Editor's note: An excerpt from this article is featured in the full episode of Anderson Cooper's “The Playing Field: The Battle Over Transgender Athletes,” which airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on CNN.
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Like any competitive swimmer, Megan Cortez-Fields knows just how high the stakes can be in a sport where a hundredth of a second can mean the difference between winning and losing.
But she was one of the few who feared what victory would bring.
“I was worried that if I won, all my success would be negated because I was transgender,” Cortez Fields, a senior on the women's swim team at Ramapo College in New Jersey, told CNN.
As an NCAA competitor, Cortez Fields underwent more than a year of hormone therapy, blood tests and testosterone tracking to meet the association's transgender athlete guidelines and realize her dream of swimming alongside other women. I did.
But after a much smaller athletics association, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), voted to effectively ban trans women from competing in most athletic events, the NCAA has This week, it faces a flurry of calls to further restrict the participation of trans students. Its women's sports program.
Last month, the NCAA announced that the policy was “under consideration.”
Marci Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women's Sports (ICONS), which opposes trans women's participation in women's sports, praised the NAIA ban as an “important step” and called for the NCAA to “lift policies that protect “I will.” This is a female category. ”
Critics like Smith argue that transgender women, even those undergoing treatment to lower their testosterone levels, have an unfair physical advantage that deprives cisgender women of opportunities to succeed. It is claimed that this will happen.
But transgender athletes and their advocates point out that there is a lack of consistent, direct research to support this claim. They argue that trans women have the right to compete alongside their female peers.
“Given the number of trans women competing in the NCAA, the idea that trans women are taking over women's sports is completely off base,” said Anna, director of research at Athletes Ally, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ equality in sports. Mr. Beis says. .
Bass estimates that fewer than 40 of the NCAA's more than 500,000 athletes are known to be transgender.
Last month, Athlete Ally sent a letter to the NCAA signed by more than 400 current, former professional and college athletes, as well as hundreds of researchers and advocacy groups, urging the NCAA to continue allowing transgender athletes to compete. I begged.
“We cannot deny transgender athletes the fundamental right to be who they are, to access the sport they love, and to enjoy the proven physical and mental health benefits of sport,” the letter signed by the athletes said. “is contrary to the principles of the NCAA Constitution.” Megan Rapinoe, the retired U.S. women's national soccer team star, is one of them.
“Every student should have access to the life-saving power of sports.”
Competitive swimming pools have become a battleground in the battle to exclude transgender athletes, which took a sharp turn after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Leah Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title in 2022. It attracted a lot of attention.
Smith, co-founder of ICONS, said watching Thomas compete was “absolutely shocking.”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “I felt like I was watching women shrink.”
The NCAA's policy was revised in 2022 to adjust for “participation of transgender students and athletes in Olympic athletics.”
The association takes a sport-specific approach, allowing trans athletes to participate as long as they undergo one year of testosterone suppression treatment and meet the testosterone levels required by the sport's national or international governing body.
Trans women athletes, including Cortez Fields, say competing alongside other women is an important step toward feeling like their true selves and helps combat feelings of isolation.
“Transgender people have existed since time immemorial. But if we win, it will matter,” she said.
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Megan Cortez-Fields will graduate from Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, in May.
For Cortez-Fields, diving into the muffled sound of water has always felt like a sacred moment. However, as she began expressing her transgender identity during her second season on the men's team, her acceptance of this position became increasingly difficult.
“I have to wear a man's suit and have my chest taped, and even just competing against men makes me feel like a part of me is dying and withering away, which makes it even more painful. ” she said. “I believed I had to sacrifice my transgender identity in order to swim.”
Cortez Fields underwent hormone therapy for more than a year, closely tracked his testosterone levels and trained even though his body could no longer glide through the water with the speed and stamina he once did.
Finally, during her senior year, she was cleared by the NCAA to play on the women's team, which Cortez-Fields said at the time was “one of the most exciting things that ever happened.”
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In the final meet of her swimming career, Megan Cortez-Fields broke two school records and placed second in the 100-yard butterfly.
