Misogyny and Sex in Sport
Misogyny and Sex in Sport
Women’s sports categories and the limits of “inclusion”
Reading about the recent Olympics and researching the case of Imane Khelif, I have been thinking about the case of Gavin “Laurel” Hubbard. Hubbard was the “first openly transgender” athlete, a 43-year-old man, who competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in the female division of weightlifting. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) permitted Hubbard to compete against women on the basis of its 2015 change that men can do so if they lower their testosterone levels below 10 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) for at least 12 months. In November 2021, however, the IOC went back on its 2015 policy in favor of inclusion on the basis of “gender identity,” discarding the prior requirement to lower testosterone.1
As we know, suppressing testosterone does not undo physiological changes to muscles and bones that come with male pubertal development; hormone levels can be altered medically, but physiology developed through puberty does not so easily shift. First published online December 8, 2020, Emma N. Hilton and Tommy R. Lundberg’s article “Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage” in Sports Medicine argues that data indicate strength, lean body mass, muscle size, and bone density are only minimally impacted by suppressing testosterone.2 Medically handicapping male athletes to compete in female athletics does n0ot level the playing field in terms of males having undergone male pubertal development. According to the IOC’s 2021 policy, as long as their documentation reads “female,” with or without “sex variations,” male athletes have no restrictions in competing in female athletics. The cases of Khelif now and Hubbard then are more similar than first apparent, for both illustrate IOC policymaking that prioritizes the “inclusion” of individual male athletes at the collective expense of female athletes.
For Women Are Human, in December 2020, I wrote a piece titled “Misogyny and Sex in Sport” that critiqued the “gender identity” claim made by men asserting their purported “right” to participate in women’s sports categories. As noted before, due to issues with the website ever since Women Are Human went on hiatus, I want to reprint some past writings from there to preserve them and make them more easily accessible. This piece uses the 2019 wins of Hubbard and Craig “CeCé” Telfer over women to illustrate problems with male athletes in female athletics. I have made some edits to the piece in terms of cutting more repetitious bits and changing some language for clarity (e.g., “males” instead of “people born male”). Further, I have included notes on some material once available online that must now be found using the Internet Archive, as linked.
August 31, 2024
Donovan Cleckley, “Misogyny and Sex in Sport,” Women Are Human, December 14, 2020, https://www.womenarehuman.com/misogyny-and-sex-in-sport.
That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that.
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists3
Women who don’t menstruate, cannot conceive or breastfeed are still women. Trans women are another kind of women. If this were not true, medical institutions, universities, state and federal governments would never allow trans people to change their gender markers on their IDs, as I have, from ‘M’ to ‘F’ or vice versa. If you really must know, most sexual partners, even gynecologists (at first glance) can’t detect the difference between a post-op trans woman and a woman who’s been female all her life. That’s not meant to condone non-disclosure; the vast majority of trans people are proud to say who we are and how we’ve improved our lives for the better by transitioning.
- Dawn Ennis, “Dear TERFs: A New Year’s Message to Transphobes from the Managing Editor,” Outsports, January 2, 20204
You may be thinking that since the passage of Title IX and the new improved image of the woman athlete, it has become more acceptable, hence less stigmatic, for women to be physical. Title IX has been extremely important. But the minute women claim something for ourselves and it is seen as powerful and important, especially if it becomes profitable, it immediately gets claimed and taken over by men.
- Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Women, Self-Possession, and Sport,” 1982, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law5 *
Whether in regulations or policies, even suggested guidelines, sex being subsumed within “gender identity” furthers the subordination of women and girls on the basis of sex, primarily to “affirm” men laying claim to womanhood. This practice seems increasingly evident in the ongoing public debate about whether or not sport categories should be divided on the basis of sex. Due to male pubertal development, male athletes exhibit biological and physiological sex differences, despite hormone suppression, that make their participation in female athletics unjust and unfair. Inclusion policies that privilege individual men’s identity claims over the collective welfare of women constitute a form of sex bias operating at the institutional level. Such policymaking imposes the male fantasy of being female, effectively trumping female reality for women and girls, and enforcing, at minimum, a state of female degradation in service to individual male “affirmation.”
