Unfair Play: The Double Standard of Transgender Athletes in Sports (A Series)

In sports, fairness serves as the universal baseline of playing yet when it comes to transgender athletes, the rules often feel anything but fair. While trans female athletes face intense scrutiny and accusations of advantage, trans male athletes are left alone. This double standard raises deeper questions about bias, inclusion, and what fairness truly means on the field.

What Does It Mean to Be a Transgender Athlete?

The term “transgender” refers to individuals whose gender identity or expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)—a nonprofit governing organization for intercollegiate athletics in the United States. Established on March 31, 1906, the NCAA claims to promote fair competition while ensuring the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes.

Despite its mission, the NCAA has come under scrutiny for caving to contradictory political pressures, specifically an executive order from the Trump administration. The NCAA’s changed policy was effective February 6, 2025 and restricts women’s sports competitions to only athletes assigned female at birth while allowing all male athletes to compete on men’s teams. While framed as a measure to protect fairness, the change disproportionately impacts transgender women, reinforcing the long-standing barriers they face in athletic competition.

A History of Gender Verification in Sports

The Olympic Games have long been a staple of global sports—serving as an annual family watch party tradition for many—yet they also carry a history of exclusion. The 2020 Summer and Winter Olympics marked the first instances of openly transgender athletes competing. Similarly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a dark history of gender verification dating back to 1968, when it introduced tests to prevent men from competing as women.

Sonja Erikainen, in her book Gender Verification and the Making of The Female Body in Sport: A History of The Present, explains that such policies were rooted in the belief that women were physically weaker and needed protection from male dominance in sports. The earliest of these verification methods, known as the Barr Body test, aimed to identify athletes with cells that contained more than one X chromosome. The invasive procedure applied only to female athletes thus highlighting the gendered bias within competitive sports.

The test was not perfect, however. During the 1985 World Games, Spanish hurdler Maria Martinez-Patino failed the Barr test which left her disqualified for 3 years before being reinstated. She argued that her diagnosis of androgen insensitivity syndrome caused her to “fail” it without any physiological sporting advantage, proving the test to be faulty. Martinez-Patino later became a physician and wrote an article in The Lancet about her experience, stating, “But I knew that I was a woman, and that my genetic difference gave me no unfair physical advantage.

In 1988 the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF, now known as World Athletics) decided to eliminate sex testing. Due to doping regulation’s requirement for athletes to pass urine in front of witnesses and athletes wearing close-fitting sportswear, the IAAF argued it would be impossible for a male athlete to impersonate a female.

Before 2003, the IOC handled transgender participation on a case-by-case basis, leading to no recorded instances of transgender athletes competing. That year, the committee established its first formal policy which required transgender athletes to undergo sex reassignment surgery and a two-year period of hormone therapy before being eligible to compete. This decision, influenced by the IAAF, was designed to ensure transgender women did not have an “unfair” physical advantage.

The policy remained unchanged until 2012 when the IOC introduced a testosterone regulation, capping levels for female competitors but establishing no limits for male competitors. As sociologists Laurel Westbrook and Kristen Schilt noted, this shift allowed trans and intersex athletes to participate without challenging the fundamental binary structure of sports yet, it also reinforced the idea that transgender women needed to be medically monitored and controlled.

In 2015, the IOC removed the requirement for sex reassignment surgery, responding to criticism from transgender athletes such as Kristen Worley, a Canadian cyclist who sued the organization for violating her rights. Under the revised policy, transgender men could compete without restriction, whereas transgender women had to meet four specific conditions, including maintaining testosterone levels below a set threshold for at least a year. Unlike transgender women, trans men were not required to declare their gender identity for a fixed period, nor were they subjected to hormonal testing, reinforcing the assumption that “female-born” athletes posed no competitive threat in men’s sports.

It reflected a deep-seated belief that women, regardless of biology, are naturally weaker than men and, therefore, do not require regulatory oversight. This assumption was challenged in the 2021 IOC policy, which was introduced to combat the increasing number of anti-trans sports bills at the lower levels of competition. The policy stated that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in their preferred gender category without assumption of an inherent advantage. It also condemned invasive examinations used to determine whether female athletes were “women enough.”

However, the 2021 policy lacked legal enforcement, leaving the final say to individual sporting bodies. Critics, including Olympic athletes like Veronika Stepanova and Erik Schinegger, argue that the policy opens the door for transgender women to compete without undergoing testosterone suppression, leading to claims of an “unfair advantage.”

