Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport

Eric Anderson, Ann Travers, Eric Anderson, Ann Travers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138235632
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315304250
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

While efforts to include gay and lesbian athletes in competitive sport have received significant attention, it is only recently that we have begun examining the experiences of transgender athletes in competitive sport. This book represents the first comprehensive study of the challenges that transgender athletes face in competitive sport; and the challenges they pose for this sex-segregated institution. Beginning with a discussion of the historical role that sport has played in preserving sex as a binary, the book examines how gender has been policed by policymakers within competitive athletics. It also considers how transgender athletes are treated by a system predicated on separating males from females, consequently forcing transgender athletes to negotiate the system in coercive ways. The book not only exposes our culture's binary thinking in terms of both sex and gender, but also offers a series of thought-provoking and sometimes contradictory recommendations for how to make sport more hospitable, inclusive and equitable.

Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport is important reading for all students and scholars of the sociology of sport with an interest in the relationship between sport and gender, politics, identity and ethics.

Part I
Individual stories of transgender sporting experiences

Chapter 1
Advantage Renée?

Renée Richards and women’s tennis

Lindsay Parks Pieper

Newcomer Renee Clarke cruised by top-seeded Robin Harris, 6–1, 6–1, in the finals of the 1976 La Jolla tennis tournament. Clarke’s precise baseline shots and powerful serves proved too much for Harrison. While her 6’2” frame awed the crowd, it particularly impressed San Diego reporter, Dick Carlson. He originally researched her for background information to produce a feel-good story about a remarkable local athlete. Instead, Carlson aired an expose that pushed the new star into the spotlight. He identified Renee Clarke as Renée Richards, the former male professional tennis player Richard Raskind. The discovery of a male-to-female trans athlete in women’s tennis immediately raised eligibility questions and sparked protest.

Moreover, when Richards announced her intention to compete in the 1976 US Open, she challenged the classification structure of tennis. Like most sport organisations, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) divided participants into male and female categories. Richards’s very presence complicated these rules. She also surfaced just as women’s tennis was making significant strides in both professional opportunities and payments. Viewing her as a threat to sex-segregated contests, and a menace to the newly popular women’s tour, the USTA and WTA barred her by instituting a chromosomal check for all female participants. Richards consequently sued. A victory in the New York Supreme Court paved the way for her inclusion on the women’s tennis circuit; however, the ruling extended only to Richards, and did not provide blanket acceptance for trans athletes in sport (DeMartini 2014). She participated in the 1977 US Open, lost in the first round, and retired from sport four years later.

Richards’s athletic career demonstrates the importance of gender norms in the determination of sex in women’s tennis. She overtly challenged biological conceptions of sex but also performed stereotypical understandings of femininity. Significantly, Richards repeatedly downplayed her athleticism – to diminish concerns of her supposed biological edge – and highlighted her weakened physique. Journalists similarly responded to accusations of advantage by focusing on her feminine appearance, while the reaction from female tennis players largely centred on questions of fairness. Although many argued that trans athletes threatened the sex-segregated blueprint of sport, an overview of Richards’s time on the women’s circuit instead illustrates a reaffirmation of binary understandings of both sex and gender.

Two sides of the net: a sex divide on the court

Before appearing in the women’s division of the local California tournament, Richards participated in men’s matches. She enrolled at Yale University and captained the tennis team. As a Yale Bulldog, Richards won the 1953 Men’s Eastern Junior Indoor Championship. She later graduated from the University of Rochester Medical School in 1959, started an ophthalmology practice, and continued to compete. In 1964, she won the New York State men’s clay-court title and, in 1972, ranked sixth nationally in the men’s 35-and-over division. Despite finding success in medicine and athletics, Richards remained discontent. “My feeling for appropriate masculine behaviour came from more observation and impersonation than it did from any internal mechanism”, she wrote in her 1983 autobiography Second Serve: The Renée Richards Story. “A lot of times I was like a man from a foreign country trying to blend in with the population” (111). Richards underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1975 and moved to California for a fresh start. Her success in the La Jolla Junior Veteran’s Championship the following year ended her anonymity. The press immediately picked up the story and headlines appeared around the world.

Her decision to continue competing not only ensured more news coverage, but it also caused policy changes. When Richards announced her plans to participate in the 1976 US Open, the USTA and WTA banned her by enacting the Barr body test. This method, also known as the buccal smear test, checked competitors’ chromosomes. The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had already instituted the technique, purportedly to detect male imposters in elite sport.¹ Sport officials incorrectly argued that all women possessed XX chromosomes and all men possessed XY chromosomes.² In 1967, the IAAF introduced the Barr body test as a requirement for all female track and field athletes; the IOC followed suit the next year for all female Olympians (Pieper 2016).

Tennis officials thus had the Barr body test at their disposal in 1967. The USTA and WTA did not mandate the check until Richards appeared on the tennis scene nine years later. Disregarding warnings from scientists who argued that chromosomes did not unequivocally identify sex, the organisations used the precedent established by the IAAF and IOC. They instituted sex testing for the 1976 US Open to eliminate “persons not genetically female” from competition. Although worded broadly, the policy was aimed at Richards. Richards (1983) argued that “they knew in all likelihood I could never pass such a test, though it is not infallible proof of sexual identity” (343).

