ジェンダー研究

Special Section

第 23 号

2020 年

Transgender Questions: Body, Race and Identity

The ‘Feminist’ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports
Satoko Itani

Kansai University

A recent surge is observable in the discourse on transgender women’s rights
to access “women-only” spaces, particularly in the Japanese Twittersphere.
The conversation encompasses topics such as the enrolment of trans women in
women’s universities and their use of women’s bathrooms or public baths. The
debate concerning trans inclusion in sports is another aspect of this discursive
proliferation. This study examines the “feminist” discourse on the participationof transgender women in women’s competitions in the domain of sports. Twoof the most commonly occurring and visible discourses pertain to oppositional
constructions: trans exclusion because of the differences and trans inclusion
because of the sameness. This study contends that both groups of discourses are
grounded in the sexist logic of female inferiority and that both rationales reinforce
the gender binary that roots the heteropatriarchal gender order. It further argues
that the “feminist” discourse on trans exclusion aligns with the transphobic
conservative faction in attacks against the rights of trans people. Such debates also
allow the warping of feminist politics by far-right conservative groups to advancemisogynistic, homophobic, racist, and imperialist political agendas through sex
control in sport.

Keywords
transgender, sport, feminism, hyperandrogenism, transphobia

Survival becomes a project when your existence is the object of a rebuttal.
You have to survive a system that is constantly chipping away at your being.
A feminism that participates in the chipping away is not worthy of the name.
-Sara Ahmed 2016: 31

DOI：10.24567/00063792

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

Introduction
The last year witnessed a notable explosion of discussions in Japan about therights of transgender people, particularlytrans women, 1 to access gender-segregated spaces. This recent debate unfolded primarily on Twitter and was triggered by theannouncement of Ochanomizu University’s new admissions policy in July 2018,
welcoming applications from prospective
trans women students from 2020 to its
historically women-only college campus.
Although Ochanomizu University was thefirst Japanese women’s university to officially institute a trans inclusive admission
policy, 2 the decision was not unexpected.
In fact, the mandate of inclusion closely
followed a series of similar decisions taken by prominent women’s universities andcolleges in Western countries, which began opening their doors to trans women in
the mid-2010s. In 2014, Mills College became the first women’s college in the U.S.
to admit trans women. This move by Mills
College was followed by many other women-only higher educational institutions in
the country including the Seven Sisters
colleges on the East Coast of the UnitedStates. Murray Edwards College in the
United Kingdom a women-only college
affiliated to Cambridge University, alsochanged its admissions policies in 2017
to allow transgender women. 3 These recent changes in higher education reflect alarger transformation in societal attitudes
toward transgender people resulting froma growing social understanding of diverse,
non-binary gender identities and gender
expressions.
That being said, the debate on who getsto be counted as a woman and who shouldbe allowed in women-only spaces haspolarized feminist communities (Weber,2015) and also, to an extent, transgendercommunities in the United States, United
Kingdom, and other Western countries
since at least the 1970s. The publication of
The Transsexual Empire: The making of
the Sha-Male (1979) by Janice Raymond, aself-proclaimed radical feminist, triggeredthe ‘feminist’ discourse on trans exclusion.
The discussion pivots on the argument thattrans women are “biological males” whothreaten the safety of women and dominate women-only spaces without having
shared the experiences of cis women. The
significant societal and cultural changes ofthe last decade notwithstanding, feminists
against trans inclusion, identified as transexclusionary radical feminists or TERFs,
continue to iterate a set of arguments regarding the safety and rights of women andthe biological determinism of sex/gender.

1 The terms “trans woman” and “trans man” are used in this article to refer to Male-to-Female(MtF) transgender and Female-to-Male (FtM) transgender individuals, respectively.
2 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/03/national/womens-university-tokyo-accepttransgender-students/
3 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/04/women-only-cambridge-college-to-allowstudents-who-identify-as-female-murray-edwards

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ジェンダー研究The domain of sports is cited as another
women-only space that is purportedly indanger of being invaded by trans women,
threatening the safety of cis women. The
debate on the inclusion of trans people insport is not new; nonetheless, it has recently received significant attention in Japanbecause of recent controversies over transinclusion. The discussions against allowing trans women to compete in women’scompetitions often emphasize the biological difference between trans women andcis women. The inclusion of trans women is said to be unfair and unsafe for cis
women who would lose opportunities because their chances of winning and receiving prize money and sports scholarships
would be diminished. Some individuals
even argue that women’s sport as we know
it would cease to exist if trans women are
allowed entry into women’s competitions.
Recent online debates on trans athletes
may lead one to conclude that there has
been a sudden and large influx of transathletes into women’s competitions aroundthe world. The dispute about trans girls
and trans women’s rights to participate insports in the gender category with which
they identify may also seem new. Thereis, however, a long history of trans participation at the elite level of sports. The
public debate on how to regulate trans participation began in the 1970s, perhaps even
before. 4 The controversy over the gender第 23 号