Athletics should be separated on the basis of sex—that is, justly and fairly sex-segregated. The problem with males, including those with DSDs (differences in sex development), competing in female athletics is not about the “gender identities” of any of the participants. Participation as athletes should not pertain to a subjective perception of the self, which is “gender identity”—an identity claim at odds with reality when males assert their “right” to be female. What matters is the objective reality of the body, which, because of human sexual dimorphism, involves not only genital differences but also hormonal differences at puberty. At the level of objectivity, the sex of the body remains distinct from “gender identity” in the psyche and should be regarded as separated from it rather than subsumed within it.
Focusing on “gender identity” rather than sex makes it seem as if some female athletes may be denied their otherwise rightful participation, being female, to compete against other members of their sex in sport. But this framing is false. Instead, the problem is people’s bodies experiencing male pubertal development or the equivalent, which are, indeed, distinct from any female “gender identity” claim. The problem, then, is male competition against female athletes being a glaringly self-evident violation of the rights of women and girls in their sports categories. It is, therefore, discrimination against women and girls on the basis of sex by members of the male sex who self-identify themselves as “female” on the basis of legal fiction. The “gender identity” claim made to femaleness becomes a method for males to perpetrate legal sex discrimination against females, which perpetuates sexism.
Regardless of their “gender identities,” males should not be denied their equal participation in sport in male athletics, if they wish to do so—and there is no such prohibition on males playing among males. Allowing males to compete in sports categories with female athletes, however, subordinates about half the human population to put a minority of males on a pedestal, both literally and figuratively. While done in favor of this minority, this newer practice in the subjection of women sacrifices women’s rights for all female athletes to privilege some male athletes.
Lobbyist groups and organizations misleadingly assert that “transgender people” are being “banned” from equal participation simply for “being transgender”—that is, for their “gender identities,” treated as if another meaning of sex in policymaking. Although not made explicit, what the lobbying bodies and organizations mean is they demand for males to compete against females in sports categories. They strategically misrepresent the problem and selectively choose to deny the significance of biological and physiological distinctions between the sexes in favor of the male “gender identity” claim to femaleness.
Case I—Laurel Hubbard
In 2019, two Samoan female athletes lost a weightlifting competition to 41-year-old Gavin “Laurel” Hubbard, a white male New Zealander whose documentation says “female,” who demanded and gained the privilege to compete in the female division. Hubbard, who began claiming “womanhood” during the third decade of his life, won in competition against Feagaiga Stowers and Iuniana Sipaia.6 According to Faria Begum, reporting for FBC News, Hubbard “won two gold medals and a silver in women’s weightlifting at the Samoa 2019 Pacific Games.”7
In the Samoa Observer, Samoan journalist Mata’afa Keni Lesa asks readers how adding to the privileges of men by taking liberties, opportunities, and rights away from women constitutes empowerment for women. Such unjust conditions, at best, negate women’s rights and undo what hard-won advances women have accomplished to improve their status. Enraged on behalf of Samoan female athletes, whom he knows have made great effort, Lesa writes:
We talk a lot about empowering women, this does not empower women. If anything, it is taking power away from them. It is robbing them of what rightfully belongs to them. Which is why this needs to be addressed, sooner rather than later. We accept that the Hubbard case has garnered international attention for some years now. And this is not the first time Stowers and other women lifters have been disadvantaged.8
A 41-year-old white man who claims womanhood as if his property displaces young women of color in a weightlifting competition for women. What an illustration of the dominant ideology of the so-called “left”—treating women of color as symbolically useful but ultimately expendable, unworthy of justice and fairness on account of them being female! Males like Hubbard appear to be seen as the preferred victims of nature, while females happen to be the inconvenient ones—and, “naturally,” the women find themselves expected to nurture men. Even more than this reversal of victimization, 18-year-old Feagaiga Stowers survived sexual violence, moving forward in her career as a hardworking, young female athlete. All this work she did, only to have a win stolen from her by a male athlete. Yet, still, we hear “cisgender privilege” stamped upon women who do not disown their womanhood—as if any woman on earth would truly identify herself into the situation of the dispossessed. Made clear in this case, it seems even more absurd to suggest that female athletes, like Stowers, would identify with the charade into which they, as women, find themselves forced to play with this man.
