Sports, Transgender Rights and the Bodily Politics of Cisgender Supremacy

Abstract

Between 2020 and 2021, one hundred and ten bills in state legislatures across the United States suggested banning the participation of transgender athletes on sports teams for girls and women. As of July 2021, ten such bills have become state law. This paper tracks the political shift towards targeting transgender athletes. Conservative political interests now seek laws that suture biological determinist arguments to civil rights of bodies. Although narrow binary definitions of sex have long operated in the background as a means for policy implementation under Title IX, Republican lawmakers now aim to reframe sex non-discrimination policies as means of gendered exclusion. The content of proposals reveal the centrality of ideas about bodily immutability, and body politics more generally, in shaping the future of American gender politics. My analysis of bills from 2021 argues that legislative proposals advance a logic of “cisgender supremacy” inhering in political claims about normatively gendered bodies. Political institutions are another site for advancing, enshrining, and normalizing cis-supremacist gender orders, explicitly joining cause with medical authorities as arbiters of gender normativity. Characteristics of bodies and their alleged role in evidencing sex itself have fueled the tactics of anti-transgender activists on the political Right. However, the target of their aims is not mere policy change but a state-sanctioned return to a narrowly cis- and heteropatriarchal gender order.

Serial Mediation Analysis of the Association of Familiarity with Transgender Sports Bans and Suicidality among Sexual and Gender Minority Adults in the United States

“…Laws and policies that require people who are transgender to participate in sports based on the sex assigned to them at birth convey that society cannot accept that a person can identify with a gender incongruent to their sex assigned at birth. In their review of proposed state-level transgender sports bans bills in the US, for example, Sharrow found that the bills “rarely explicitly acknowledge the existence of ‘transgender’ people” (p.13) [ 53 ]. Rather, transgender girls and women were misgendered as ‘biological males’ in most bills [ 53 ].…”

“…In their review of proposed state-level transgender sports bans bills in the US, for example, Sharrow found that the bills “rarely explicitly acknowledge the existence of ‘transgender’ people” (p.13) [ 53 ]. Rather, transgender girls and women were misgendered as ‘biological males’ in most bills [ 53 ]. Legislation and policies that require people who are transgender to participate in sports based on sex assigned at birth may also skeptically suggest that a person who wants to participate in sports based on their identified gender is trying to “game the system” for an unfair advantage (e.g., a boy wants to run girl’s track to win state).…”

Perinatal Care for Trans and Nonbinary People Birthing in Heteronormative “Maternity” Services: Experiences and Educational Needs of Professionals

“…This study occurs within a geopolitical Western context in which some conservatives are attempting to police the category “female” (Sharrow 2021), as an oppressive force fuelling anti-trans rhetoric (Hsu 2022). We argue that a focus on the sexed body is bound up in the medicalization of both women’s bodies, childbirth and trans identities whereby trans people who seek perinatal care can be cast under suspicion as not being truly what they claim to be (Gill-Peterson 2014; Thomas 2021).…”

“We Just Think of Her as One of the Girls”: Applying a Trans Inclusion Staged Model to the Experiences of Trans Children and Youth in UK Primary and Secondary Schools

“…Cis supremacy is understood here as a situation in which cis people hold power over or are privileged over trans people, with trans people systemically disadvantaged. Sharrow (2021) wrote about how institutions are a “site for advancing, enshrining, and normalizing cis-supremacist gender orders” (p. 1). Schools that ignore cis-supremacist hierarchies are complicit in perpetuating, legitimizing, and enabling discrimination (Ferfolja & Ullman, 2021).…”