AIPS e-College: Navratilova and Women’s Sports Policy Working Group offer scientific insights into transgender debate
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova
LAUSANNE, May 19, 2021 – Many years ago tennis legend Martina Navratilova played against a transgender opponent, Renée Richards, who would go on to become her coach. And even though the then world number one never lost to Richards, science – according to her - has shown that her opponent still had sex-linked advantages despite undergoing reassignment surgery in 1975. “As a male player she was what we call a journey man - she would not have even been in the top 100. She was 40-plus years old when she came on the women's tour, barely trained but was ranked in the top 30. Now she is in her 80s and she herself said she should not have been allowed to compete; it wasn't fair.”
While there is a long history of transgender people in sports, with Richards suing to play at the 1977 US Open, the debate over their participation in women’s sports has been heating up in recent years. “In the United States this discussion has been prominent in news coverage, unfortunately there’s a real division on how it’s covered,” noted Donna de Varona, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in swimming and prominent champion of women’s sports.
Navratilova, de Varona, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an American swimming champion and civil rights lawyer, as well as Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester, were the speakers of the eye-opening AIPS e-College global session on “Transgender politics: science vs ideology”, which attracted over 200 attendees from around the world.
WSPWG Navratilova, de Varona and Hogshead-Makar are founding members of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG) which was launched early this year and is on a mission to establish a middle ground in the contentious debate, where one side is insisting on an outright ban on transgender athletes, while the other side is seeking full inclusion.
“More than a year ago a group of us, who have been very active in women's sports and in getting athletes’ rights and voice in sports management and participation, came together to start to study how we could understand the policies and how to include transgender athlete participation in sport, as well as protect the separate sport category of women and girls participation in sport,” de Varona explained.
SCIENCE Navratilova added that the group has approached the complex issue from a purely scientific viewpoint which split transgender athletes into three basic categories, whereby transgender girls and women who have not experienced any stage of male puberty may be included in girls’ and women’s sport without conditions or limitations. She continued: “The second group is trans women who have gone through male puberty but are not mitigating the sex-linked advantages; they can be on the team, but no head-to-head competition whether contact or non-contact sports. Then the third group is trans women who have gone through male puberty but are taking hormones or have mitigated their advantage; according to the NCAA, Olympic rules etc. they can compete.”
SEX SEGREGATION IN SPORTS Hogshead-Makar’s presentation focused on why there is sex segregation in sports. “There should be no discrimination based on gender identity in employment, in housing, banking, public accommodations, voting, classroom education, but sports does allow sex segregation,” she said. She compared the testosterone levels of female and male and highlighted a giant performance gap, then further explained that “there are no further physical criteria that could be used to determine eligibility that would similarly assure biological women would have equal opportunities in competitive sports.” Putting American multiple Olympic and world champion swimmers Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte side by side, Hogshead-Makar noted that they both have the same weight, height and wingspan, still Franklin’s world record time would tie for 50th in the US men’s Olympic trials.
“A lot of times you'll hear people say, this is a human rights issue, and I would agree, it is a human rights issue but following human rights principles that support fairness and giving females an opportunity to be able to participate in sports. We want to be able to include as much as possible, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we define the boundaries of the girls and women's category in the same way that you define the category of the 140-pound weight class, for instance.
“There are categories that exist throughout sports. So, we have these categories in order to give lots of different people opportunities to be able to win, to be able to get the honour and recognition and everything that they deserve.”
Hogshead-Makar explained that this also means “a transgender man who was born XX female but identifies as a male is welcome in the women’s category so long as they don’t try to gain the male advantage, so long as they don’t go on performance enhancing drugs”.
SECONDARY SEX CHARACTERISTICS Still on the need for a “protected female category in sports”, Hilton, who studies sex-linked and other genetic disorders in humans, shared some of her data sets that explain the physiology of trans women who have been through puberty. Her presentation showed that the development of secondary sex characteristics at puberty gives male the upper hand over female in sports performance and that is why over 3000 males – since the year 2000 – have run faster than Florence Griffith-Joyner’s women’s 100m record of 10.49 seconds, which has stood since 1988. “In the US, the NBA, the NFL and the MLB actually permit females, there is no regulatory barrier, so why aren’t there females in those teams,” Hilton asked rhetorically. For instance, famous WNBA player Brittney Griner is 6ft 8 inches - “an extraordinary height for a female” - and has a 24-inch leap, but Tyrone Bogues, one of the shortest ever to play in the NBA, can jump 44 inches off the ground, which is an impossible leap for a female to achieve, according to Hilton’s data. Hilton also added that “schoolboy males tend to start surpassing elite females around the age of 14 to 15 years old.”