“Intersectionality,” that buzz word, almost inevitably appears in discussions of “trans rights”—but only in a form negated by misogyny, not the kind that actually thinks critically about real hierarchies of sex, class, and race. Males laying a false claim to femaleness hold priority, which includes white men like Hubbard being prioritized over Samoan women like Stowers and Sipaia. Here we have a case of a man’s “gender identity” claim to womanhood being used to override women’s rights—with it evidently having a negative impact on minority women as women. But men’s claim to validation and comfort should not be paid for through women’s invalidation and discomfort. A truly intersectional feminist analysis, not rendered meaningless by misogyny, would take sexual difference seriously and not prioritize validating males at the expense of females. As Lesa continues in his piece:
This is why we cannot stop thinking about Stowers and how gutted she must have been, at being denied the gold medal in the women’s 87kgs division by Hubbard, who lifted a total of 268kgs. Stowers lagged behind by seven kilos. Imagine that? Given Hubbard’s genes, think of how hard Stowers had to work to try and keep up. And she did.9
We should wonder, then, to what extent unconscious sex biases in favor of males hinder self-described “progressives” from considering how men abuse and exploit the “gender identity” claim to femaleness at the expense of women and girls.
Case II—CeCé Telfer
Prior to “coming out” as “transgender,” Craig “CeCé” Telfer had competed on the men’s 400-meter hurdles team in the 2016-2017 season, not even making it in the top 200 male athletes in the event.10 In the last event Telfer competed in, prior to joining the women’s team, he finished at number eight out of nine athletes in the men’s 400 meter at the Middlebury Winter Classic in Vermont. That placing was in January 2018, followed by Telfer then joining the women’s team in October. Then, in 2019, he became a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) track champion in the female division, after having been ranked far behind in the male division. Telfer won the women’s 400-meter hurdles national title at the 2019 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships for Franklin Pierce University on May 25. Interviewed by Don “Dawn” Ennis for Outsports, Telfer referred to his development from testosterone as a disadvantage due to being on hormone suppression:
And there are people who say I have the benefit of testosterone. But no: I have no benefit. I’m on hormone suppression, it doesn’t help. It’s another disadvantage. Cis women are producing more testosterone than the average trans female [sic]. So it’s crazy! I’m the crazy one, to be the weakest female [sic], the weakest link in the chain, to be competing against the top ones. I should be fingered as the stupid one, for wanting to do that in the first place. (emphasis added)11
There is much to untangle in Telfer’s claims as uncritically quoted in Outsports. For one, females do not produce more testosterone than the average male, an erroneous claim at first glance. Perhaps Telfer fabricated his claim in assuming that some females not being stereotypically feminine produce more testosterone than males with long, painted nails. Further, Telfer claims he must be “the weakest link in the chain, to be competing against the top ones,” yet he went from being far from first in the male division to being first in the female division. Such a shift in placement seems worth questioning. Of course, Telfer’s coach attributes it to having, in his words, “never met anybody as strong as [Telfer] mentally in my entire life.”12 But we knew then—and, certainly, we know now—that members of the male sex who experience male puberty hold biological and physiological advantages over members of the female sex.
Dear Man-Who-Has-Lied-About-His-Wife-and-Himself
The implicit claim in the piece by Ennis in which Telfer is interviewed is that pubertal development has no significant, long-lasting impact on the biological and physiological development of the human body for members of the female sex. Hormone suppression would, so it seems, decrease the abilities of members of the male sex enough that they would not still hold an advantage over members of the female sex. Typical for such arguments, Ennis dishonestly compares Telfer to females with differences in sex development (DSDs) who do not undergo male pubertal development. Telfer holds no biological and physiological advantage due to being “transgender” simply because “gender identity” has nothing to do with the body having undergone male puberty or not. The trouble, again, is sex, not gender.
In an open letter, Ennis, Managing Editor at Outsports, writes: “At Outsports, we believe trans athletes have the right to compete according to their gender identity.”13 This letter exhibits many problems, including the analogy between “gender identity” and race, where there is no account of what sex means. Sex becomes subordinated to “gender identity” in this reformulation of the analogy that should rightly place sex alongside race.
