Jun 24
⚧️ TransRights for Title iX Anniversary
Do collegiate transmen & transwomen athletes mostly play on women’s teams or men’s teams?
Thought about running this analysis a few hours ago as we celebrate & honor the 50 year anniversary of Title iX (June 23rd, 1972) 🏃🏻♀️
Using information provided by Outsports (Cyd Zeigler and Karleigh Webb, 2022), I collected & coded information associated with collegiate level trans athletes and whether they played for the men’s or women’s team. Their participation on their focal team was coded similarly whether they joined the team after fully transitioning or during their transition (i.e., since 2011, the NCAA has given transmen the right to join men’s teams while taking testosterone without losing a year of eligibility).
☆ Sidenotes
∘ Today’s Athletes are Bigger, Stronger, Faster
∘ The T Started the Movement
∘ 🌈🏀 WNBA & Sexuality (Willis et al., 2022)
The Results
Regardless of identity, most trans athletes play for college women’s teams (χ2(1, N = 31) = 5.45, p = .020), though transwomen (91.7%) are more likely to play for the women’s team than transmen (57.9%), χ2(1 , N = 31) = 4.07, p = .044.
Stated differently,
transwomen are more likely to play for women’s teams than transmen are to play for men’s teams.
One possibility is that women’s teams are more welcoming of transmen than men’s teams are of transwomen, as there is far more sexuality diversity in women’s sports than men’s sports. For instance, the WNBA is ~38% LGBTQIA+ whereas the NBA is 95%+ cishet.
Another possibility is that transmen may take more time to transition to ensure fair competition against cismale athletes. If so, they may be more likely to favor completing their collegiate athletic careers with their current friends/ teammates as opposed to meeting new teammates for their junior or senior year.
Combination of both: It may also be the case that if transwomen are in a more welcoming environment & their transition timeline allows then to compete up to the level of ciswomen faster than transmen’s timeline allows them to compete up to the level of cismen, then they would be more likely to play with the identity-affirming team. One pattern in line with this possibility is that the articles on transwomen athletes were disproportionately more likely than articles on transmen athletes to mention 1st place finishes, tournament championships, and other high level competitions.
Transwomen athletes broke more records & won more titles than transmen athletes.
Ultimately, additional research with larger samples & comparing different sports (as it may matter more in some sports than others) is required before anything can be stated conclusively. Hopefully this inspires future inquiries into transrights & making sports more inclusive for all 🏳️⚧️
Technical Description of Identity Coding
Transmen = a trans athlete who was assigned female at birth. They may identify as non-binary, as transmen, or just as themselves. For the purposes of data analysis & presentation, all such cases were coded as transmen.
Transwomen = a trans athlete who was assigned male at birth. They may identify as non-binary, as transwomen, or just as themselves. For the purposes of data analysis & presentation, all such cases were coded as transwomen.
Sidenotes
Today’s Athletes are Bigger, Stronger, Faster
…or
Today’s athletes are more likely to have 2 parents who played sports whereas Boomer & GenX athletes (pre-Title 9) likely only 1 parent who played sports in high school or college (their father).
Thus, among a myriad of reasons as to why today’s athletes are Bigger, Stronger, Faster, the fact that a higher proportion of them have genetic-athletic inheritance from 2 parents who played sports through high school or college (thanks to Title iX) instead of only 1 parent who played sports should be considered.
The T Started the Movement
“The Stonewall riots were a series of demonstrations by queer and transgender people in New York in 1969 following a Police raid at The Stonewall Inn. This event has been attributed as one of the inciting moments of the Pride movement (Armstrong & Crage, 2006).”
🌈🏀 WNBA & Sexuality (Willis et al., 2022)
We found that, even though lesbians & bisexual women (~38% of WNBA players) have higher testosterone than straight women, the regular season performance of WNBA athletes was largely the same regardless of sexuality.
The only differences that emerged were that lesbian guards were more accurate shooters with a significantly higher field goal percentage than straight guards, and, regardless of position, lesbian players averaged more assists per game.
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July 4th Update
🏳️⚧️ Pay Gap — Lydia Geijtenbeek & Erik Plug, 2018
“MTF workers experience a 20% fall in earnings as a registered female, whereas FTM workers experience an 8% rise as a registered male”
⚧️Transgender Veterans & Service — Janelle Downing et al., 2018
Transmen are “nearly 5x times more likely to be veterans than cisgender women (7.9% vs. 1.7%).
Transwomen are “less likely to be veterans than cisgender males (11% vs. 19%).”
🌈LGB Veterans & Service —Muirhead et al., 2017
Lesbians & bisexual women are more likely to serve in the military than straight women (Blosnich et al., 2012; Gates, 2004, 2010; Herek et al., 2010; Muirhead et al., 2017; RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2010), and, “when compared to bisexual and gay men they are more likely to serve” (Muirhead et al., 2017).
Trans Proportions & GamerGirl 🎮
More men (assigned at birth) transition into women than vice-versa (Bao & Swaab, 2011). Just as there are more male-to-female transsexuals than female-to-male transsexuals (Bao & Swaab, 2011), more men gamers genderswap to play as women avatars than women gamers genderswap to play as men avatars (Ducheneaut et al., 2006; Isaksson, 2012).
