Fair Game: Trans athletes and the future of sports

Welcome back to Let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast, your go to LGBT Australian podcast for all things queer.

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Dr. Anna Baeth and Ellie Roscher, co-authors of Fair Game: Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports, to unpack one of the most heated debates in the world right now: trans athletes in sport.

Are transgender athletes “taking over” women’s sports?
Are they stealing scholarships and medals?
Is it really about fairness and safety, or is something else going on?

We break down the biggest lies circulating in the media and politics, and look at what the actual research says. Spoiler: trans athletes make up less than 1% of participants, yet hundreds of laws have been proposed to exclude them.

In this episode we explore:

• The data behind trans athlete participation
• Why the “fairness” argument doesn’t hold up
• How moral panic is manufactured
• The role of patriarchy and capitalism in sport
• Why controlling trans bodies is part of a bigger political agenda
• How trans athletes can actually help create a better, more inclusive sporting future

We also talk about lived experience, what it feels like to move through sport in a transitioning body, the anxiety around locker rooms, and why movement and play are a human right.

This episode is about more than sport. It’s about bodily autonomy, media misinformation, political fear-mongering, and what happens when we actually listen to trans athletes instead of talking about them.

If you care about transgender rights, women’s sport, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, or the future of athletics, this is a conversation you need to hear.

🎧 Listen in and find out the truth about trans atheletes in sports... and until next time, stay perfectly queer!

ELLIE ROSCHER 

Social Media Links:

• Purchase the book: https://thenewpress.org/books/fair-game/?v=eb65bcceaa5f
• Website: www.ellieroscher.com
• Instagram: @ellieroscher , https://www.instagram.com/ellieroscher

DR. ANNA BAETH 

Social Media Links:

• Purchase the book: https://thenewpress.org/books/fair-game/?v=eb65bcceaa5f
• Website: www.annabaeth.com
• Instagram: @dr.bae.phd , https://www.instagram.com/dr.bae.phd/

Transcript

Welcome to Let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie, and I'm joined today by Dr. Anna Baeth and Ellie Roscher. Anna Baeth is a feminist scholar, collegiate coach and former two-sport college athlete whose research focuses on gender, sport and social movements.

She also holds an MS in Exercise and Sports Studies from Smith College and a PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Minnesota, and Ellie Roscher, author, writing and yoga teacher and former two-sport college athlete who has coached gymnastics and softball. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in Theology from Luther Seminary. On today's episode, we are going to be talking to Dr. Anna Baeth and Ellie Roscher,and their book Fair Game, Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports.

Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. This is such a great book and something that's so needed right now.

Thank you for writing it and thank you for doing something like this. For our listeners who might not know anything that's going on in the trans space or might be new to this conversation, can you each introduce yourself and how you came to work in a trans-inclusive space, especially in sport? Totally. I'll begin.

My name is Ellie Roscher. I'm so happy to be here. I'm a writer and a teacher.

Right now, I'm teaching yoga and teaching writing and I love writing books. My last book, I interviewed people who have interesting body stories, interesting things that have happened to their bodies. I got to interview a couple of trans and non-binary folks and I was just fascinated with their body stories and how articulate they were because at least the people I interviewed were so in tune with shifts in their bodies and they were just so awake and alive.

That's one of the nuggets. I also was a high school teacher and I had transgender students who needed my support and advocacy. This was before we saw all of these bans start to come out.

I competed in two college sports and so I started gymnastics when I was four. I have no memory of my life without sports. I love them so much.

You put all of these things together. When I start seeing in the U.S. that we're banning trans kids, that we're banning trans adults from playing in sports, all three of those things came together. I was so mad.

I didn't buy into the story that was coming through the media that it was unsafe or that it was unfair because I knew these trans folks were pretty vulnerable in our society. I knew the people before I knew the issue. I just believe that play is a human right and I can see the power of sports, why it's so important to give kids and adults access to that play, that sense of belonging.

And then the other part is that I met Dr. Baeth. She's leading this in research and so we decided to come together and try to have a project that has both stories and really good information. So the hat that I kind of wore in this project is sitting at the feet of trans athletes, asking them these body questions, listening really, really hard and really allowing the trans athletes finally to speak for themselves.

One of the things we've been saying over and over again is that we're talking about trans athletes without talking to them. And so that was our number one move with this book is talking to trans athletes who wanted to share their stories. And those stories changed me forever.

