In the April 2025 edition of The Union, a pro/con debate was issued on whether transgender athletes should participate in sports with the gender they identify with. Being a transgender girl, I was drawn to the reasoning for why transgender athletes should not play in the category of their gender. In order to confirm the story’s claims, I looked up the evidence used, but was ultimately left perplexed. Not only was the terminology used by the author, Connor Long, inaccurate and insensitive towards trans people, but some claims in Long’s story were not supported, and were even contradicted, by his own evidence. On behalf of myself and other students, cisgender and transgender alike, we agree that this scrutinized the transgender population and blurred the line between making a half-baked argument and recklessly talking about an issue that affects the livelihood of a beat-down minority.
Long’s word choices about transgender people degrade them by presenting language used against trans people and also by portraying their gender identity as only their sex assigned at birth. For example, he uses inaccurate terminology such as “transgenderism” in the first sentence and “biological men” throughout the story. The Cambridge Dictionary defines transgenderism as “the fact of not having your gender match with the body you were born with,” but adds that the term is pejorative and usually used by those “who want to suggest that transgender people are wrong about their gender”. This language is unacceptable when discussing trans people, as it negates the gender identity of trans people by portraying it as inherently inaccurate. Beyond being a negative term, his use of the word implies that he could have written the story as someone who disapproves of trans identities, which could further set the context for why he wrote about such topic. Additionally, Long’s conflation of gender and sex under the phrases “biological men” or “biological women” simplifies gender into being inherited from sex. This is problematic, as there are distinctive definitions of sex and gender used by multiple institutions such as the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association. Although some readers may already understand the distinction between sex and gender, it is important to clarify the definitions, as many may not understand the differences. According to Carolyn Mazure’s article in Yale School of Medicine, “What Do We Mean By Sex and Gender?”, sex is a classification made by our observations of people’s bodies and fits into two categories: male and female. Intersex refers to those whose sex does not fit entirely within the sex categories of male and female. In contrast, gender is a classification made by society, and could potentially not be visible on the outside to others. Gender identity is one’s inner sense of gender, despite societal views of gender. Whenever someone’s gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth, they are cisgender. However, whenever someone’s gender identity doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth, they are transgender. For simplicity, the term “transgender” will be used in this letter as a broad category beyond people transitioning between the male and female genders, with gender identities such as nonbinary, agender, bigender, and more being vested under it. Whether or not Long intended to portray trans people in such a way to negate their gender identity or not, he is still responsible for his word choices and must use terms that respect, rather than disrespect, the transgender population.
In addition to Long’s careless word choices, his claims and use of sources are also problematic. Long provided no specific names to studies other than giving a description of who hosts the studies and what happened in them; I was able to find 3 of the 5 documents he cited. Long cites two studies from the National Library of Medicine, two from the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and one being the United States Constitution. The two unknown documents are from the National Library of Medicine and could not be found due to the multitude of studies on the same topics and no name being provided for them, leaving no clarification for what specific studies he refers to. For example, Long states that a study from the National Library of Medicine finds that “trans women maintain higher bone density after hormone replacement therapy when compared to biological women,” but the National Library of Medicine also houses the 2023 review “The Impact of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy on Physical Performance” by Ada Cheung, which claims that previous studies “assessing [areal mineral bone density] have produced inconsistent observations, particularly in trans women,” possibly as a result of bone density measurements over time being obstructed by the fat redistribution, an effect of hormone replacement therapy. Additionally, in his second paragraph, Long claims that transgender men “compete at a disadvantage due to a lack of muscle mass and lung capacity,” and should therefore be barred from participating in men’s athletics. However, Long’s argument is refuted by one of his own sources from the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The 2020 study “Effect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislators” by Timothy Roberts examined the performance of members of the United States Air Force on sit-ups, push ups, and a 1.5 mile run. It supervised the performance of cisgender men and women and the performance of transgender men and women both prior to starting hormone replacement therapy and throughout over two years of