But, if accepted, the analogy between gender and race would mean that nobody, accepted socially at least, could “self-identify” into being male or female, as nobody can “self-identify” into being white or Black. Plus, the analogy between gender identity and sexual orientation is false, given that being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual does not require a claim of being the opposite sex when one is not. As Black people have never insisted on actually being white inside, homosexual people have never insisted on actually being heterosexual inside and needing some inner “self” medically reified. Neither race nor sexual orientation involves an “identity” constructed by medicine and codified in law and rooted in dissociation between the mind and the body. These key differences seem ignored for the sake of a false analogy. Only under transgenderism do we allow medicalization of the human body for one to take hormones and undergo surgeries to make an identity claim to being something that one is not. Interestingly, though, Ennis writes:
When it comes to women like me, we know all about change. A lot of people have the mistaken idea that trans people undergo a ‘sex change,’ and tell us that, just like we cannot change our DNA, we also cannot change our sex. It may surprise you to learn, I agree.14
But Ennis claims that males, such as Hubbard and Telfer, can be female on the basis of “gender identity” and should be regarded as such—while also claiming to agree that nobody changes sex. Without regard to sex, however, what Outsports affirms in “gender identity” being the way in which sports categories should be separated enforces the exact opposite: sex denialism. I agree with Ennis that nobody truly undergoes a “sex change” and becomes the opposite sex, but he does not even agree with his own words.
Yet again, contrary to what Ennis asserts, there appears an underlying belief that people do become the opposite sex on the basis of a “gender identity” claim. The slogans “Trans women are women” and “Trans men are men” are precisely about the assertion that some males are truly female and some females are truly male. Revealingly, Ennis insists that males can exist as “another kind of women,” but they do not share the same sex as all people of the female sex—splitting womanhood from sex to transmogrify men’s “gender identity” claim into a female “sex change.”15
Rooted in some abstract proclamation of “the authentic self” through hormones and surgeries, Ennis’s arguments for transgenderism could be made in defense of transracialism. In addition, Ennis makes generalizations about how hormones and surgeries improve mental health over long-term for both sexes. We might also notice that Ennis focuses only on testosterone levels rather than physiological differences between the sexes that are more than merely about suppressing hormone levels. However, as published in Sports Medicine, Emma Hilton and Tommy Lundberg argue that hormone suppression does not, in fact, do much to reduce the original advantages that come with male pubertal development. Hilton and Lundberg write:
We have shown that under testosterone suppression regimes typically used in clinical settings, and which comfortably exceed the requirements of sports federations for inclusion of transgender women [sic] in female sports categories by reducing testosterone levels to well below the upper tolerated limit, evidence for loss of the male performance advantage, established by testosterone at puberty and translating in elite athletes to a 10-50% performance advantage, is lacking. Rather, the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. The reductions observed in muscle mass, size, and strength are very small compared to the baseline differences between males and females in these variables, and thus, there are major performance and safety implications in sports where these attributes are competitively significant. These data significantly undermine the delivery of fairness and safety presumed by the criteria set out in transgender inclusion policies, particularly given the stated prioritization of fairness as an overriding objective (for the IOC). If those policies are intended to preserve fairness, inclusion and the safety of biologically female athletes, sporting organizations may need to reassess their policies regarding inclusion of transgender women [sic]. (emphasis added)16
In addition, Hilton and Lundberg point out that biological and physiological advantages in members of the male sex versus members of the female sex exist even prior to pubertal development. As such, testosterone is not the sole factor at play, which would make hormone suppression alone insufficient and even questionable as to its objectives and its impact on individuals who otherwise do not desire it. Differences in terms of athletic performance between the sexes persist.
“Accommodation”—or, Putting Men’s Problems on Women
For “trans” ideologues, the slogan “Trans women are women” asserts that members of the male sex truly must be considered members of the opposite sex by virtue of the male “gender identity” claim to femaleness. Reasoning can range from men just declaring themselves “women” to men undergoing various degrees of hormonal and surgical interventions that feminize them in conflating femininity with “femaleness.” Cosmetic manufacturing or not, whatever the unnecessary medical interventions may be, man’s claim to womanhood functions in the same way to conflate “gender identity” with sex.
