As transgender people continue their fight to be accepted for who they are, more states are taking action to stand in their way. According to the ACLU, 31 states have considered bills this year that would ban transgender youth from competing in school sports.
At Verify, we've received a lot of questions on this topic. Specifically - whether transgender girls actually have an advantage over cisgender girls in athletics as some of these bills claim.
So let's start with what makes a cisgender person different from a transgender person. A cisgender person is someone whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth. A transgender person's gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Supporters of the bills argue testosterone levels in trans women give them competitive advantages - including speed and strength.
THE QUESTION
So let's Verify -- is there evidence transgender women have a competitive advantage over cisgender women in sports?
THE SOURCES
Our sources include Dr. Jack Turban, a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine who works with trans youth, and Dr. Timothy Roberts, a researcher who analyzed the athletic performance of transgender Air Force members.
THE ANSWER
The claim that transgender women have a competitive advantage over cisgender women in sports is inconclusive due to a lack of scientific data at this time.
WHAT WE FOUND
According to Dr. Turban, there aren't many transgender athletes across high school, college and professional sports... so data comparing their athletic performance with cisgender athletes is limited.
“It's not zero, but it's not a lot,” Dr. Turban said. “And people will search far and wide to find an example of this being a problem.”
He says supporters of anti-trans legislation often point to the 2019 Connecticut state track championship. During the meet - two transgender girls, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, finished first and second in the women's 55-meter race. Following the meet, three cisgender girls, including third-place finisher Chelsea Mitchell, filed a lawsuit over the trans girls' eligibility to race. But a year later, in the 2020 state championship, Mitchell beat Miller to win the championship.
The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but the 2019 championship race and subsequent legal action had a ripple effect. Several states signed anti-trans sports bans into law, including Mississippi. Their legislation cites a recent study of transgender U.S. Air Force members published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The bill alleges that after 12 months of hormone therapy, trans women "had an absolute advantage over female athletes and will still likely have performance benefits over women."
But Dr. Tim Roberts, a researcher on the study, says there's more to this story. He agrees that when the trans women were first beginning hormone treatments, they outperformed cisgender women in tests that included push-ups, sit-ups and running, but by their second year on hormone therapy that was no longer the case.
“The performance of the transgender women was indistinguishable from the performance of the average cis woman in the Air Force,” Dr. Roberts said.
He believes his research was misrepresented in the legislation.
“They're cherry-picking the one number that agrees with their pre-existing notions and using it as an excuse to do a lot of other things,” he said.
Here in California, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill in 2013 that guarantees transgender students the right to participate in school activities in accordance with their gender identity. And the California Interscholastic Federation, which is the state's governing body for athletics, agreed. They added language to their bylaws stating - "All students should have the opportunity to participate in CIF activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student's records."
Chelsea Wolfe, a transgender BMX freestyle competitor fell just short of qualifying for the Olympics. She argues the legislators presenting these bills, and the people supporting them, don't realize the negative psychological impact they'll have on trans youth who are already struggling to fit in.
“What they want is a complete guarantee on winning,” Wolfe said. “And that's not a human right, access to sport and fair competition is a human right.”
Transgender females compete in very few events across high school, collegiate and Olympic competitions. Because of that - studies about any potential competitive advantage transgender women may have over cisgender women are limited, making it difficult to draw conclusions without more research.
So we can Verify, the claim that transgender women have a competitive advantage over cisgender women in sports is inconclusive due to a lack of scientific data at this time. But medical experts do know that participating in sports has many positive benefits and they fear banning transgender children from youth sports will have a negative impact.
“Sports have all kinds of benefits for mental health and physical health,” said Dr. Turban. “And that's being taken away from transgender kids.”
Watch Related: SDPD adopts new rules on interactions with transgender, nonbinary citizens (June 2021)