Speaking of transgender women who have been suppressing their testosterone for 12 months, according to the criteria of some sports federations, Hilton shared the summary of two independent reviews that covered 800 transgender women. “The magnitude of loss in transwomen is much smaller than the baseline gap between people who have been through male puberty and people who haven’t been through male puberty. And it’s clear to me that those small losses are insufficient to create parity within a female category, especially in terms of muscle strength.” Hilton is, however, not a member of Women’s Sports Policy Working Group.
FIRST TRANSGENDER ATHLETE IN TOKYO? In line with the WSPWG policies, Hogshead-Makar said that New Zealand transgender weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard should be allowed to compete in the rescheduled Tokyo Games “if she checks all the boxes”. The IOC guidelines issued in November 2015 allows athletes who transition from male to female to compete in the women’s category provided their testosterone levels are below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition. Hubbard competed in men’s weightlifting competitions before transitioning in 2013.
COMMUNICATION When asked about the best way to communicate this delicate matter so that people can understand, Navratilova said: “There is no simple answer to this. Our group and our ideas are based on science, and we are trying to include as many trans women and girls as possible, to compete in sports, you know, we want to have it all, but we can't have it all. It’s really difficult to imagine how you can communicate this properly without offending somebody. If you include every self-identifying transgender female into women's sports, we will not see women winning for much longer as there are so many more transgender women and men in our society today. If we exclude everybody then they say we don't really care about anything… So, you may want to have it all, but most times it's not possible, you have to give up something; I gave up my country so I could compete because I was being excluded by my Federation.”
REPORTING With regard to reporting on the issue, de Varona said: “If you're a journalist, you'd have to look at the science, look at the research and write up a balanced article. What we find is demonizing, name-calling, and a lot of journalists are afraid of the issue because they don't want to report on it because it seems so confusing, and it is complex work.”
THIRD CATEGORY? Navratilova said that she spoke to some trans athletes who told her they want to compete in the women’s category, but they want to also make sure they do not have an advantage. “Most of the rhetoric or the all-inclusion is coming from somewhere else, not from the athletes themselves,” she said. Hogshead-Makar added that numerous trans athletes are in agreement with the WSPWG policies and have joined the group as supporters. Then in response to a question about having a third category, de Varona said transgender athletes do not want their own category; they want to compete in either the male category or the female category.
CASTER SEMENYA When asked about the case of double Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya, Hogshead-Makar explained that what she has is a DSD (difference of sexual development), adding that the South African middle-distance runner will have to adhere to the eligibility regulations of World Athletics if she wants to compete in her favourite event. “Unfortunately, the manner and way in which Caster's medical information was released was unethical unfair-punishing and embarrassing,” de Varona opined. The WSPWG is however "mostly talking about transgender women", according to Hogshead-Makar. Having seen a "tidal wave that is coming - of our youths that are identifying differently than the sex they were born", the group is "trying to get ahead of the curve".
While there is a long history of transgender people in sports, with Richards suing to play at the 1977 US Open, the debate over their participation in women’s sports has been heating up in recent years. “In the United States this discussion has been prominent in news coverage, unfortunately there’s a real division on how it’s covered,” noted Donna de Varona, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in swimming and prominent champion of women’s sports.
Navratilova, de Varona, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an American swimming champion and civil rights lawyer, as well as Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester, were the speakers of the eye-opening AIPS e-College global session on “Transgender politics: science vs ideology”, which attracted over 200 attendees from around the world.
WSPWG Navratilova, de Varona and Hogshead-Makar are founding members of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG) which was launched early this year and is on a mission to establish a middle ground in the contentious debate, where one side is insisting on an outright ban on transgender athletes, while the other side is seeking full inclusion.
“More than a year ago a group of us, who have been very active in women's sports and in getting athletes’ rights and voice in sports management and participation, came together to start to study how we could understand the policies and how to include transgender athlete participation in sport, as well as protect the separate sport category of women and girls participation in sport,” de Varona explained.
SCIENCE Navratilova added that the group has approached the complex issue from a purely scientific viewpoint which split transgender athletes into three basic categories, whereby transgender girls and women who have not experienced any stage of male puberty may be included in girls’ and women’s sport without conditions or limitations. She continued: “The second group is trans women who have gone through male puberty but are not mitigating the sex-linked advantages; they can be on the team, but no head-to-head competition whether contact or non-contact sports. Then the third group is trans women who have gone through male puberty but are taking hormones or have mitigated their advantage; according to the NCAA, Olympic rules etc. they can compete.”
SEX SEGREGATION IN SPORTS Hogshead-Makar’s presentation focused on why there is sex segregation in sports. “There should be no discrimination based on gender identity in employment, in housing, banking, public accommodations, voting, classroom education, but sports does allow sex segregation,” she said. She compared the testosterone levels of female and male and highlighted a giant performance gap, then further explained that “there are no further physical criteria that could be used to determine eligibility that would similarly assure biological women would have equal opportunities in competitive sports.” Putting American multiple Olympic and world champion swimmers Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte side by side, Hogshead-Makar noted that they both have the same weight, height and wingspan, still Franklin’s world record time would tie for 50th in the US men’s Olympic trials.