And that's kind of the heartbeat of this book, Fair Game. And I'll pause for there, otherwise I'll keep going for the whole hour. Dr. Baeth, you're up.

Thanks, Ellie. Yeah. First, thanks so much for having us on.

I'm Dr. Anna Baeth. I use she, her pronouns. For those who are listening in who maybe can't see me, I am a cisgender white woman.

And you can probably tell from our accents that Ellie and I are both Americans. But how I came to this work is essentially I was finishing my PhD, I was studying sport. My background is really in sport and athletics.

And I was looking for a job. And I was hired by an LGBTQ rights organization focuses in sport. And right as I was hired within, I would say about six months, all of a sudden, trans athletes were in the news everywhere.

None of us really saw it coming. And I will say at that point, because I just started this job, I didn't really know a lot about trans athletes. I knew a lot about sports.

And I think I knew a lot about gender in sports, but I really didn't know much. And all of a sudden, I was getting all of these calls, people asking me, hey, you do research, you're in this space, what do we know about trans athletes? And so I essentially spent about five years just doing as much research as I possibly could on the subject. And as I was doing that work, I was realizing that all of the data I was coming to, all of the findings that I had, I was presenting them to politicians, to lawmakers, to sport governing bodies, and it just it wasn't moving the needle.

And so actually, Ellie, Ellie and I also were running buddies. We lived about a mile apart from each other when we started this book. So we were out for a run one day, and I was talking about my frustrations.

And we decided, OK, well, then let's talk about how we move the needle. And we wrote this book with the idea that we want to present the stories of trans athletes to the world. And we also want to back it with data.

But you can't have one without the other. So that's really how how the book came together. And those I have to say, we were running in the winter in Minnesota, and it was so cold.

I don't even know. I feel like we were throwing ideas out there back and forth, mostly because I was just in a frozen brain state. That's right.

We're hardy folk. Yeah. Definitely.

In Australia, especially WA and West Australia, it is summer right now. So thinking about that is a bit crazy. It gets very hot.

And anything below like six degrees here, which I'm not sure what that is, Fahrenheit, we're like, nah, we just stay inside. So it's very crazy when we see those things across the world, and it's very, very different. But going back to the book before I get distracted by weather, I love the human aspect to it.

And you don't see that. It wasn't just stats and statistics and here's all the data. I love that there was that human aspect.

So it gives that humanity to trans people, which I do feel like some people are missing out on. When I was reading it as a trans man, I could relate so much as well to what they're going through and how their brain works. I was like, this feels like this could be my story, which is a bit crazy as well.

And I love that aspect. So well done on that end. Amazing.

That's so good to hear. I mean, the stories are incredible. And I also think it's really beautiful how varied they are.

So often we want a singular story, but trans folks don't want to be put into boxes. And so even the variance between the stories are so, so, so beautiful. And I think that's important when we're talking about policy because we have to have more nuanced conversations of like bodies are complex and so are sports.

And so it kind of depends on how old you are and what sport you're in and what is your experience of your gender, your body, your sex. So I loved meeting all these trans athletes who came forward to be part of the project. And I think the diversity within their stories is one of the strengths of the book for sure.

Yeah. No, it's awesome. And we hear a lot of fear-based language around trans athletes, especially in the news and social media.

But what are the biggest myths you see repeated and what does the data actually say? Okay. So, Baeth, I'm going to set you up. I'll put up a myth and then you give us some good data.

We debunk it. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So we created a master lie that we've been hearing and I did call them myths, but I always like to say I love mythology.

Like I love myths and this is doing harm. So it's like, you get what I mean, but like I'm going to, right now I'm just going to say lies. Okay.

So there's a big master lie that in the book we break down into pieces. Okay. And the first is that transgender athletes are coming in droves.

there's a disproportionality aspect to this where there are more bands of trans athletes than there are trans athletes. And so this, this part of the lie that there's this wave of trans athletes who are coming to take over, we'll say specifically women's and girls sports is supposed to do work to incite a moral panic. And I'll say that the moral panic will work. 

That fear can be activated when you're working in a structure where there's scarcity. Right. And so they're coming in droves is a lie and it's being believed because it has become a moral panic. 

They go part number one. What do you got? Yeah, that's, that's, uh, most of it. I mean, I think it's important to say, you know, trans athletes make up less than 1% of all athletes across the board. 