2020 年

identities of athletes and their biologicalsex is also not recent. The issue of which
women are women enough to compete in
the women’s category has been contested
since the early 20th century when a large
number of women began to participate inrecreational and competitive sports (Cahn2015).
This study intends to add to the extant
literature by examining ‘feminist’ discourses on the participation of trans women in sports competitions designated for
women. For the purpose of the present paper, the term “feminist discourses” alludes
to texts and speeches iterated by women
who identify as feminists and those who
advocate for gender equality. Thus, both
women’s rights and trans rights advocatesare encompassed by this term. The articles
and tweets selected for this study address
the issue of the participation of trans women in sports. These appeared in American
and British media and were cited frequently in the Japanese Twittersphere between
2018 and 2019. The present study begins
by outlining the history and controversies pertaining to gender verification andthe inclusion of trans athletes in women’s
sports. In so doing, it positions the current
debate within the larger ambit of feminist
deliberations as well as within the long
history of trans participation in sport.
As noted above the two most common
aspects of the recent debate focus on trans

4 Renée Richards, a former professional tennis player, is considered the first openly transgenderperson who competed in professional or elite level sports. Her two autobiographies, Second Serve(1983) and No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life (2007) may be consulted formore information about her life and her athletic career.

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

exclusion because of the difference andtrans inclusion because of the sameness.
This paper contends that both facets are
grounded in the sexist logic of female inferiority and that both reinforce the gender binary that roots the heteropatriarchal
gender order. The discourse on biologicaldeterminism has also been mobilized timeand again in the history of modern sports
to exclude women, especially those whoare deemed “too masculine” in the eyes ofWestern sports officials. Thus, discriminatory and violent gender testing policies
have been implemented in international
sports competitions. These rules have disproportionately targeted women from developing countries. In other words, the frequently cited essentialist argument against
the inclusion of trans women in women’scompetitions is closely related to both sexism and racism; it is also connected to thecolonial legacy of the gender binary in thedomain of women’s sports.
At this historical juncture when transrights are receiving more attention from theJapanese feminist community and from society at large, attention must be paid to theways in which feminist discourses, particularly those against trans inclusion, align withtransphobic attacks by conservative groups
on the rights of trans people. Scholars mustalso investigate how such discourses allow
the warping (Yoneyama 2016) of feminist
politics by far-right conservative groups
to advance their misogynistic, racist, andhomophobic political agendas.

30

Ⅰ. Sports and the Biological Determinism of Gendered Bodies
Many feminist sports scholars havepointed out that the discourse on the biological difference between women and men
forms the foundation of patriarchy (e.g.,Cahn 2015; Hall 1996; Vertinsky 1994).
They have critiqued how such essentialist discussions of gender that presuppose
the weakness, fragility, and instability ofwomen’s bodies serve to limit women’s
spheres of existence and aspirations. Feminists in the realm of sports have, for a longtime, battled precisely such essentialist notions of the female body. Yet, when intersex and trans women oppose rigid and oppressive concepts of women’s bodies, theyencounter resistance from both womenand men, including individuals who identify as feminists.
The rationales that inform the exclusion of women from sports has changed
over the course of the 20th century. What
has remained constant is a focus on the
biological difference between women andmen. Women were considered too frail
to take part in competitive sports sincethe 19th century and through much of the20th century. Many medical experts andphysical educators believed that “games ofstrife” reduced the attractiveness of women, damaged their reproductive organs,and diminished their womanly qualities,
both physically and psychologically (Cahn2015; Vertinsky 1994).
Another debate on biological genderdifference emanated from increasing at-

ジェンダー研究tention to concerns about gender fraud in
the international sporting arena. Sport officials were concerned that male imposters and intersex athletes invade women’scompetitions to win medals and showcase
the racial and ideological superiority of
discrete nations. Such trespass was treated as a threat to the purity of competition
and to the ideal of fair play (Henne 2015).
Thus, athletes who compete in women’s
divisions were subjected to increasingly
strict gender policing and surveillance, labeled “sex control” by L. Dawn Bavington(2019). Gender verification began in the
1930s and continues to be implemented
by various international sports governing
bodies, most notoriously by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), World
Athletics (formerly the International Association of Athletics Federations [IAAF]),and Fédération Internationale de Football
Association (FIFA). However, varying
methods of gender testing have repeatedly been found to yield results that are atbest inconclusive, erratic, and inefficient.
Further, athletes, scholars, and medical authorities have long criticized such testing
because it amounts to the invasion of privacy and the violation of human rights ofwomen athletes, including intersex women. Such testing is also critiqued as being sexist (Vignetti et al. 1995) and racist

第 23 号

2020 年(Travers 2008; Bavington 2019). In 1992
and in 1999, the IAAF and the IOC respectively decided to terminate the mandatory
gender testing of all female athletes. Bothorganizations, however, retained the rightto order athletes to undergo gender testing
if their gender was questioned. In 2012,
these international bodies finally appeared
to have abandoned the idea of testing gender when the policy was abolished. Yet,they introduced the hyperandrogenism
regulation that same year.
Researchers have shown that the hyperandrogenism regulation, just like genderverification, is based on insufficient scientific data (Ferguson-Smith and Banvingon
2014; Sőnksen et al. 2018) and is misguided by myths about the impact of testosterone on athletic performance (Karkazis
et al. 2012; 2019). Notwithstanding theseshortcomings, countless women athletes
have been subjected to invasive sex control measures for nearly a century. The
recent documentary, Annet Negesa - How
the IAAF Fails to Ensure Human Rights(2019), elucidates that the outcome has
been devastating for athletes who havefailed the test, not only in terms of theirathletic careers but also for their healthand their social lives. The documentary
recounts the story of Annet Negesa, 5 a
Ugandan middle-distance runner who sur-