The USTA and WTA’s decision to bar Richards from women’s tennis stemmed from two false assumptions: that sports are fair and men possess a biological advantage in all athletic events. In a 1976 USTA press release explaining the new practice, the organisation suggested that “entry into women’s events at the U.S. Open, the leading international tennis tournament, of persons not genetically female would introduce an element of inequality and unhappiness into the championships”. The WTA echoed this idea. New York Times reporter Neil Amdur summarised the organisation’s position as “it’s damn unfair to a woman who has devoted her whole life to tennis to lose a sport in a draw to a man” (15 August 1976, 147). The new regulation, and the USTA’s and WTA’s defence of it, illustrates what sport scholar Heather Sykes (2006) refers to as the “unfair advantage discourse”. This discourse falsely assumes that relatively higher levels of testosterone guarantee athletic success, that all male competitors are better than all female competitors in all sporting activities, and that men will undergo sex changes to reap the benefits of women’s sport. Research on testosterone is inconclusive regarding the likelihood of gains in strength, and muscularity is not the only attribute necessary for sporting success. Plus, no man has ever changed sex for the sake of sporting victory.³

Despite evidence proving the unfair advantage discourse erroneous, the USTA and WTA held firm. “If I was allowed to play”, Richards recalled (1983), the tennis organisations believed “the floodgates would be opened and through them would come tumbling an endless stream of made-over Neanderthals who would brutalize Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong. Of course, this was sheer nonsense” (345). Nonsense or not, Richards needed to fight for entrance to the women’s tour. One way she sought to dispel assumptions of her supposed advantage was to perform stereotypical femininity.

Richards’s performance of femininity

The USTA and WTA believed that Richards’s biology gave her an unfair advantage in tennis. “They think of me as bionic woman”, she explained in a 1976 New York Times interview. So Richards regularly resisted such sentiments. “I’m not the world-beater they think I am”, she argued (18 August 1976, 61). To help quell any misnomers about her athleticism, she displayed conventional femininity and highlighted her weakened physique, in line with Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity (1990). According to Butler, gender is constructed through the performance of acts that mirror social ideals. Richards’s repetitive performances of femininity were important for her eventual inclusion on the women’s circuit.

To prove her womanhood, Richards made herself the epitome of femininity in three ways. First, she outwardly upheld gender norms with makeup, nail polish, jewellery, and dresses. At a press conference following the La Jolla tournament, Richards appeared in “distinctly female” clothing, complemented by matching peach nail polish and “graceful gold pierced earrings”. Second, she readily enacted stereotypes of female behaviour. For instance, Richards described herself as a newly emotional person. She claimed that hormone treatments had lifted her mood, but also left her off balance. “The hormones seemed to induce in me an uncharacteristic sense of well-being, even though my emotional swings increased markedly”, she explained (2007). “I had laughing fits and crying jags, but they seemed natural and even therapeutic” (235). Her use of “natural” is striking. It suggests an essentialist notion of gender that reaffirms the belief that women as a group are more sensitive and irrational than men.

Third, and more significant in the realm of sport, Richards downplayed her athleticism and emphasised her weakness. She did so to abide by social protocol that views female athletes as inferior to male athletes. Thus, to prove to the USTA, WTA, and her competitors that she did not have an unfair advantage, Richards highlighted her weaknesses. She repeatedly described her reduced muscle mass, increased tiredness, and weight loss as signifiers of her womanhood. Even more overtly, Richards publicly equated losing with being a woman. Writing in Second Serve, she (1983) described playing tennis with male friends. “They were amazed at my skills … but, when I missed a ball, they were quick to blame it on my being a woman”, she wrote. But Richards’s male competitors were not alone in labelling her mistakes as feminine. “I didn’t mind these jibes because they affirmed my womanliness”, Richards wrote. “Even the putdowns were welcomed reinforcements” (238). This behaviour, of course, upheld the idea that femininity and athleticism are oxymoronic. As sport philosopher Knutte Jonsson (2007) explains, these biological arguments of difference help “legitimate the gender hierarchy … by seeing women’s (inferior) gender roles as something that is natural” (245). Richards’s enactment of stereotypical femininity therefore not only upheld society’s ideals about gender, but also reinforced cultural practices that mark sport as a male space.

Journalists also regularly made note of Richards’s outward appearance. Reports discussed her “high cheekbones”, “sharply defined eyebrows”, “shapely legs”, and general attractiveness. New York Times writer Charles Friedman described Richards as “stylish and statuesque in a light blue tennis dress with a flared skirt and large loop earrings” (20 July 1977, 34). Although the presence of a trans athlete threatened to upend society’s beliefs about the division between men and women, reporters largely covered Richards in the same (pejorative) way as they did other female athletes. As sport scholars Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole (1990) explain, this type of coverage reproduced, rather than challenged, dominant understandings of sex and gender. They argue that the media upheld the “assumption that there are two and only two, obviously universal, natural, bipolar, mutually exclusive sexes that necessarily correspond to stable gender identity and gendered behavior” (3). Although many positively commented on Richards’s carefully constructed appearance, not everyone was happy to include her in women’s tennis.