And realistically, the number is closer to about a half of 1%. So we are talking about really a handful of people. And what Ellie just mentioned is the reality is last year, there were 13 times more anti-trans bills proposed across the United States than there were out trans athletes. 

Do we need 13 bills per person? I think that. I think not. I think not. 

And a lot of that is because if we can talk about the bills, then we can create this idea and the sensibility and this, this sense of fear or this moral panic. But really the impetus behind a moral panic is by creating a moral panic. Certain lawmakers are then also saying, not only should you be afraid, but you should turn to me and vote for me and give me money because I am the one who can solve this problem. 

Right? So the irony abounds there because also these lawmakers have never cared about women's sport, right? Or women, any women. Yeah. Women's bodies. 

Okay. Can we say that? Okay. The next myth that we debunk, we really debunk four in the book. 

The next one is that they're stealing scholarships and medals. This is simply not true. A trans athlete has not been awarded a scholarship in the United States in place of a cis athlete. 

No trans athlete has won an Olympic medal. I'm not sure what else there is to say about that, except that it's just not true. But again, it's a, it's another myth that fuels that fear. 

And I think what's going on behind the lie that they're stealing medals, what's underneath that is that it's unfair. What they're actually saying when they're saying that is it's unfair for a trans woman to compete against a cis woman. And what's underneath that, like you just keep excavating it.

There's this belief that women's bodies are inferior and need to be protected. And I, as a cis woman am divesting from that. I don't need that protection. 

Let me go. Let me compete. Let me compete against anyone who wants to compete with me. 

Right? So what we need to look at where we're laser focused right now on testosterone, but the studies are not good. The numbers are not good. They are inconclusive, right? That testosterone and cis men and cis women overlap a great deal. 

We have not studied transgender athletes bodies, right? We have, we don't have good information about the correlation between testosterone and athletic performance. And Dr. Baeth taught me to always think about, it's not about the level of testosterone in your body. It's about receptors and how testosterone acts in your body. 

So we need to learn a lot more about hormones. And as a cis woman, I'm super interested in learning more about hormones, right? We want to have a really intelligent conversation about fairness in sports. We need to keep our eye on the prize of like, why is sports unfair? It has to do with money and it has to do with race.

So if you're not willing to talk about capitalism, then you can't be part of this conversation, right? That sports is unfair. And the athletic advantage, the competitive advantage, which is different than an athletic advantage is going to folks who have money to have access to good facilities, good coaches, good training. They have that stability. 

And so I go so far as to argue that being cis is a competitive advantage because you hear these trans athletes talking about having to be vigilant to keep themselves safe in this binary sports world. Baeth, do you want me to keep going? Here we go. Keep going.

For three, we have to take a pause because it gets heavier fast. We make a point in the book that all four of the lies are doing harm. This one is doing harm at a very different level. 

And so we kind of have to move a little bit slower because the third lie is that they're coming in droves to steal your medals and do harm. And that harm is in two different areas. One, we're talking collision sports, right? So that goes back to policymakers having the audacity to say that they want to protect the bodies of cis women athletes who are not asking for that protection. 

We love collision in sports. Why do we believe that the female body can't handle that, right? So that's one aspect of harm. But then this other aspect of harm is around this idea of like locker rooms.

And so it's super, super important to debunk that lie and get crystal clear on where the harm is. So the question underneath that is, is it safe? We want to have that conversation. We are desperate to build a safer sports system for our kids and for our adults. 

And it is absolutely not trans athletes who are doing the harm. Baeth what do you got? I think to add to that a few points. When we talk about who's winning in this system, the people who have always won in sport are the same people who are still winning, right? To Ellie's point, it's the people who have the money and the access. 

That is very clear, right? As much as we don't know about testosterone, what we know is what makes somebody really good at elite sport, and it comes down to resources, bottom line. When we talk about this idea of safety, I think it's important to name too that that myth really triggers fear in a pretty visceral way for a lot of folks. And I will say for me as a cis woman, yeah, there is some fear in locker rooms. 

It's not around trans athletes, right? A lot of the fear that I have felt in sports spaces is frankly around cisgender men. So the conflation of trans women with cis men who are aiming to do harm, I think we need to name that that's what it is. But also, I actually think it's a really interesting moment to then say, okay, well, if we want to talk about the harms that are being done in sport, let's talk about them. 

