Early this week, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito proudly defended her support of the anti-trans “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” which was reintroduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and which Capito cosponsors, in an op-ed for Fox News. The legislation would create a blanket ban of all transgender athletes under Title IX from women’s school sports under threat of revoking federal funding for the institution.
Capito’s reasoning relies on the vastly oversimplified assumption that any athlete assigned male at birth has a distinct and unavoidable advantage over cisgender (gender identity matches biological sex) females. But that’s not the case.
It seems circulating testosterone is the key factor under consideration in athletic performance. The underlying assumption behind trans bans in sports is that a “biological male” will always have higher levels of testosterone than a biological female and will therefore always perform better. The matter is so much more complex. Dr. Joshua D. Safer, who provided an expert declaration in the court case challenging Idaho’s blanket ban of trans women athletes, explained there are certain conditions in otherwise “biologically females” that can cause increased testosterone, including polyscystic ovary syndrome and “46,XY DSDs,” which Safer defines as “a group of conditions where individuals have XY chromosomes but are born with typically female external genitalia and assigned a female sex at birth.” (This is one example of what some may know as “intersex.”)
Safer also explains that before puberty, boys and girls have virtually the same amount of circulating testosterone. It’s not until puberty begins for males in their teens that testosterone levels skyrocket and create the physical changes that are considered to give them greater athletic advantage begin. As Safer writes in his court statement: “Testosterone provides less of an impact for a 14-, 15- or 16-year-old than it does for a 17- or 18-year-old.”
He then goes on to explain that trans women athletes who begin hormone therapy or take puberty blockers before puberty starts “go through puberty with the same levels of hormones as other girls and develop typically female physiological characteristics, including muscle and bone structure.” Beyond that, there are variations in DNA sequence that give athletic advantages, called “performance enhancing polymorphisms,” and anyone can win the genetic lottery to get one. For example, Michael Phelps’ body produces only half the lactic acid, which causes fatigue, of a “normal” athlete, so he naturally doesn’t tire as quickly. And yet no one fought to keep him from competing.
The International Olympic Committee and the NCAA both allow trans women athletes to participate in women’s sports after at least one year of testosterone suppressants. The IOC specifically requires trans women athletes have testosterone levels below a specified amount for at least one year in order to compete. Several studies have shown that once trans women athletes have been on their hormone regiment for a while, they perform comparably to cisgender female athletes.
As you can see, there are a multitude of issues with the blanket ban Capito supports. First, it targets schools by changing the language of Title IX. As Safter’s research showed, the difference in athletic abilities between children up until high school is negligible, and the NCAA already has protocols in place for college sports. At the onset of puberty — around high school — a trans woman who has already started hormone therapy won’t experience male puberty. In other words, the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” has no practical “leveling” effect on elementary-level sports and would nullify the guidelines already in place for colleges. All it would do is force trans women athletes out of sports altogether.
Second, the bill doesn’t consider intersex athletes, nor does it provide guidance for what schools should do if a trans woman athlete is forced to compete with men. Will they be provided access to facilities that match their gender identity? Also, the main summary of the bill states, “To provide that for purposes of determining compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in athletics, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” and yet there has been no explicit discussion of forcing trans men to compete in women’s sports. Trans-women alone seem to be targeted.
We don’t have a perfect solution, but we know a blanket ban that would prohibit “a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls” is not the answer. Given that West Virginia has the U.S.’s highest percentage of teens who identify as transgender, this bill — and Capito’s support for it — is a slap in the face to West Virginia’s youth.