These same ideologues, however, insist that sex is not the same as “gender identity” and, in fact, the two can be at odds—that is, being of the male sex but claiming a “gender identity” that happens to be “female.” But, in cases like Hubbard and Telfer, we hear they must be regarded as “female” not only in social interactions, such as using “she/her/hers” pronouns, but also in terms of what sports categories they play. Being male, as in the case of both Hubbard and Telfer, should not deny one the right of individual self-expression to be “feminine” or “gender nonconforming.”
The problem, however, is men feeling they must assert their claim to womanhood, which becomes women’s collective problem to “accommodate” these men at women’s expense. Males struggling to fit into masculinity believing it makes them not male has been part of the issue. It would be more beneficial, I argue, to recognize sex as a category of significance that must be protected in law and seek to move beyond sex-role stereotyping that restricts the humanity of the sexes. While “gender identity” seems mistaken for a personality and may be special to its devotees, it should not be enshrined in law at the expense of women and girls.
Note
December 14, 2020
* I am aware that Catharine A. MacKinnon and Kimberlé W. Crenshaw have written a piece titled “Reconstituting the Future: An Equality Amendment” positing “gender identity” as compatible with protecting the civil rights of women and girls on the basis of sex. They argue:
Pregnancy, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity are grouped under ‘sex’ because they are all facets of the unified but diverse system of inequality that privileges maleness and masculinity over femaleness and femininity, enforcing sexual rules and gendered myths, roles and stereotypes, and punishing noncompliance. Discrimination against transgender or nonbinary persons based on gender or sex, including nonconformity, would be covered. Similarly, ethnicity, national origin, and color are grouped under ‘race’ because they are complexly but inexorably racialized in the United States, privileging whiteness and punishing as lesser anyone seen as not so-called white. (emphasis added)17
While what MacKinnon and Crenshaw argue may look agreeable, I would question how it actually protects women and girls on the basis of sex from having their civil rights erased and eroded through “gender identity.” The problem remains in the prioritization of the male sex over the female sex and how gender hierarchy can work in similar ways while looking different—namely, in this case, under the guise of “gender identity.” There is no reconciliation between sex and “gender identity” as long as “gender identity,” peculiarly embodied as “sexual rules and gendered myths, roles and stereotypes,” becomes enforced as the meaning of sex in civil rights law.
Much of society now believes gender to be a matter of identity, rather than a matter of hierarchy, undermining the framework posited by MacKinnon and Crenshaw from the start. Increasingly, sex does not appear considered in “identity-based” protections—at least not to the same degree as “gender identity,” which overrides sex. MacKinnon and Crenshaw invoke the analogy to race without recognizing that race, presumed to be immutable when far less rigid compared to sex, has not been deconstructed in a similar fashion to sex under “gender identity.” Seeing gender as a matter of “identity,” enforcing it as such, recasts the social as the individual. It becomes yet another manifestation of naturalizing the gender hierarchy of sexism by rewriting it as inborn and innate, thus, at least through sleight of hand, hiding the subjection of women in plain sight. There is an absence of a critical account regarding what male supremacy means in the construction of gender and how, as a consequence, the concept of “gender identity” itself creates the rights conflicts that it does.
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I have kept the “Further Reading” section the same as in the December 2020 piece to illustrate the body of work existing at the time and the preceding years of research and investigation.
Further Reading
Linda Blade, “Keeping Male Bodies Out of Women’s Rugby,” Quillette, September 27, 2020, https://quillette.com/2020/09/27/keeping-male-bodies-out-of-womens-rugby.
Donovan Cleckley, “In Defense of Sex as a Category of Significance,” Uncommon Ground Media, April 14, 2020, https://uncommongroundmedia.com/in-defense-of-sex-as-a-category-of-significance-donovan-cleckley.
Doriane Lambelet Coleman, “Sex in Sport,” Law and Contemporary Problems 80, no. 4 (2017): 63-126, https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol80/iss4/5.