And let's talk about the rampant harassment, abuse. And that's not all athletes, and it's not all sports, but it's everywhere, right? So if we really want sport to be more fair, safer, let's get to the heart of what's actually making sport not fair and not safe. And I think the other bottom line from our book is quite simply, these myths, these lies are doing way more harm, way more lasting harm than trans athletes ever have, ever will, right? I mean, we are talking about the next 10 to 50 years of sport. 

And I mean, beyond sport, if we're talking about just access to social institutions that people who are not cisgender have, we're talking lifetimes here. That's a problem. That's a problem for me. 

You touch on a lot of good points there. And it's, I think it also stems down to the patriarchy and men don't like to lose to women. And that's what it is. 

And so they feel if a trans woman comes in, that it really messes with their brain and they want any excuse to not have a trans woman in the sport. And I was looking at recently, I think it was a Chinese female athlete. It was some shooting in Olympics. 

Yeah, clay pigeon shooting. And the fact that she beat all the men and then they had to divide it, not because they had to divide the genders because of fairness to the women, it was because the men didn't want to lose to the women. So I think it all, if you think about it, it does stem back to the patriarchy.

And then you see on all the social media, all these people who are trying to protect women's sport, who can't name a single female athlete, which is absolutely insane. It just shows that the patriarchy feeding these minds and saying, this is the way it is, they're here to take everything. And there was the New Zealand weightlifter. 

I remember there was a lot of issues when she came onto the scene. She didn't even pass the first round. And they're like, she's going to steal all the medals. 

And she was like, I just want to compete. I love the sport. And a lot of the times with the trans athletes, they just want to compete in the sports they love.

And it's really that simple. But the media love to take anything. And clickbaits have been around since the 1800s because everybody loves something that's going to grab their attention.

And for some reason, people love trans people in the news. They love to read about it, write all these hateful comments, but they've never met a trans person in their life, or they probably don't realize that they've met a trans person. And so you've got all this kind of stuff. 

And to use the bathrooms, that's all you want to do. You want to use the bathroom in the change rooms. You don't want to go in there and do anything else. 

I know as a trans man, when I first started using male bathrooms, first, they're disgusting. They're absolutely disgusting. They stink.

They're gross. It's the one bad part about transitioning was the toilet situation. You don't think about that. 

It's next level. It's next level. But you do freak out going to the bathroom because you're like, wait a minute, this feels weird. 

And as trans women, they've already got so much anxiety. And a lot of them end up with UTIs or different things because they don't want to use the bathroom because they feel scared to make other people scared, which is crazy. It's just people want to play sport and they want to use the bathroom in the change room.

That's it. There is nothing else to it. That's right. 

Gosh, that's so refreshing. Yes. And I would take it one step further and say, what if we took all of that time and energy and money that we put into vilifying trans athletes and we, I don't know, paid to have clean bathrooms, right? Or whatever it might be.

I mean, that's part of the infuriating part for me, right? It's why are we wasting so much time on something when we could be actually using our energy to affect real change and to make sport and all social systems healthier, not just for trans folks, but to your point about the patriarchy. God, I mean, I don't know what it means to be a man in this system, any of these systems, but to be so afraid of losing. When we talk about fear, I mean, it's coming from somewhere.

And for me, I empathize. I feel for little cis boys who are taught that they have to be so afraid to first identify with womanhood at all. E.g., if you become a trans woman, become a trans woman, that's a major problem. 

But also you have to be so afraid of losing to women because that says something about you. I think the point that I'm just trying to make is this is not just about trans athletes. That's right. 

And it's not even just about cis women and it's not even just about girls. This is about everybody who touches sport and is affected by it. Yes. 

And you're talking about money. It is like wasting so much money and time and resources. And you mentioned before trans athletes make up less than 1% of the participants, but there are hundreds of bills targeting them. 

What do you think is the real driving level of this political attention to trans athletes? Well, for me, the bottom line is this is about controlling bodies. And it's the idea of whose bodies can we control? How much work do we need to do to control bodies? And once we start controlling some, who else can we control? I mean, it's about controlling bodies. It's about a lack of bodily autonomy. 

It's no coincidence that reproductive rights in the United States have been redacted at the same time that these laws are being passed around trans athletes. It's not lost on us that it's not just trans folks losing access to medical care and the education system. It's also people who cannot afford insurance. 

Right? I mean, this is all about who is being given access to be in their bodies healthfully, safely, and who's not and who benefits from that. We got to pull the very recent history books out and take a look at abortion and how that was used and exploded in politics. You said about clickbait, right? There is something about if you say you're going to protect girls from transgender athletes, it works. 