Richards and the women’s liberation movement

Richards may have viewed her lesser capabilities as justification for entrance to the women’s tour, but her opponents on the court largely disagreed. When director of Tennis Week Open, Gene Scott, invited her to participate in an August 1976 tournament, twenty-five of the thirty-two women scheduled to compete dropped out in protest. The number two seed Ann Kiyomura told reporters that the reason for the mass exodus was because “We all feel she’s still a man and it’s just not fair” (Chicago Tribune, 21 August 1976, 4). Similarly, Wimbledon runner-up Janet Newberry argued that “We are not prepared to commit ourselves to a women’s tournament in which a man is playing” (Los Angeles Times, 21 August 1976, C2). The WTA also revoked its sanction of Tennis Week Open on the premise that “there is a man in our tournament” (Los Angeles Times, 20 August 1976, E1). Presumptions of an unfair advantage again underlined these concerns. Some people also thought that including Richards diminished the gains women’s tennis had only recently earned. In connection with the women’s liberation movement, professional female players had established a professional tour for women in 1970 and continued to fight for equal purses to the men. Richards thus not only raised questions of fairness and advantage, but also highlighted the precarious nature of women’s professional sport.

With the implementation of Title IX, and with support from the women’s liberation movement, women’s sport grew. Title IX stipulated equal sporting opportunities for men and women, increasing female participation at the high school and collegiate level. In professional tennis, Richards appeared on the scene just as Billie Jean King and other tennis players were advancing women’s events. King was among the first to embrace the cause of women’s tennis. The vocal advocate led the fight for equality and convinced eight of the top tennis competitors to start the Virginia Slims Tour in 1970. Shortly thereafter, King earned $117,000, becoming the first female athlete to breach the 100-grand mark. Her easy defeat of Bobby Riggs in the 1973 match billed as “The Battle of the Sexes”, also provided justification for the expansion of women’s sport. King’s on-court efforts buttressed the women’s movement and provided a strong symbol of successful female entrance into traditionally male realms (Ware 2011).

Consequently, some feared male-to-female trans athletes diminished the achievements of women’s athletics and belittled the goals of the women’s liberation movement. Gloria Steinem (1983), for example, embraced the unfair advantage thesis and wondered “if Richards had changed identity only to prove that any man, even a former one, could beat any woman” (227–228). Similarly, self-identified radical feminist Janice Raymond (1979) expressed even more hostile opposition to the possibility of trans inclusion in sport. She argued that “transsexuals” were men reconstructed in the guise of femininity in order to subvert women’s progress. Raymond argued that Richards’s campaign for inclusion was an attempt to dismantle the recent achievements of women’s tennis. Raymond claimed that Richards had “succeeded in hitting the benefits of sex discrimination back into the male half of the court. The public recognition and success that it took Billie Jean King and women’s tennis years to get, Renée Richards has achieved in one set” (xiii).

Richards continued to gain public recognition. When the Tennis Week Open tournament rolled around, only seven of the original thirty-two enlisted athletes participated. Richards defeated Cathy Beene, 6–0, 6–2, Caroline Stoll, 6–2, 0–6, 6–1, and Kathy Harter, 6–4, 7–6. Then, in front of a sell-out crowd of 36,000, she lost to seventeen-year-old Lea Antonoplis, 7–6, 3–6, 0–6, in the semi-finals. Her performance left many unimpressed. As New York Times reporter Amdur succinctly put it, “So what was all the fuss about” (29 August 1976, 141)? Beene commented that “I thought she would be a much stronger player than she was” and “she’s not as strong or powerful as I anticipated” (Chicago Tribune, 22 August 1976, B3). When Richards failed to demolish other female competitors as initially expected, those opposed to her started to ease up on their protests. She continued to compete in tournaments – those not sanctioned by the USTA or the WTA – and many athletes came to a similar conclusion. As Richards (1983) recalled in Second Serve, “most of the women [the USTA and WTA] were supposedly protecting didn’t want to be protected. In fact, they were on my side” (346). But because the tennis organisations remained unmoved, Richards sued for access.

Renee Richards vs. United States Tennis Association

In 1977, Richards filed suit against the USTA, WTA, and the US Open Committee. She argued that their refusal to allow her entrance to the women’s tour was discriminatory and a deprivation of her civil rights. The case focused on three issues: the reliability of the Barr body test in the determination of sex, how to define sex, and the reaction of female athletes. When the New York Supreme Court ruled in Richards’s favour on 16 August 1977, the decision opened the door for her to compete on the women’s tennis circuit.

The court first heard arguments regarding the use of chromosomes as a prerequisite for competitions. Richards’s lawyer argued that the Barr body test was “insufficient, grossly unfair, inaccurate, faulty and inequitable” in the determination of sex (Richards v. United States Tennis Assn., 2). The doctors who testified on her behalf argued that a phenotype test was more accurate. Phenotype...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Individual stories of transgender sporting experiences
• PART II Research into transgender sporting experiences
• PART III When policy and identity clash
• PART IV Challenging the system
• Index