5 Annet Negesa is a former star middle-distance runner for Uganda who was expected to qualify
for the 800-meter women’s final in the London 2012 Olympics. Although she was Uganda’s medal
hopeful, she suddenly disappeared from athletics without any public explanation. In the documentary, she revealed that she was coerced to undergo a gonadectomy without proper explanationof the procedures or its potential complications and consequences. At the age of 27, Negesa sought
and was granted asylum in Germany after the release of the video which identifies her as a personwith intersex conditions or differences in sex development (DSD) because LGBTQ people are

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

vived victimization by the hyperandrogenism regulation. The film exposes cases ofwomen athletes experiencing health problems, depression, and attempting or committing suicide after their disqualificationfrom sports because of gender testing.
Payoshni Mitra, a feminist scholar and a
longtime advocate for intersex athletes,
has repeatedly condemned the current hyperandrogenism regulations followed by
the IOC and the IAAF. She explains how
the implications of such regulations transcend the sporting arena. In her words,
these regulations have “negatively impacted lives of young athletes, humiliatedthem through public questioning of theirgender, and affected their livelihood.” Sheadds, “In conservative countries, being
outed as having a DSD means risk of serious physical harm.” 6
The hyperandrogenism regulation does
not directly address the participation oftrans athletes. It does, however, involvethe definition of who is considered feminine enough to be allowed in women’scompetitions. Despite the different ways inwhich intersex women and trans womenencounter the question of their gender insports, both groups of women are asked
to alter their bodies to compete in thewomen’s category. This stipulation applies
because women (with the exclusion of intersex and trans women) are considereddisadvantaged as a group in comparison
to men whose category, according to thelogic of the regulators, includes intersex
and trans women with respect to biological attributes. Indeed, when the IAAF first
introduced the hyperandrogenism regulation, the 10 nmol/L level of testosterone,
commonly and misleadingly called the“male hormone,” 7 defined the point of demarcation between women and men forthe purpose of sports. The section that follows explicates that this level of testosterone is also the upper limit established fortrans women to be allowed into women’scompetitions.

Ⅱ. A Brief History of Trans Athletesin Sports

Trans athletes were officially included
in international sports competitions in2004 after the IOC instituted the “Stockholm consensus on sex reassignment insports.” However, this official declaration
does not imply the absence of transgenderpeople in competitive sports before 2004.
In fact, there have been several trans athletes, many of whom are also well-known.

regularly subjected to violence and persecution in her home country (Rumsby 2019).
6 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2019/12/05/intersex-ex-athlete-annet-negesa-relieved-happy-granted-asylum/
7 Jordan-Young and Karkazis (2019) argue that the “sex hormone concept, whereby testosterone
and estrogen are elevated as the primary hormones for males and females respectively,” invites
multiple inaccurate assumptions about the functioning of these hormones. Scientists have shownthat both testosterone and estrogen are produced in both male and female bodies and have specificfunctions in the physiologic development of both sexes (i.e., Oudshoorn 1994; Fausto-Sterling
2000).

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ジェンダー研究To name only a few, some early successful trans athletes included the tennis celebrity Renée Richards, the Olympic gold
medalist in decathlon Caitlyn Jenner, andPhilippa York, who won the title of “TheKing of the Mountains” in the 1984 Tourde France. 8 Needless to say, the relationships between gender identity, sports careers, and gender transition were miredin difficult decisions for these earlier elite
athletes who also happened to be transgender individuals.
The negotiation of athletic careers andgender identities continues to be varied
and complex for trans athletes even after
the implementation of IOC’s trans policy.
Some trans athletes begin the medicaltransition, such as hormone therapy and/or gender-affirming surgeries (more commonly known as sex reassignment surgery
or SRS), and come out as transgender after retiring from high-level competitions(e.g., Caitlyn Jenner and Philippa York).
Some trans athletes come out as trans but
postpone their medical transition until
they retire from the high-level competition (e.g., Keelin Godsey, Kye Allums, andBalian Bushchbaun). Some trans athletes

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2020 年

continue their sports careers after genderaffirmation treatments by competing in
the affirmed gender category (e.g., Renée
Richards, Mianne Bagger, and Michelle
Dumaresq, Hiromasa Ando, 9 Patricio Manuel). Some continue to compete in sports
after beginning medical transition but donot, or are not allowed to, change theirgender category in competitions (e.g., Jaiyah Saelua 10 and Mack Beggs).
Most of the openly trans athletes inWestern nations over the course of the long
history of trans participation in sports have
faced heavy criticism both from within andfrom outside their sporting communities.
Yet, the challenge posed by trans athletes
and trans rights activists to such strict binary gender division and cisgenderism haspressured the sporting world to recognize
the rights of trans people to participate insports. However, allowing trans athletes toparticipate in their affirmed gender category has become a complicated issue sincemodern sport imposes a strict binary gender division. Before the IOC establishedthe trans policy, most cases were handled
on a case-by-case basis by the particulargoverning bodies of sport.