And when you push these folks who are saying that don't know, they don't know what they're talking about. And the sad thing is that they don't have to, like if they just say it, they get power and money and votes. So we have to take a really serious look at that moral panic and like what is underneath it pushing that fear where you say this lie and it's working. 

So stories are constantly doing work in our society, whether they're true or not. So, you know, Johnny Powell uses the example of like, there's a story in our country in our, in the United States that black men are dangerous. And regardless of what the data shows, that is a story that our society has chosen to believe. 

Now that is working with transgender athletes as well. And numbers aren't shifting that untrue story. So we have to tell more beautiful stories to get ourselves out of the one that we're stuck in and telling that story because we live in such a highly capitalistic society. 

And there's so much money in sports that if you follow the money, it becomes clear who is telling this lie and what they are benefiting from it. And then who is being harmed by it. And we have to just get so clear about who's actually vulnerable in our society and needs that support. 

If we start policing sex and policing that female category, like sex is so complicated, right? So to maintain this pristine women's category, any woman who's not performing gender obediently is going to be under the microscope. And that inordinately is usually women of color, for example. And so we have to see like who's going to be spending the money to maintain that pristine women's category and what bodies are going to get shoved to the side and deeply harmed. 

That doesn't look like protecting girls to me, right? So we know that in states that support trans athletes, cis girls in those states, cis women in those states are having a better experience and they're participating at a higher rate. So we're just trying to have the actual conversation that's in the media. Let's talk about how to support all girls and women. 

Let's talk about creating a sports world that is more fair and more safe. And as soon as we're having conversation that's backed by actual body stories and that's backed by actual information, it becomes very clear what needs to shift. And it's not excluding trans athletes, like all bodies deserve to play and we all do better when we do better. 

And I would even say, and we allude to this in the book, but I don't know that we talk about it outright. Trans athletes can show us a very clear future of sport. And I think that is part of why people want those voices, those stories to be erased. 

That's right. Right. And I think it comes in all different forms and fashions. 

But the bottom line is, you know, to Ellie's point at the very top here, we're talking to and you hear it and you see it when you read these stories. When we talk to trans athletes, they know their bodies. They are intuitive with their bodies and with sport in ways that frankly, I think most cisgender folks aren't because cisgender folks haven't had to explore their bodies and identities in the same ways. 

That's right. And because of that, they can offer, they offer insights into how to make sport safer, healthier, more fun. That's right. 

That I think if we took them very seriously, we would have an entirely different sporting system, one where everybody thrives. But we'd have to like, we'd have to dismantle the current one for it to move toward that exuberance and joy. And I'm here for it.

You know, doing these interviews, I came out as cis, you know, like I did the work and I have now an active cis identity. I am way more awake and alive. People in my life noticed. 

And so, you know, it's those parts of our body privilege that like are dormant when we don't do that deep self reflection. Our gender and sex is just fascinating. And I just think like it's when cis folks are willing to turn toward our own bodies and do that work, we're going to become pretty amazing advocates because the way then becomes clear that we're working toward a world where more people are awake and alive. 

And I'm going to go so far as to say like when we're talking about capitalism in the United States, the system, it's like think about which bodies are just standing up and put cogs in the system of like, what are you going to do with me though? What are you going to do? I exist. What are you going to do with me? That's petrifying to the system. Disembodied people are so much easier to control. 

So when folks are dormant, their heads are down, they're going through the motions of life, they haven't come out as cis, the system can control them with these lies. If we start waking up and doing our work and becoming embodied, we're going to push back and burn it down. Let's go. 

And that's one of the reasons I'm so into sports is because sports invite folks to come back home to their bodies over and over and over again. And remember that movement is medicine and that collective movement is liberation. And we need everybody at that party. 

We can't be excluding the most free bodies. It's so clear to me that trans athletes have done work that have set themselves free. They're the ones leading us into this future that's more creative, more colorful, more exuberant, more joyful. 

I'm in. Line me up. Love it. 

That's the way. It should be more inclusive. And then you have all different types of athletes, all different types of bodies, then you can learn from each other. 

You can learn different ways. Because reading in the book is that some of the athletes had to relearn how to do things in their new body. And I didn't even think about that because I used to love futsal.

And then I went to go play because I'm also a high school teacher with some of the high school kids. And I was like, this isn't as easy.

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