We’ve all seen the government’s ads telling us that we need to eat healthy, stop drinking and smoking and to exercise. You go to the doctors for a cold and they’ll start quizzing and weighing you. You wander through the supermarket and every piece of packaging assaults you, all clamouring to tell you how much sugar is in them, but with all of the ‘be healthy’ messages there’s a little invisible asterisk next to them. This little footnote, cleverly hidden from most people’s eyes, says ‘apart from trans* people, you should forget about sport, because we aren’t going to let you play’. This is the hurdle they have to overcome before they can reach the start line.

The only times people tend to hear about trans* rights are when they are tacked onto the end of LGB rights, but it’s issues like this that really show how far trans* rights are behind LGB rights. 9 years ago, the Gender Recognition Act gave trans* people the ability to be recognised as their gender (provided they fit neatly into the gender binary). It was a big step forward back then but, has increasingly come under fire for all the holes it left. Trans* rights have always been a case of two steps forward and one step back, in this country, and the Gender Recognition Act was no different; Hidden away in it was enshrined the right for sporting bodies to exclude trans* people.

Whenever the subject is brought up, it is met with all the usual cries of ‘but it wouldn’t be fair’ and ‘what about cheating?’ directed especially at trans* women. Hidden within these seemingly reasonable objections are the far darker sentiments that trans* people are somehow different from cisgender people or that you could masquerade as a trans* person to cheat.

Around the world, trans* people are allowed to compete with others, doing so fairly and often with greater integrity then their peers. The names Renée Richards, Michelle Dumaresq, Kristen Worley, Kye Allums and Lana Lawless may mean nothing to you but they and many more have had to fight to be allowed to compete. Despite the rulings of governing bodies, other competitors frequently do their best to take matters into their own hands and create a hostile atmosphere, questioning whether trans* people deserve their victories or if they have some mystical advantage, as has happened with MMA fighter Fallon Fox ; UFC heavyweight competitor Matt Mitrione faced suspension and a fine after calling Fox a ‘lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak’ who ‘lied on [their]  license to beat up women’, though others have also come under fire for referring to Fox as ‘it’. These athletes will say they are standing up for sportsmanship, only to turn around and pull such stunts as disrupting the podium ceremony at the 2006 Canadian women’s cycling nationals. The trans* athletes themselves try to rise above it all, they’re there to compete, something their cis opponents seem to forget.

Claims of unfair advantages aren’t just shown to be groundless by studies of actual athletes, medical research is also against them. After a short period of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), trans* people are completely physiologically similar to their cisgender counterparts. Everything from the haemoglobin content of their blood to their muscle sizes are within normal human variation. Side effects from HRT, such as weight gain, can actually place trans* people at a disadvantage to other athletes, though this thought rarely crosses people’s minds.    

As for cheating, in the entire 40 year history of sex verification procedures in international sport competitions, no instances of such ‘fraud’ have ever been found. Most people still think that being trans* is a choice and so it follows that someone could pretend to be trans*, but being trans* is neither a choice, nor is it easy. Anyone who thinks they can pretend to be trans* is in for a rude awakening when they realise what it means to be part of a group, so marginalised that 84% of it has thought about ending their lives (as evidenced here).

Sports bodies in this country are very secretive about what their policy for transgender athletes actually is. Of the ones that are available, they can’t seem to agree upon when a trans* person would be able to compete fairly. Many of them follow the International Olympic Committee’s policy, which requires trans* people to have major, irrelevant and potentially unwanted, surgery in order to play. The UN has recently described these sorts of requirements as ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’, but despite this it doesn’t look this policy is set to change.

The government’s solution to improve the prejudiced nature of sports culture is its charter against homophobia and transphobia in sport, though the promises it makes ring hollow. It’s all well and good to tell people to treat trans* people with respect but, what good is it if we can’t play in the first place? 

Here in Cambridge, CUSU LGBT+ has been working to improve the situation and have published a detailed report on Transgender and Intersex Sport Provision, though our work has been hampered by the sport governing bodies. If people begin to disagree with them, they throw childish temper tantrums. Their responses can be distilled down to ‘well if you don’t want to play by our rules then we aren’t going to let you play with us’. You’d expect this behaviour to be something that should have been left behind in childhood. Sport here is run by students, for students; we don’t need any big organisations coming in to dictate who we can include.

For most people, sport isn’t just about who’s ‘the best’, it’s about having fun and staying fit, simple pleasures that no-one should be denied. Around the world, other countries have accepted trans* athletes, the people and the arguments are the same here, so why can’t we accept them? We’ve all heard that ‘it’s the taking part that counts’ but some of us aren’t even allowed to do that.

For more information contact lgbt-trans@cusu.cam.ac.uk

Varsity Platform is a series intended to allow campaigns and organisations in Cambridge to defend their causes. If you would like to participate, email comment@varsity.co.uk and give a voice to your campaign. 

The previous parts of this series:

‘I want to talk about choice’ 

‘Reach out beyond the Cambridge bubble’

‘Time to wage war’