8 Harper (2019) may be referenced for more detailed stories about these athletes and more recent
cases of openly transgender athletes.
9 Hiromasa Ando is a Japanese speedboat racer. Ando started as a female racer but later cameout as a person with Gender Identity Disorder and started to race as a man. See Ando’s (2002)
autobiography published, Sukato wo Haita Shonen: Koushite Watashi wa Boku ni Natta, Tokyo,
Bookmansha.
10 Jaiyah Saelua was born in American Samoa. She is fa’afafine, a “third gender” recognized in Samoan culture. Although Saelua is known to be the first international transgender football player
recognized by FIFA and allowed to play in the FIFA World Cup, it must be noted that fa’afafine is
not same as the Western concept of “transgender.” Nonetheless, she is included here because she
is a significant part of the history of gender variant athletes.

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

The IOC’s policy was devised by an adhoc committee of medical experts from
Sweden, France, and the U.S. It states that:any “individuals undergoing sex reassignment of male to female before puberty should be regarded as girls andwomen” (female). This applies as wellfor female to male reassignment, whoshould be regarded as boys and men(male). (IOC 2004)
The document does not clarify the procedures to be included within the ambit of“sex reassignment” before puberty. The
IOC also mandates that any individual who
undergoes sex reassignment after puberty
must meet three conditions: 1) “Surgicalanatomical changes have been completed,including external genitalia changes andgonadectomy;” 2) “Legal recognition of
their assigned sex has been conferred by
the appropriate official authorities;” and3) “Hormonal therapy appropriate for theassigned sex has been administered ina verifiable manner and for a sufficient
length of time to minimise gender-related
advantages in sport competitions” (ibid.).
The statement also specifies the “sufficient
length” to be “no sooner than two years after gonadectomy” (ibid.).
A revision of this regulation was published in November 2015. Trans athletes
are no longer required to undergo genderconfirmation surgeries under the updated
rules. The IOC has also dropped the legal recognition clause. Now, trans men
can compete in the men’s category without hormone therapy or surgeries. 11 A
trans woman must, however, demonstratethat “her total testosterone level in serumhas been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12
months prior to her first competition.”
Further, both trans men and trans womenmust declare and maintain the gender category in which they wish to compete for aminimum of four years (IOC 2015). The
regulation also states, “To avoid discrimination, if not eligible for female competition the athlete should be eligible to compete in male competition” (ibid.).
The IOC’s transgender policies have attracted varied responses from trans communities, athletes, sports authorities, aswell as spectators. Some people fiercely
oppose these policies because they fearthat women’s sports would be taken overby men pretending to be women (Harper
2019: 93). Others praise the IOC policy
as a step toward more inclusive sporting
spaces. Heather Sykes (2006) critiques
trans inclusive policies such as the IOC’s
that are rooted in the Western binary
gender system as “necessarily limiting.”
According to Sykes, the attempt of such
regulations to be universal conflicts withthe “multiple ways of inhabiting gendercategories and the contradictory interests

11 If trans men are using or plan to use testosterone as a part of their gender affirmation treatment, they must be granted therapeutic use exemption (TUE) by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). WADA’s (2017) detailed, nine page long document, “TUE Physician Guidelines:
Transgender Athletes,” specifies the hormone requirements for both trans women and trans men.

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ジェンダー研究of diverse gender minorities” (4).
Despite such criticism, the IOC’s updated policy has become a model for theworld of sports, demonstrating the increasing need for trans inclusion procedures in
sports. A steady increase may be observedin the number of sports governing bodies
around the world that have adopted identical rules or have instituted modified versions of the IOC policy (Itani 2016). Suchinclusionary trends are not limited to thebodies governing international sports;
they also extend to national and non-profit
organizations. School-specific sports organizations such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) andthe National Scholastic Athletics Foundation (NSAF) tend to adopt more inclusive
policies with fewer restrictions to prioritize the rights of transgender children andyouth to participate in sports. For example,
17 states in the U.S. currently follow inclusive policies that do not require surgical or
hormonal procedures to be accomplished
for participation in high school sporting
competitions. However, eight American
states still require athletes to compete according to the gender recorded on theirbirth certificates or to complete surgicalprocedures and comply with a hormone
wait period. 12 The rest of the states either
do not have any specific policies or require
some form of modification, and trans participation is evaluated on a case-by-casebasis. Even though they are limiting anddivisive, the existence of trans inclusion

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2020 年

policies has encouraged and provided
space for some trans athletes to compete
in their affirmed gender category.

