Transgender Rights and the Olympic Games
July 1st 2024 marked the day of the 19th Meeting of the 56th Regular Session of Human Rights Council in Geneva. The main topic of the conference was the 2024 Olympics, which will be taking place in France, from July 26th until August 11th. One issue that caused a great deal of contention amongst the representatives is what to do about transgender-indentifying athletes in sports. The fear among many is that biological males will completely dominate women’s sports and make the competitions completely unfair for female athletes.
Organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian NGO, discussed the importance of protecting women’s sports, saying that allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports is “an injustice.” The organization’s representative at the conference said, “men and women are inherently different. Physiological differences between the two sexes give men performance advantages in sports, a reality consistently confirmed by scientific research.” The organization strongly disagrees with the International Olympic Committee’s stance of there being, “no presumption of advantage based on transgender status.” According to the ADF representative, allowing transgender-idenifying athletes to compete against women “is causing harm to women and girl’s sports at all levels including lost medals, violations of privacy and safety, and self-exclusion.” ADF demanded that women’s sports remain solely for women.
However there was of course strong backlash against the conservative view of gender and sports. The representative from the International Lesbian and Gay Association claimed that the Olympics and sports organizations in general, are hostile places for transgender-identifying individuals. She stated in her speech that, “stigma, fearmongering, and misinformation surround debates on trans, gender diverse, and intersex people in sports.” She continued, saying that transgender-identifying athletes do not have an advantage over women, and claims that there is data to prove it. As the representative continued with her speech, she expressed her deep frustration with the practices of the International Olympic Committee, and other United Nations branches. According to her, her organization has “seen an increase in discriminatory narratives from parliaments to recent United Nations events and spaces.” She stated that before they can begin training transgender-identifying individuals often have to undergo, “sex testing,” which she says, “may amount to torture,” and undermines, “their rights to just and favorable conditions of work, privacy, and bodily integrity.”
It has been clear for millennia that men and boys are physically stronger than women and girls, and it seems as though only in the past decade that this has been an issue. Although there has been some backlash from female athletes such as swimmer Riley Gains, I am surprised that there is not more backlash from women in sports. Their careers as athletes are on the line, since their medals and scholarships are often given to biological men. I also find it interesting that both sides of the argument find what the International Olympic Committee is doing to be inadequate. I guess it goes to show that you cannot be neutral in this kind of an issue.
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