s sports without discrimination.