Ⅲ. The Discourse Against Trans Inclusion (Exclusion Because of Difference)

Perhaps predictably, the increased visibility of trans athletes in the twenty-first
century has resulted in a strong backlash
after the implementation of transgenderpolicies by the IOC and other entities. Thissection analyzes the discourse on trans exclusion from sports. It focuses primarily
on cases in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
that have most significantly influenced therecently occurring debates in Japan. One of
the most prominent of such cases involves
a successful Canadian downhill mountainbike racer, Michelle Dumaresq. She competed in the women’s race in 2001 when
she was 26 years old, three years before theStockholm consensus, and five years after
her gender affirmation surgery. Nonetheless, Dumaresq faced much criticism fromwithin and outside of cycling communities. Her own mentors in women’s downhill racing, who had once invited Dumareq
to train and compete with them, changed
their attitudes toward her inclusion in thewomen’s race once she began to succeed.
Some of her female competitors filed complaints to the governing organization, resulting in Dumaresq’s temporary suspension. Dumareq was eventually allowed toresume racing because her legal gender

12 https://www.transathlete.com/k-12

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

was female. More controversy followed
when a fellow competitor who won second
place after Dumaresq in the 2006 Canadian downhill mountain-biking championship wore a T-shift to the award ceremonythat read, “100% women champ 2006.”
Besides individual athletes, conservative media outlets have also weighed in on
the controversy. Breitbart News Network
is an increasingly powerful far-right syndicated news website that has been labeled
misogynist, xenophobic, and racist (Grynbaum and Herrman 2016, Aug. 26). In
2016, Breitbart published an article titled,“Olympics Loosen Rules to Allow PreOp M-to-F Transsexuals to Compete with
Women” in reaction to the IOC’s release of
its revised transgender policy in 2015. The
article begins with the typical transphobic
discourse of equating trans women to men
who disguise themselves as women to exploit spaces meant only for women; in thiscase, the arena of competitive sports.
There’s great news for adventurous
male Olympic hopefuls: if they declarethemselves women and reduce their
testosterone below 10 nmol/L for atleast 12 months prior to competition,
they can compete against ladies. 13
This sarcastic statement mocking the IOC’s

more inclusive policy typifies transphobia
and demonstrates how trans exclusion andsexism work in tandem. Trans women areequated with men who maliciously intend
to compete against ladies, who are thus simultaneously coded as fragile, weak, andsecond-class athletes.
More recently, Rachel McKinnon, atransgender cyclist, published an opinion piece in The New York Times (NYT)on December 5, 2019. This article reveals
that she received an increasing number ofdeath threats and faced online abuse after
a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. criticizing
her participation in women’s events heldaround a month before the tweet was posted. 14 Trump Jr. had tweeted that allowing
trans women to compete in women’s sports
would “destroy women’s sports and everything so many amazing female athletes
have worked their entire lives to achieve.” 15
McKinnon’s NYT article demonstrates
that this form of transphobia imposes direct and dangerous consequences on the
lives of trans people, especially when suchattacks emanate from high profile individuals such as professional athletes, celebrities, and politicians. It is not coincidental
that the number of transgender people
murdered in the U.S. has reached recordhigh levels since the election of Donald
Trump, who has authorized extensive anti-

13 https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/01/22/olympics-allow-transsexuals-to-compete-undergender-they-identify-with/
14 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/i-won-a-world-championship-some-people-arenthappy.html
15 https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr/status/1186275133494910976?lang=en

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ジェンダー研究

trans legislation in the U.S. since his inauguration. 16
Trans and queer movements have always faced backlashes. A series of socalled “bathroom bills” have been proposed and passed around the U.S. sincethe 2010s to prohibit trans people fromusing gender-segregated spaces according
to their gender identity. If the anti-transbacklash in sports was voiced solely by theusual suspects, the right-wing (religious)
conservatives, the counterattack would
be treated as an expected extension of theconservative political campaign. Feminists, including queer activists, have decades of experience in critiquing and pushing back against this sort of discriminationand violence. Feminist scholars and activists in the sports arena have long critiquedsexism and homophobia in sports (Cahn
1994; Griffin 1998; Lenskyj 1986; Pronger
1992) and have censured the gender binarythat underlies the exclusion of trans athletes from sport (Love 2014; Sykes 2010;
Traverse 2006). The anti-trans backlashin the sporting space has, however, demonstrated a concerning new development
in recent years. As the discourse of transexclusion from sports expanded out of athletic communities and conservative online
media and into the larger political spaces,
it seems to have merged with campaigns
for feminist causes.
One notable example is the U.K.-based

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2020 年

conservative anti-trans campaign groupcalled “Fair Play for Women (FPFW).”
Their website describes the group as “acampaigning and consultancy group whichraises awareness, provides evidence andanalysis, and works to protect the rights ofwomen and girls in the U.K.” 17 The organization’s campaign history notes its beginning in 2017 as a small group of women
who were concerned about the “the impactof transgender policy on the participationof women and girls in sport,” but it grew
into a larger campaign about wider issues
related to trans people, particularly the
proposed amendment of the 2004 Gender
Recognition Act in the U.K. They claim:
Women’s rights depend on sometimes
being able to treat males and females
differently because of their sex. To
do this we must be able to accurately
identify and acknowledge the material reality of someone’s sex. 18
If this group started out of concern for
women in sports, they have not paid attention to, or have conveniently skipped
the troubled history of attempts by sports
authorities to separate women and men
based on the material reality of the sex of
athletes, which has resulted in appalling
violations of the rights and health-conditions of women. In addition, precisely thislogic of binary sex has been deployed in

