ENJOY THE GAME

THE GENDER GAMES: MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR

H. G. LARSBY

February 28, 2025

Competitive sports have long been arenas of triumph, discipline, and a fair dose of theatrical absurdity. And the most charged debate in sports today is a veritable minefield: the participation of transgender athletes in competitive sports. Rather than merely parsing fairness and biology, perhaps it is more illuminating to examine how this debate echoes centuries of cultural anxieties about identity, performance, and the rules governing who gets to participate.

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Transgender athletes have shifted the narrative of sports from a metaphor for universal human striving into a battleground for cultural values. This topic is as loaded as a weightlifter’s barbell, demanding nuance, empathy, and a willingness to rethink everything from genetics to equality to why we even bother keeping score in the first place. But what if, instead of focusing on the mechanics of competition, we framed this debate within larger historical tensions surrounding identity and its fluid boundaries?

Think of Rrose Sélavy, the female alter ego of Marcel Duchamp, whose very existence questioned the rigid structures of identity and artistic legitimacy (and who gave this journal its title). In early twentieth-century Paris, Duchamp challenged the sanctity of artistic categories just as transgender athletes challenge the fixed classifications of sports today. Duchamp’s infamous Fountain (1917), a urinal proposed as art, shattered conventional definitions of creativity. Was it a joke? Was it genius? Or was it simply a provocation that exposed the arbitrariness of artistic (and, by extension, societal) categories?

Lovingly, Rrose Sélavy

The outrage over transgender athletes mirrors this disruption. Is sport a test of pure biological merit, or is it, like art, a cultural construction shaped by shifting values and evolving definitions? If Duchamp could redefine art by questioning who gets to call themselves an artist, then what happens when we interrogate who gets to call themselves an athlete?

Alessandro Moreschi, the “Angel of Rome”

Looking further back, the castrati singers of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe occupied a liminal gendered space that was simultaneously celebrated and controversial. These male singers, castrated before puberty to retain their high vocal range, were seen as possessing both the lung capacity of a man and the ethereal voice of a woman—an advantageous blend that made them operatic superstars. Their biological modification was both their ticket to fame and a source of public fascination.

The backlash against the castrati followed a trajectory similar to today’s opposition to transgender athletes. Critics argued they were unnatural, unfair, and undermining the purity of performance, while supporters saw them as pushing the boundaries of what the human body could achieve. Sound familiar? If the essence of competition is the thrill of performance, then why do we accept some forms of biological modification while vilifying others?

In the eighteenth century, Chevalière d’Éon, a French diplomat and elite fencer, lived half of their life as a man and half as a woman. They fought duels, conducted espionage, and competed in fencing—while simultaneously forcing society to confront questions about whether gender was fluid or fixed. D’Éon’s legacy poses a provocative question: Have gendered divisions in sports ever been as immutable as we claim? If d’Éon was able to compete and win while occupying multiple gender identities, is today’s debate really about fairness, or is it about enforcing outdated categories in a world that increasingly resists them?

Lost in History: Charlotte d’Éon de Beaumont aka Charles d’Éon de Beaumont

History is littered with figures who thrived precisely because they subverted gender expectations. Joan of Arc cut her hair and dressed as a man to lead the French army. Dr. James Barry (born Margaret Ann Bulkley) lived as a man to become a pioneering nineteenth-century surgeon. Both succeeded in worlds that would have excluded them had they adhered to rigid gender norms.

James Miranda Steuart Barry Margaret Ann Bulkley

Transgender athletes, too, force us to reconsider whether we define sports by biology, tradition, or something more nebulous—like our cultural comfort with who gets to win. If success in history was often contingent on bending gender expectations, why does modern sport insist on clinging to categories that are increasingly at odds with how identity is understood?

Historically, sports have always been a stage for societal anxieties. When Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier and when women began running marathons, the backlash was fierce. Critics at the time insisted that these changes would ruin the integrity of their respective sports. Today, we look back on those moments as milestones of progress. The debate over transgender athletes is the latest chapter in this ongoing saga, and like those earlier struggles, it reveals as much about our cultural insecurities as it does about the athletes themselves.

Yet even as society grapples with these big-picture questions, the practical realities of competition remain stubbornly unresolved. The International Olympic Committee has established testosterone thresholds for transgender women, but these guidelines are far from perfect; critics argue that they rely on outdated science and fail to account for the nuances of athletic performance. Meanwhile, some have proposed creating separate categories for transgender athletes, but this idea risks reinforcing the very divisions it seeks to address. Inclusion, after all, loses its power when it is confined to its own lane.

Laurel Hubbard, the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Olympics

The emotional toll of this debate is also worth considering. Female athletes who express concerns about fairness are often dismissed as sore losers or, worse, bigots. Meanwhile, transgender athletes face scrutiny that goes far beyond their performance on the field. They become symbols in a cultural war they did not sign up for, their every move dissected and debated in ways that no cisgender athlete would ever endure. As Sharron Davies, a former Olympic swimmer, said in a widely shared interview, “I absolutely support transgender rights, but we cannot ignore the physical advantages that are baked in from male puberty. It’s not about discrimination; it’s about fairness.” Conversely, transgender cyclist Rachel McKinnon countered in an interview with The Guardian, “The idea that trans women are a threat to women’s sports is just fear-mongering. Every athlete has physical advantages, and we do not police those.”

So where does that leave us? Perhaps the most honest answer is that there are no easy solutions. The debate over transgender athletes is messy, contentious, and deeply human. But maybe the real problem is that we keep assuming sports were ever about absolute fairness to begin with.

Duchamp proved that art was a game of perception. The castrati, d’Éon, and Joan of Arc thrived in spaces that refused to recognize their full humanity. What if sports, rather than being the last bastion of unchangeable rules, are actually part of a long tradition of redefining who gets to compete?

H. G. Larsby lives in a converted lighthouse off the coast of Le Havre, France, where they spend their days contemplating the intersection of sports and societal norms. Larsby has never run a marathon but once walked briskly to catch a bus. When not writing, they curate an impressive collection of vintage referee whistles and host trivia nights dedicated to obscure Olympic scandals.

Cover image: Albert Lynch, Joan of Arc, 1903