The physiological differences between male and female athletes are often cited in discussions about competitive fairness. However, these arguments fail to justify why transgender women are subjected to observation while transgender men are not.

Being a transgender male prompts the question of whether or not gender advantage varies depending upon the sport in question. For example, a larger build may be of more benefit in a power-based sport, but a lighter physique could be more advantageous in an event such as racewalking. Joanna Harper, a Ph.D. researcher specializing in trans-athlete research, points out, “Trans women also have disadvantages in sport. Our larger bodies are being powered by reduced muscle mass and reduced aerobic capacity, and can lead to disadvantages in quickness, recovery, and a number of other factors.”

These double standards reflect more than just outdated policies—they expose the dehumanization of transgender athletes. Historically, female athletes have been policed based on biological assumptions, and trans women now face even harsher restrictions in politics under the guise of “fair play.” The ongoing change of sports regulations raises a critical question: Are these policies truly about maintaining fairness, or are they reinforcing societal biases that dictate who is “worthy” of competing?

The lack of clear rules eliminating unfair advantage in sport have downstream effects at lower levels such as in high school, making sports even more challenging for younger athletes. Most endocrine clinical practice guidelines do not recommend hormonal therapy in patients younger than 16 years old. As a result, timing of transitional hormones for trans teenagers can disrupt their participation in high school athletics. For instance, before 16, a transgender male athlete could compete against cisgender male athletes that potentially have androgen advantage over the trans-athlete. From ages 16–17 years old, the transgender male athlete becomes eligible for the first time for hormone therapy and thus would have to choose between ineligibility as a female due to androgen advantage during transition or compete as a male without the advantage of full transition— possibly putting themselves at higher risk of sport-related injury. To continue, if a transgender female athlete starts hormones at age 16 years old the athlete may be ineligible to compete as a female until the age of 17, if a 1-year transition period is required.

In March 2020, Idaho passed House Bill 500 “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” implementing the nation’s first transgender policy barring trans female athletes from playing on athletic teams sponsored by public schools, colleges, or universities. Lindsay Hecox, a trans woman track athlete at Boise State University and an unnamed high school athlete in Boise, contested the bill stating that it violates Title IX.

For context, Title IX states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” This means that schools and colleges must offer equal opportunities for male AND female athletes. It does not require identical programs but mandates equitable treatment in areas like funding, scholarships, coaching, and facilities.

To date, this case is still awaiting adjudication before the Court of Appeals. Since 2020, Montana, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia have passed similar legislation.

The Senate Bill 1028 “Fairness in Women’s Sport Act” in Florida is also currently being challenged by an even younger 13-year-old athlete who was born male but identified and dressed as a girl since toddlerhood, played on girls soccer teams for the past 7 years, and now is banned from participation on her school’s female soccer team despite being too young for hormonal therapy or surgery.

Mack Beggs, a transgender male wrestler, started transitioning hormones during high school. Due to Texas state policy requiring athletes to participate in sports according to their birth assigned sex, he was required to wrestle in the female category despite being medically treated with androgenic hormones. Beggs was dominant in 2017 and 2018, posting 57–0 and 32–0 records and winning back to back state titles. In the Mack Beggs’ case, from Texas, both the cisgender and the transgender athletes did not like the situation the rules placed upon them. He stated, “even though I was put in this position, even though I did not want to be put in this position, even though I wanted to wrestle guys, I still had to wrestle girls”

Overall, the history of defining gender in sports has demonstrated the task to be a persistent challenge. Currently, gender for the purposes of sport is defined solely on androgen levels, not by phenotype or genotype, with the assumption that androgen levels are what confer advantage. At the high school level, policy based on androgen levels becomes extremely difficult as local and national laws/regulations are not universal. This is coupled with the fact that a high or college school sports career is only 4 years. The first 2 years an athlete may not play much, therefore the time required to transition may prevent athletes from competing in their chosen gender at any point. Requiring androgen testing at the high school level in order to facilitate fair competition in women’s sports is not logistically nor economically feasible.

The conversation surrounding transgender athletes in sports is far from simple, and as discussed, the policies in place are often more about control and outdated biases than about ensuring fairness. The disparities in how transgender men and women are treated in athletic competitions demonstrate the double standards that persist through time.

In the next article of this series, we will explore the specific scrutiny that trans women face in sports, the media’s role in their treatment, and the impacts on cisgender women. As the debate continues to unfold, we must ask ourselves: Can fairness truly be about equal opportunity if it only benefits some and not all?

“As long as we are living in a culture where one has to prove their womanhood or manhood, we are not living in a free culture.” — Laverne Cox