16 https://transequality.org/the-discrimination-administration
17 https://fairplayforwomen.com/
18 https://fairplayforwomen.com/jkrowling/

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

the sporting world to maintain the overwhelming domination by men and to exclude women not only from playing sports,
but also from coaching, managing, andleading sports teams and organizations.
There have been similar campaigns
across the Atlantic Ocean to exclude transwomen from women’s competitions. In
June 2019, three girls in Connecticut filed
a federal Title IX discrimination complaintthat stated:
Women fought long and hard to earn
the equal athletic opportunities that
Title IX provides. Allowing boys tocompete in girls’ sports reverse nearly 50 years of advances for women
under this law. We shouldn’t force
these young women to be spectatorsin their own sports. 19
For those unacquainted with the term, Title IX is a federal civil rights law in the
U.S. and is a part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Title IX protects people
from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive
federal financial assistance. Title IX declares that:
No person in the United States shall,on the basis of sex, be excluded fromparticipation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimi-

nation under any education program
or activity receiving Federal financial
assistance.
Although Title IX does not mention athletic programs in school, it has perhaps
been most contested and has experienced
the most significant changes in the distribution of funding and opportunity in education.
While this Title IX complaint remains
pending, the same Connecticut families
also filed a federal lawsuit on February
12, 2020, against the Connecticut Association of Schools (CAS) seeking to reverse aConnecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference rule that permits trans athletes tocompete in the category of their affirmed
gender. 20 Connecticut is one of 17 statesin the U.S. that does not require hormone
therapy or gender reaffirmation surgery
for high school sports competitions. It issymbolic that the families of the Connecticut girls based their complaint on Title IX
because if their complaint is successful,trans girls will be excluded from sports,
not cis girls. Chelsea Mitchell, one of theplaintiffs claimed in an interview that “Nogirl should have to settle into her starting
blocks knowing that you don’t have a fairshot at winning.” The lawsuit alleges that“transgender girls are displacing” cis girls
as the runners “to compete in the post
season, denying the cis girls sports in the

19 https://apnews.com/3966a7d34fc64dd886aa12116795c7b7
20 https://www.courant.com/sports/high-schools/hc-sp-ciac-transgender-federal-lawsuit20200212-20200212-wjk3p4i3evh25ayp7kksefmf4i-story.html

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ジェンダー研究State Open and New England championship.” Thus, this lawsuit effectively asserts
the rights of cis girls to win as it contests
the rights of participation of transgender
girls. Further, there is only one spot for thewinner in any given competition. The opportunity to win and compete in higherlevel competitions is a privilege earned
not just by hard work, but also by a rangeof unequally distributed advantages suchas genetic make-up and socio-economic
privileges like access to good nutrition,coaches, teams, and training facilities.
Most women athletes, whether they are cisor trans, never attain the opportunity toachieve sports scholarships or a place on
the podium. Is it then unfair that they are
defeated by other female athletes who benefit from biological, environmental, andsocio-economic advantages?
It is worth noting that the conservative
Christian law firm, Alliance Defending
Freedom (ADF) submitted and represented both the Title IX complaint and thefederal lawsuit. ADF also handles othercontested issues related to gender and sexuality, representing the religious conservative stance: anti-abortion and anti-samesex marriage. The participation of this law
firm in a matter concerning trans athletes
elucidates the manner in which the genderbinary in sports is positioned, along withabortion and marriage, to be an importantsite in which conservative views on genderand family are deemed to be threatened.
Ironically, religious conservatives in the
U.S. are among those who have resisted
the enforcement of Title IX since the law

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came into effect almost five decades ago.
Most notably, this case demonstrates how
the warping of feminist politics occurs.
The language of women’s rights and protection is invoked to reinforce the genderbinary and to effect the exclusion of transpeople from public life. The Twittersphere
exhibits the tendency to label an individual who evinces such a pro-women trans exclusionary stance as a “trans exclusionary
radical feminist (TERF).” However, it isalso noteworthy that trans exclusion fromwomen’s sports is not radical; nor can it
be asserted to protect women’s rights. Political actions that espouse the goal of excluding a minority group of (transgender)
women to preserve access for the majority
group of (cisgender) women are conservative and discriminatory. Such warping of
who forms the minority is an old but effective discursive tactic employed to preserve
the privilege of the majority. Both FPFW
and ADF label trans girls and women as“men” or “male,” thus constructing transgirls and women as gender majority (men)individuals who take away the rights ofthe gender minority (cis women). It is notdifficult to discover that the same discursive tactics were deployed in the backlash
against feminism and civil rights movements initiated by people of color. They
are easily observed in instances such as
the attacks against affirmative action forminority upliftment. Entitled people fromthe majority group (white/men) position
themselves as the new minority who are
oppressed in societies in which womenand people of color are accorded preferen-