“A lot of times you'll hear people say, this is a human rights issue, and I would agree, it is a human rights issue but following human rights principles that support fairness and giving females an opportunity to be able to participate in sports. We want to be able to include as much as possible, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we define the boundaries of the girls and women's category in the same way that you define the category of the 140-pound weight class, for instance.
“There are categories that exist throughout sports. So, we have these categories in order to give lots of different people opportunities to be able to win, to be able to get the honour and recognition and everything that they deserve.”
Hogshead-Makar explained that this also means “a transgender man who was born XX female but identifies as a male is welcome in the women’s category so long as they don’t try to gain the male advantage, so long as they don’t go on performance enhancing drugs”.
SECONDARY SEX CHARACTERISTICS Still on the need for a “protected female category in sports”, Hilton, who studies sex-linked and other genetic disorders in humans, shared some of her data sets that explain the physiology of trans women who have been through puberty. Her presentation showed that the development of secondary sex characteristics at puberty gives male the upper hand over female in sports performance and that is why over 3000 males – since the year 2000 – have run faster than Florence Griffith-Joyner’s women’s 100m record of 10.49 seconds, which has stood since 1988. “In the US, the NBA, the NFL and the MLB actually permit females, there is no regulatory barrier, so why aren’t there females in those teams,” Hilton asked rhetorically. For instance, famous WNBA player Brittney Griner is 6ft 8 inches - “an extraordinary height for a female” - and has a 24-inch leap, but Tyrone Bogues, one of the shortest ever to play in the NBA, can jump 44 inches off the ground, which is an impossible leap for a female to achieve, according to Hilton’s data. Hilton also added that “schoolboy males tend to start surpassing elite females around the age of 14 to 15 years old.”
Speaking of transgender women who have been suppressing their testosterone for 12 months, according to the criteria of some sports federations, Hilton shared the summary of two independent reviews that covered 800 transgender women. “The magnitude of loss in transwomen is much smaller than the baseline gap between people who have been through male puberty and people who haven’t been through male puberty. And it’s clear to me that those small losses are insufficient to create parity within a female category, especially in terms of muscle strength.” Hilton is, however, not a member of Women’s Sports Policy Working Group.
FIRST TRANSGENDER ATHLETE IN TOKYO? In line with the WSPWG policies, Hogshead-Makar said that New Zealand transgender weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard should be allowed to compete in the rescheduled Tokyo Games “if she checks all the boxes”. The IOC guidelines issued in November 2015 allows athletes who transition from male to female to compete in the women’s category provided their testosterone levels are below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition. Hubbard competed in men’s weightlifting competitions before transitioning in 2013.
COMMUNICATION When asked about the best way to communicate this delicate matter so that people can understand, Navratilova said: “There is no simple answer to this. Our group and our ideas are based on science, and we are trying to include as many trans women and girls as possible, to compete in sports, you know, we want to have it all, but we can't have it all. It’s really difficult to imagine how you can communicate this properly without offending somebody. If you include every self-identifying transgender female into women's sports, we will not see women winning for much longer as there are so many more transgender women and men in our society today. If we exclude everybody then they say we don't really care about anything… So, you may want to have it all, but most times it's not possible, you have to give up something; I gave up my country so I could compete because I was being excluded by my Federation.”
REPORTING With regard to reporting on the issue, de Varona said: “If you're a journalist, you'd have to look at the science, look at the research and write up a balanced article. What we find is demonizing, name-calling, and a lot of journalists are afraid of the issue because they don't want to report on it because it seems so confusing, and it is complex work.”
THIRD CATEGORY? Navratilova said that she spoke to some trans athletes who told her they want to compete in the women’s category, but they want to also make sure they do not have an advantage. “Most of the rhetoric or the all-inclusion is coming from somewhere else, not from the athletes themselves,” she said. Hogshead-Makar added that numerous trans athletes are in agreement with the WSPWG policies and have joined the group as supporters. Then in response to a question about having a third category, de Varona said transgender athletes do not want their own category; they want to compete in either the male category or the female category.
CASTER SEMENYA When asked about the case of double Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya, Hogshead-Makar explained that what she has is a DSD (difference of sexual development), adding that the South African middle-distance runner will have to adhere to the eligibility regulations of World Athletics if she wants to compete in her favourite event. “Unfortunately, the manner and way in which Caster's medical information was released was unethical unfair-punishing and embarrassing,” de Varona opined. The WSPWG is however "mostly talking about transgender women", according to Hogshead-Makar. Having seen a "tidal wave that is coming - of our youths that are identifying differently than the sex they were born", the group is "trying to get ahead of the curve".
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