| dc.description.abstract | Sport should be for everyone. As asserted by the Olympic charter, “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport” (International Olympic Committee, 2021, p. 8). However, sport is made up of two categories: women’s and men’s. Often, those assigned female at birth are placed in women’s sport, and those assigned male at birth are placed in men’s sport. These binary categories exist under the assumption that sex assignment coincides with the gender category arrangement in sport, creating a cisgendered system. So, what happens when an athlete assigned ‘male’ at birth, identifies as a woman? Where do they fit in sport?
Sport has been traditionally structured under gender essentialist principles, which creates challenges for trans women athletes to participate in women’s competitions. Elite athletes are stakeholders in the formation of inclusion policies surrounding these issues on trans women competitors. Earning perspectives from athletes of all gender identities are crucial. To explore factors related to trans-exclusionary or trans-inclusionary belief sets within an elite athlete population, in this research I qualitatively analyzed perspectives of collegiate and professional cis women soccer athletes in the United States on the participation of trans women in professional women's sport using open-ended survey questions. I hypothesized that I would find patterns analogous to that of previous research based on five theoretical domains: Athletic Identity, Fairness, Gender, Inclusion, and Trans Women Athletes. Using NVIVO, qualitative analysis of the survey data uncovered a multitude of coded themes under these domains. Results suggested that
factors relevant to gender, such as conservative gender perception and sex-defined physiological advantages (advantages described as male physiology compared to female physiology), were the most frequent factors associated with trans-exclusionary attitudes. Other reasonably strong associations with these exclusionary attitudes surrounded aspects of athletic identity such as hypercompetitive states (excessive need to win) and ‘enemy’ contesting orientations (when faced with competition). Most athletes who held trans- inclusionary attitudes did so only if there was a contingency to regulate their testosterone, or if trans women athletes undergo transition before puberty. Elements found under domains of Gender (progressive gender perspectives), Inclusion (an accommodating understanding of inclusion) and Trans Women Athletes (a desire for more research into trans women athletes) were associated with this contingency-based trans-inclusionary attitude. A very small minority of the sample had non-contingent inclusionary attitudes towards trans women athlete inclusion in women’s sport, most of whom had an awareness of or were associated with trans women athletes in their lives. Overall, findings suggest that elite cis women athletes are resistant to the inclusion of trans women athletes in elite women’s sport. Attitudes associated with this resistance are predominantly related to either rigid and conservative perceptions of gender or the definition of physiological equivalence classes, along with athletic identity and the structures surrounding competitiveness and winning. | |