39

The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

tial treatment.
In addition, the discourse of trans exclusion from sports often refuses to refer to trans women as women. Instead,trans women are called transgendered
men who are cheaters and even potential
sexual predators who threaten the safetyof women. This discourse of cheating andendangering women has historical roots inracism and colonialism. Toby Beauchamp
analyzes the discourse of gender and racebased segregation of public bathroomsin the late nineteenth-century U.S. in his
book Going Stealth: Transgender Politics
and U.S. Surveillance Practices (2019). His
analysis evinces how demarcating clear binary gender divisions has been “crucial indistinguishing civilized societies from theless advanced” (85). It also demonstrates
how this process is intimately connected
to racial stereotypes of black men as being
sexually excessive threats to the purity of
the white race. Such stereotypes continue
to be invoked to justify the racial segregation of public spaces and to fuel the lynching of black men. Scott Morgensen (2010)
argues that diverse practices of genderand sexuality among indigenous people
were seen by European settlers as “signsof their general primitivity among Native
people” (106). He maintains that over time,
settlers “produced a colonial necropolitics
that framed Native peoples as queer populations marked for death” (ibid.). Today,colonial necropolitics continues to unleash
genocidal violence against queer and gen-der non-conforming people. Wherever statistics are available across the world, thereported number of incidents of violenceagainst trans people and the murders oftrans individuals, especially trans womenof color, have reached a record high. The
Western epistemology of gender and sexuality continues to assert itself in the worldof sport and to globally sustain the colonization of the bodies of athletes through sex
control and trans exclusion.

Ⅳ. The Discourse on Trans Inclusion(Inclusion Because of the Sameness)

On the other side of the debate is theconversation about trans inclusion becauseof the sameness. The increasing showof support for trans athletes by sporting
communities and other groups is encouraging. Many cisgender athletes, coaches,and sports fans support the participationof trans women in sporting competitions
designated for women. For example, anarticle titled, “Transphobia Has No Placein Action Sports” 21 was published in June2019 on the action sports media outlet
Teton Gravity Research in response tocriticism against Kate Weatherly, a downhill mountain bike racer who placed 3rd in
the Women’s World Cup race. The author
accepted that trans inclusion was a complicated matter, but emphasized that Weatherly’s testosterone level was measured at
0.1 nmol/L whereas the average span of cis
women’s testosterone levels ranged from
0.4 nmol/L to 2 nmol/L.

21 https://www.tetongravity.com/story/adventure/transphobia-has-no-place-in-action-sports40ジェンダー研究In 2015, trans woman athlete and medical physicist Joanna Harper published arare study that compared the performanceof trans women distance runners before
and after testosterone suppression. The results of Harper’s study suggest that transwomen performed “at approximately thesame level, for their respective gender,
both before and after gender transition”(2015: 8). She cautions against the generalized application of this test result to othersports; however, she asserts that this outcome makes a strong statement to support
trans inclusion.
These arguments for trans inclusion
based on the sameness of trans women to
cis women do not evince any discriminatory intent. Trans women athletes themselves often rely on the fact that theirbodies lose the “male advantage” after aperiod of hormone therapy and/or genderaffirmation surgery. The frame of the body(the height and bone density) may stay, buttrans women must often carry heavier bodies with an otherwise average female muscle mass. It is often cited that the 10nmol/L
is only the set maximum level. In reality,
however, the post-gonadectomy testosterone levels of trans women often fall below
the average levels for cis women. 22
The vocal support for the participation of trans women in women’s sporting
events is significant. It demonstrates a
generally wider acceptance of transgender and gender non-conforming people.

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Yet, arguments supporting trans inclusion
based on claims that most trans women’s
testosterone levels are below the average
testosterone counts of cis women and thatthey have no “male advantage” represent aslippery slope. The so-called male advantage is precisely the logic that justifies thehyperandrogenism regulation. It is crucial
to remember that the regulation was implemented to replace IOC’s notorious sex
control policy of gender verification. It
was designed to exclude female athletes
who were deemed too masculine and thus,
not feminine enough. Contrary to popular
perception, such measures do not protect
women’s rights to compete; rather, they
serve to perpetuate the male dominationof sports and sustain the belief that men
are superior athletes. This connection, or
the slipperiness of the slope, is well illustrated through Harper’s role in designing
the sex control policies in sport. As thechief medical physicist advising the IOC
on transgender policies, Harper played asignificant role in the publication of the
updated transgender policy of 2015 that set
the upper limit of testosterone to 10nmol/Lfor both trans women and women with intersex conditions. While advocating fortrans inclusion in sport, Harper engaged in
the design of a regulation that effectively
issued ultimatums to some intersex/DSD
women to choose between retiring fromsport or medically altering their bodies.
The IAAF further tightened the regulation

22 E.g. Joanna Harper (2019, April 1). “Sport’s Transgender debate needs compromise not conflict”,
The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/apr/01/sports-transgender-debatecompromise-not-conflict