Fair Play for Women, “The Impact of Trans-Inclusion Policies on Female Competitive Sports,” December 14, 2018, https://fairplayforwomen.com/sports.
Emma N. Hilton, and Tommy R. Lundberg, “Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage,” Sports Medicine 51, no. 2 (February 2021): 199-214, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3. Published online December 8, 2020.
Robert Jensen, The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 2017).
Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Women, Self-Possession, and Sport,” Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 117-124.
Meghan Murphy and Linda Blade, “Linda Blade on Why Sex-Segregated Sport Matters,” Feminist Current, March 12, 2019, https://www.feministcurrent.com/2019/03/12/podcast-why-womens-and-sex-segregated-sports-matter.
Raquel Rosario Sánchez, “If ‘White Feminism’ Is a Thing, Gender Identity Ideology Epitomizes It,” Feminist Current, July 26, 2017, https://www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/26/white-feminism-thing-gender-identity-ideology-epitomizes.
Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton, “The Dangerous Denial of Sex,” The Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089.
International Olympic Committee, “IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non- Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations,” November 2021, https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/News/2021/11/IOC-Framework-Fairness-Inclusion-Non-discrimination-2021.pdf. See also Les Carpenter, “IOC No Longer Will Determine Transgender Athlete Eligibility by Testosterone Levels,” The Washington Post, November 16, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/11/16/ioc-transgender-athlete-policy-changes.
Emma N. Hilton and Tommy R. Lundberg, “Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage,” Sports Medicine 51, no. 2 (2021): 199-214, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists, 2012 (New York: Anchor Books, 2015), 41.
Dawn Ennis, “Dear TERFs: A New Year’s Message to Transphobes from the Managing Editor,” Outsports, January 1, 2020, https://www.outsports.com/2020/1/1/21041628/terfs-transphobes-dawn-ennis-outsports-transphobia-awards.
Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Women, Self-Possession, and Sport,” 1982, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 122.
On Feagaiga Stowers, see Deidre Fanene, “Lifting Samoa—and a Burden,” Samoa Observer, March 25, 2016, https://www.samoaobserver.ws/category/sport/5368.
Faria Begum, “New Zealand Transgender Woman Wins 2 Gold at Pacific Games,” FBC News, July 14, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190715153022/https://www.fbcnews.com.fj/sports/new-zealand-transgender-woman-wins-2-gold-at-pacific-games.
Mata’afa Keni Lesa, “Hubbard Moment the Biggest and Most Blatant Injustice in Samoa XVI Pacific Games,” Samoa Observer, July 15, 2019, https://www.samoaobserver.ws/category/samoa/45741.
Lesa.
See Megan Sheets, “Transgender Woman Who Previously Competed in the Men’s Division Wins Women’s National Title in the 400-Meter Hurdles at NCAA Championship,” Daily Mail, June 2, 2019, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7097015/Transgender-woman-Cece-Telfer-wins-womens-national-title-NCAA-track-championship.html.
CeCé Telfer, “Exclusive: NCAA Champion CeCé Telfer Says ‘I Have No Benefit’ by Being Trans,” by Dawn Ennis, Outsports, March 27, 2024, https://www.outsports.com/2019/6/3/18649927/ncaa-track-champion-cece-telfer-transgender-athlete-fpu-trans-testosterone.
Zach Emerson, quoted in Sheets.
Ennis, “Dear TERFs.”
Ennis, “Dear TERFs.”
Ennis, “Dear TERFs.”
Hilton and Lundberg, 211. In 2024, I recognize writing published in peer-reviewed academic journals typically must still use terms like “transgender women” to publish, but I want the reader aware that simply “men” or “males” should be there. Phrasing like “transgender women in female sports categories” functions more to dull reader awareness than using “men in female sports categories” or “males in female sports categories.” Since 2020, over just a few years, there has been a shift in the limitations of language imposed, but it has not been substantial enough to cut away the linguistic trappings entirely.
Catharine A. MacKinnon & Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Reconstituting the Future: An Equality Amendment,” The Yale Law Journal Forum 129 (December 26, 2019): 343-364, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/reconstituting-the-future-the-equality-amendment.