Ali's Reviews > Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates

"[S]ports, by design, are not fair... some athletes are taller in sports that preference height, and some are faster in sports that preference speed. Is that fair? The reality of sports is that we accept unfairness all the time" (pg 235).

I devoured this book. It does a phenomenal job of explaining the history of how we got to have sex-segregated sports in the first place, and presenting the sides of debate of where trans people should be included in sport (or under what restrictions, if any). Barnes wants you to make your own conclusions at the end, but does provide their own thoughts.

The book follows multiple transgender athletes' stories (mostly trans women, because trans men are often not perceived as "an athletic threat to men" [pg 69]). It quickly becomes evident people didn't care about trans women in sports until they started winning. It is emphasized throughout the book, however, that "a person's testosterone level does not determine athletic outcomes" (pg 88). Meaning one trans woman is not guaranteed to beat all the cisgender girls. And in fact, they mostly haven't been!

While Barnes doesn't have all the answers, because there needs to be more research done on how trans women's diminished but not negated physiological advantages from HRT translate to performance advantages (pg 94), they provide a number of insights from their job in this field as to how to proceed and an understanding of why people are so angry.

Essentially though, trans people should be able to choose which team they want to play on in low stakes (children's sports and recreational sports). For the Olympics it's more complicated (but a ban is not the answer), and most of us will never make it there, but these bills happening in the US affect thousands of trans lives now (pg 234).

I glossed over so many things, but if I keep going I'll just rewrite the book in my review... I hope this book explodes and encourages people to think critically about why they are gatekeeping trans people from sports, and hopefully we'll see more trans-sport inclusivity soon.