She recalls her last tournament in February as “one of the best tournaments of my life.”
“Every moment was just magical,” she said. “It felt like I was literally flying to the surface.”
During the meet, Cortez-Fields broke two school records and placed second in the 100-yard butterfly. She says her success came under scrutiny from anti-trans groups and conservative news outlets, but was widely praised by her teammates.
“Most of the women I met and swam competitively congratulated me. They told me that I deserved to be there and that I had to fight for my place to be there. It makes you feel,” she said.
What does research tell us and what we don't know?
This debate is limited by the lack of significant research and scientific consensus regarding whether trans athletes, particularly trans women, have an athletic advantage over cisgender athletes even after undergoing testosterone-reducing therapy. It's getting complicated.
Dr. Joshua Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, said many elite sports organizations are concerned about how trans athletes perform in specific categories, such as soccer or basketball. He said the government is trying to formulate policies without meaningful data.
“If we're going to be 'fair,' no matter how we define fairness, we need to look directly at individual movement activity,” Safer said. “We'll look at transgender people participating in sports before and after treatment and really measure the differences, especially in sports in general.”
Such studies may be particularly difficult to conduct given the relatively small number of trans athletes known to compete at an elite level.
Research is ongoing, but a 2017 review published in the journal Sports Medicine said there is “no direct or consistent research” showing an advantage for transgender people.
A more recent October 2023 study concluded that gender differences emerge after puberty, but that many are “reduced, if not eliminated, over time by gender-affirming hormone therapy.” The study states that qualities such as height and limb length appear to be “less malleable,” but points out that there are no efforts to restrict cisgender athletes with extraordinary physical gifts. There is.
Until more data is available, Safer believes governing bodies like the NCAA should be cautious about enacting sweeping restrictions “to avoid getting ahead of ourselves.”
“The association should take a cautious and inclusive stance until the data shows a potential advantage and adjustments can then be made,” he said.
In the absence of a scientific consensus, both sides rely on Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, to make their case.
Transgender advocacy groups remain hopeful that President Joe Biden's administration will implement last year's proposal to amend Title IX, which would impose a ban on transgender athletes on law schools.
“Title IX is the only major law at the federal level that protects cisgender female athletes, and we believe it should apply to transgender athletes as well,” Beis said. Speaking with Athlete Ally. “Title IX wants us to consider gender, not just the sex assigned at birth.”
But the Biden administration's changes to Title IX last month, which expand protections for LGBTQ students, were conspicuously absent from any direct reference to trans athletes. Before the new changes were announced, a senior Biden administration official told reporters that the process of reviewing protections for trans sports was “ongoing.”
However, some cisgender athletes and conservative lawmakers view the inclusion of trans women in women's sports as a flagrant violation of Title IX's nondiscrimination provisions.
In March, more than a dozen current and former female college athletes sued the NCAA over its transgender participation policy, arguing that allowing trans women to compete against cisgender women “is a significant departure from the original meaning of Title IX.” '', he criticized the organization.
Their protest was echoed last month by more than a dozen Republican lawmakers, who wrote in a letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker that transgender women's participation has been criticized by cisgender women for “fairness in competing and achieving athletic success.” He said he believed it would deprive him of a “great opportunity.”
Republican lawmakers at the state and local level have largely pushed to ban transgender people from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity, limiting their efforts to elite competition. do not have. Restrictions on transgender athletes have spread to Little League baseball fields, high school soccer fields and the halls of statehouses across the country.
At least 25 states require transgender students, particularly trans women and girls, to participate on teams that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that tracks such laws. There are laws and regulations in place that prohibit it.
Cortez-Fields said while the ban is not surprising, she worries it will affect many transgender children who may already be struggling to overcome feelings of isolation. he said.
“In some ways, part of gender-affirming care is being able to compete on teams of your gender and against people of your own gender,” she says.
“It's a very small minority, but that minority is important and they deserve fair participation.”
CNN's DJ Judd contributed to this report.