the treatment. One finding of the study was that after two years of estrogen therapy, trans women were on par with cisgender women in the performance of the number of push ups and sit-ups in one minute, but ran 1.5 miles at an average of ninety seconds faster than cisgender women. Cisgender men were able to run 1.5 miles at an average of forty-five seconds faster than transgender women. Another finding of the study was that after taking testosterone for a year, transgender men had been able to perform the same number of push-ups and run 1.5 miles at the same time as cisgender men, and even outdid the performance of cisgender men in sit-ups. All three exercises are linked to muscle mass, while runs are also connected to lung capacity. Therefore, Long’s claim of transgender men lacking the muscle mass and lung capacity necessary to participate in men’s sports is not grounded on evidence he had presented in the story. How did he find that transgender men would be weaker than cisgender men despite his own source stating the opposite? Regardless, an additional claim by Long is that since the United States’ constitution protects against discrimination by race and sex, accommodations in sports should be done through sex since those “choosing to identify as transgender still possess the biology of either a man or a woman,” and therefore since (presumably cisgender) “men and women” already “have rights within sports…anyone who identifies as trans should receive the rights and amenities provided for their biological sex.” With this quote, Long intertwines sex and gender as the same thing while also failing to account for the diversity of transgender people. By declaring trans people to possess the biology of either men or women, he implies that gender is inherent to how one is born, again forming a layer of language that implies denial of people being able to self-determine their gender, especially for those under the nonbinary umbrella. Beyond delegitimizing transgender athletes’ gender identities, this perspective is inaccurate as it doesn’t account for the change in sex characteristics that some trans people undergo. For example, changes in both primary and secondary sex characteristics are done through surgery and hormone replacement therapy. Some transgender (including nonbinary!) people undergo a medical transition, which alters parts of their body to make their body better align with their gender identity. This can be done through hormone replacement therapy, which aims to bring hormonal levels to those of cisgender men/women, and through surgeries to alter primary and secondary sex characteristics (vaginoplasty, mastectomy, chondrolaryngoplasty, and more). These are all changes of sex characteristics, both those given at birth and through puberty. To disregard these changes would result in unfair circumstances for both transgender women and cisgender women. For example, a transgender man who has taken testosterone for a year would be able to easily perform at the same level as a cisgender man. To keep him in the same category as cisgender women because of his “biology” would ignore that he is undergoing (or has undergone) masculinizing puberty, and therefore would have an advantage over cisgender women. Additionally, a transgender woman who has taken estrogen for two years would perform similarly to cisgender women in most areas, according to the study in the prior paragraph. To pretend her performance would be just like those of cisgender men would be shortsighted, as she would not be able to compete at the same level as the cisgender men they would be forced to compete against. The transgender athletes would be under different circumstances than those of their “biology,” and sorting them with those of their sex assigned at birth would ignore such nuance.
With reductions in transgender rights in half of the states in this country and at the federal level, it is imperative that any issue relating to this minority should be written with care to prevent further transphobia and misinformation. The issue of misinformation pertaining specifically to transgender people is not limited to this story. In December of 2021, Midland Public Schools in Michigan was one of the first school districts to be falsely accused of having litter boxes for students who identify as cats. The claim was perpetuated by others in multiple school districts nationwide throughout 2022, and was even given light by podcaster Joe Rogan in a talk with Tulsi Gabbard (although Rogan later retracted the claim). The claim was further spread by Republican politicians who hoped to win elections in the 2022 midterms through fearmongering, with one notable example being then newly elected senator JD Vance, now vice president. The movement against transgender people persists to the present day, such as with President Trump’s observation of National Child Abuse Prevention Month this April to shed light on how “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse today is the sinister threat of gender ideology,” while affirming that “every perpetrator who inflicts violence in our children will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.” The repercussions of misinformation can travel far and wide, and for a school paper to publish both something that uses language derogatory to transgender people and includes inaccurate information on them is irresponsible and unacceptable, even more so in the face of a growth in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in state and federal governments.
Adriana Rodriguez Araujo, Class of 2027
Reese Durante, Class of 2027
Jaide Ledesma, Class of 2027
Jourdan Vuong, Class of 2027