41

The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

by lowering the upper limit to 5nmol/L in
2018. This move effectively forced Caster
Semenya, a gold medalist in the 2016 Riode Janeiro Olympics in women’s 800-meter run, to retire from elite athletics because she refused to accept medical intervention. The same 5nmol/L limit was thenapplied to trans women when the IAAF,
now known as World Athletics, replaced
its previous regulation with the “World
Athletics Eligibility Regulations forTransgender Athletes.” These new rules
came into effect on October 1, 2019.
Sex control in sports has caused harm towomen who do not neatly fit into the gender norms set by Western medical authorities. The discourse of trans inclusion on thebasis of sameness to cis women throughhormone suppression mobilizes the same
injurious logic of fairness and safety thatis used to argue for trans exclusion. The
new trans policy applied by World Athletics states that the organization recognizes
the desire of trans athletes to compete inaccordance with their gender identity:
World Athletics wishes to encourage and facilitate such participation,
on conditions that go only so far as
is necessary to protect the safety ofall participants and to deliver on thepromise of fair and meaningful competition offered by the division of the
sport into male and female categories
of competition. (World Athletics 2019)
World Athletics, the IOC, FIFA and other organizations have instituted identical42

or similar sex control policies to achieve“safe,” “fair,” and “meaningful” competition by mandating the banishment of queer
others such as Caster Semenya and Annet
Negesa whose hormones are deemed too
high to be women. The world will thus not
be able to witness the brilliant athletic performances of many other such individuals,
at least for now.

Conclusion

The seemingly new coalition of radical
feminists and sexist conservatives to protect women’s rights in sports is actually awarping of feminist politics. Such warped
feminist discourses serve to discriminate
against trans and intersex women; theyalso work to maintain heteropatriarchy
and to perpetuate the Western domination
over the rest of the world through the enforcement of the Western epistemology ofsex/gender. The discourse of trans inclusion can also become complicit in upholding the oppressive regime of binary gender
if the rational is based on the sameness ofcis and trans women.
There is a worrying trend in Japan offeminists increasingly referencing conservative Western news outlets that criticize the inclusion of trans women athletes
in sports competitions designated for women. Such Japanese feminists often mobilize(or import) the same logic of safety andfairness to exclude trans women both fromsport and from other women-only spaces
such as women’s universities, bathrooms,
and public baths. Sarah Ahmed (2016)
cautions against the expanding reach of

ジェンダー研究

TERF in the U.K., asserting that “To be
so-called gender critical while leaving traditional biology intact tightens rather thanloosens the hold of a gender system on ourbodies” (30).
Those who only see trans women athletes as cheaters should carefully consider
whether trans women do not deserve recognition for overcoming not only the difficulties of being transgender but also of being “out” in a transphobic athletic world.
Also, what if scientific data could be cited
to evidence that trans women are stronger
than cis women on average? Only a minuscule number of trans women would still
possess the talent and the socio-economic
resources to compete in elite level competitions. The same applies to cis women.
Only a select few cis women command theextremely rare athletic talent and the luck
to receive exceptional coaching and training environments that facilitate their ability to compete at elite levels. Are such advantages fair to other women who do nothave access to such advantages to compete
against the women who do? Is it fair that
athletes from economically disadvantaged

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countries must compete against athletes
from rich countries? Is it a worthy feminist
struggle to preserve the same chance for a
handful of elite women to win while excluding trans women as a whole from theopportunity to play a competitive sport?
School-based athletic programs must
always prioritize educational purposes
rather than economic incentives. Therefore, the rights of trans girls to participate
in women’s sport must be prioritized overthe chance for some cis girls to win. Winning is never guaranteed in any competition unless the contest is corrupt. Thus, I
conclude this paper with a call for radicaltrans inclusion to dismantle the oppressive regime of the gender binary, biological determinism, and heteropatriarchy: notbecause of sameness but despite all differences. Trans women are in the frontlines ofthis feminist battle. Feminists must avoid
the critical mistakes of identifying transwomen as others on the basis of biologicaldifferences, regarding them as obstacles
for women, or viewing them as enemies ofthe feminist cause.

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The ʻFeministʼ Discourse on Trans Exclusion from Sports

要旨「フェミニスト」のスポーツにおけるトランス排除言説について
井谷聡子
近年、「女性専用」スペースにトランスジェンダーの女性がアクセスする権利めぐる言説が日本語のツイッターを中心に急増した。トランス女性による女子競技への参加もこの一連の議論の一部として現れてきた。本研究では、トランス女性の女子競技参加をめぐる「フェミニスト」言説を分析する。最も一般的に登場する「相違に基づいたトランス排除」と「同一性に基づいたトランス包摂」という言説は、ともに女性を劣位におくセクシズムとそれを支える性別二元制、それらに下支えされる異性愛主義家父長制のジェンダー秩序を強化する。さらに、そうしたフェミニストによるトランス排除言説は、極右保守派によるトランスフォビアに同調するだけではなく、極右保守派がフェミニズムの政治を「ねじれ」
させ、スポーツにおける「性別コントロール」を通じて女性嫌悪的で同性愛嫌悪的、人種差
別的、帝国主義的な政治的アジェンダを前進させることに加担することになる。
キーワード
トランスジェンダー、スポーツ、フェミニズム、高アンドロゲン症

46