When World Athletics came out and announced that it was banning transgender women from competing in the female category, Lord Coe stated that “we must maintain fairness for female athletes”. The view seems to be that transgender women have a higher testosterone level, which provides them an unfair advantage over ciswomen and therefore to ensure a fair playing field, trans women should be banned from competing in the female category. 

First, it must be stated that transgender women athletes have been freely allowed to compete, provided they stay under certain blood testosterone levels, which is the same limits applied to ciswomen. To the best of my knowledge, the Olympics has not seen a wave of transgender athletes running the 100m in 5 seconds nor pole vaulting 300 metres. If testosterone is the hormone that provides the advantage, surely restricting testosterone levels is enough to ensure fairness? Some would argue that despite that, transgender women still retain noticeable advantages in areas such as muscle growth and density.   What is certain is that the scientific community cannot agree which is why transgender women were previously allowed to compete. 

Even if trans women retain an advantage over cis women, is that advantage unfair? Is it unfair that Usain Bolt can run the 100 metres in 9.58 when no one else has broken 9.5 seconds?  Is it unfair that Michael Phelps is a ‘biomedical freak of nature’ or that Lionel Messi has a God-given ability at football? All these top athletes have advantages. No one would say they are unfair. Should Messi be banned from football after taking the ball from the halfway line, running past 5 Bilbao players, and rifling it in the bottom corner because it's unfair on everyone else?  Some Bilbao fans might think so half-jokingly, but no one would seriously claim so. It’s goals like those, that make football so amazing. Phelps and Bolt are what make sports what it is. We rightly laud these athletes and the sporting excellence they have produced but let's not pretend that they don't have biological advantages over others. It's not fair but that's okay. We don’t want a 100-metre final where everyone runs it in 9.78, we want to see athletes run as fast as possible. That's the whole point. Furthermore, the advantage that trans women may have over cis-women is not unfair because transwomen are women. The advantage that trans-women have over cis-women is no different than the differences between other cis-women. Advantages are only considered unfair when the athlete in question is transgender and that is due in large part to the transphobia in society. It is this transphobia that prevents many people transitioning and also makes the idea that athletes would transition to gain an advantage as downright farcical. 

Transgender athletes also touch on the long tradition of separated male and female categories. Just this week, Swim England announced that from September, they would introduce an “open” category and at lower levels of competition, swimmers would be allowed to Self-ID.  This is certainly more inclusive than banning transgender athletes outright but throws up the issue of separate categorization. As Lord Coe stated, the banning of transgender athletes is to prevent fairness as transgender women have an advantage over cis-women. This leads to two conclusions. The first is that transgender women are indeed not women and therefore are men and thus that men have an advantage over women. Perhaps that is okay for athletics, and thus a male and female category is justified. What about Archery? Curling? Diving? Fencing?  Are men inherently better at these things than women are? Two things are possible. Either men are better at archery than women and thus separate classifications are justified, or they are not and therefore separate classifications are not needed. If that is the case, then there is no basis to ban transgender athletes, and everyone would be able to compete in one single category. 

An issue such as this one cannot be summed up in as few words such as this. There is something quite simple though. Transmen, transwomen and non-binary athletes are human beings. All they want is to compete against the best and be the best. The fact that transgender participation in the Olympics is even up for debate in the first place is quite telling. How would you feel about the issue if you knew a transgender athlete personally? 

Would you change how you feel about the subject?

What would you do?