Recently, I have been seeing a lot of commentary on transgender women in women’s sports leagues; there has also been an enormous transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+ response in the United States following Biden’s inauguration and his support of trans folks. These complaints function to keep trans folks, especially transwomen, out of their respective gender’s sports leagues and keep them in their biological sex leagues. The complaints claim specifically how “unfair” it is to cisgender women to be competing against somebody who is apparently inevitably taller, faster, and stronger — somebody who was born in a male body. Not only is this extremely misogynistic, but it is also transphobic. The transphobic assumption here is that cisgender women are playing against a man, not another woman, when transwomen are, in fact, actual women.

 When transwomen start to participate in women’s sport’s leagues and are still viewed and perceived as men by the spectator, systemically taught patriarchal masculinity kicks in and the male superiority complex is threatened by the mixing of masculinity and femininity in a male-dominated field. Michael A. Messner’s 1990 essay “When bodies are weapons: Masculinity and violence in Sport” discusses how sports were practically invented by and for men to recover and maintain power after a slice of superiority was lost when society became more rationalized and allowed women to join the workforce. Furthermore, he discusses how sports are not only meant to marginalize and exclude women but to align maleness with particular skills. Thus, when a transwoman enters a women’s sports league — leagues that are already devalued because it contests the formation of sports in the first place — it can be seen as a betrayal, or even a failure, of patriarchal masculinity.

With patriarchal masculinity comes the understanding that men are naturally better than women, regardless of what the competition is, and this is because the patriarchy has deemed women weak and feeble. In her essay “‘It’s Part of the Game’ Physicality and the Production of Gender in Women’s Hockey,” Nancy Theberge reminds readers that “when women were admitted [into sports], it was on restricted terms and according to an adapted model whereby events were adjusted (races shortened; rules altered, as in six-person basketball) to conform to a view of women as fragile and weak” (69). Not only were sports created as a way for men to uphold patriarchal masculinity and gender inequality, even the admittance of women served as a means to maintain the power dynamic and the perception of men as strong and women as weak through the altered rules. Within this mindset, women in sport, especially in physical and often violent sports such as ice hockey and football, trigger a response similar to domestic violence; if women are viewed as something to protect, then watching them in a stadium, arena, or on TV with a broken, bloody nose provokes the audience, namely men and even women who subscribe to patriarchal, hegemonic masculinity to feel uncomfortable and to even play the hero or saviour.

Subscribing to the ideology of women as delicate is another cause of what prompts transphobia against transwomen in women’s sports leagues. Firstly, if transwomen are not accepted as valid women, then the perception lives that a man is playing in a women’s league, surfacing fragile masculinity and the desperate grip on gender inequality in sport. Not only are transwomen genuine women but believing in the strict segregation of gender in sport also perpetuates beliefs that men are better than women, and thus women need to have their own “safe” and rule altered league, protecting both their fragile reproduction units and their soft, pretty faces. Secondly, women are not fragile and weak, especially in sport, and when a transwoman joins a women’s league, even if they are taller, stronger, and faster, usually it is not the players in the league that complain. There are cisgender women who are taller, stronger, and faster than other cisgender women, transwomen, and men. Furthermore, remember Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, track stars who were both suspended and/or banned for having too much testosterone? Considering this, it is appropriate to ask, what makes a woman a woman? Inability to develop a certain muscle mass? Women’s sports are structured and reliant on women performing at a lower level than men to uphold the male superiority complex. Thirdly, excluding transgender women from female sports leagues creates a narrative that transgender people, namely transwomen, are dangerous and threatening to cisgender folks. This is a transphobic perception, as it depicts transness as inauthentic and fantastical rather than valid. Transgender people do not come out as transgender or transition so that they can get scholarships, hit women in hockey, or perve on people in the bathroom. If this is how you see transgender people, you are scared of con artists, abusers, and perverts, not trans people.

Ultimately, complaining about transwomen in sport stems from transphobia and misogyny. It is not about fairness or protecting women, it is about maintaining heteronormative patriarchal masculinity; it is about exclusivity, restricting marginalized folks from participating in society, and maintaining gender binaries and power structures. You cannot claim that you support and believe in equality if you continue to view women as helpless, docile babymakers who need protection, especially in sports leagues. The whole point of participating in sports, especially physical sports, is to experience the physicality, to get banged up, to compete and improve. Transwomen and ciswomen belong in sports, and I, as a woman who has constantly been bruised and bloody from sports, think it is healthy for women, especially young women, to participate in physical sports because it shows them just how strong they are. It teaches fantastic lessons about discipline and identity and passion and capability, the list goes on and on. Do not label transgender folks as dangerous to cisgender women. Instead, go inwards and be skeptical of why you are holding on so rigidly tight to male superiority. Stop withholding people’s human rights so you can feel like you are protecting women because you are not, you are only degrading them more and churning transphobia in the process.