transgender athletes in sports essay

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I’m a Trans Runner Struggling to Compete Fairly

Trans athletes are trapped in a culture war. I’m not a cheater but I may have an unfair advantage.

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I’m a Trans Runner, and You Might Not Like What I Have to Say

Featuring Andie Taylor

Video by Lindsay Crouse ,  Taige Jensen and Adam Wolffbrandt

In the highly politicized debate over whether transgender women should be allowed to play women’s sports, opinions tend to divide into two starkly opposing camps.

There are those people — including lawmakers in dozens of states — who argue that the integrity of girls’ and women’s sports needs to be safeguarded against people assigned male at birth and the physical advantages they may possess. The other side argues that by the very fact of their gender transition, trans girls and women have earned the right to compete as their chosen gender.

But Andie Taylor, a 48-year-old trans woman and competitive runner who has much to gain or lose in this debate, finds herself staking out a more nuanced position, somewhere in the apolitical middle ground.

In the Opinion video above, Ms. Taylor describes how she is eager to compete among women and yearns for inclusion — but only if the scientific research unequivocally shows that her years living as a male did not give her an advantage.

There is little research regarding the performance of transgender athletes, in part because their numbers are so small. Some evidence suggests that trans women retain some athletic advantages after a year of undergoing testosterone suppression. Researchers have also found that those advantages, with time, largely fall away .

As research advances, Ms. Taylor is imploring all sides in the debate to refrain from using the issue for political gain.

“I want to win,” she says, “but I only want to win if I know it’s fair.”

Andie Taylor is a distance runner and transgender woman from St. Paul, Minn.

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The fight for the future of transgender athletes

A group of influential women’s sports advocates say their proposals are about fairness. but lgbt activists say their plans would endanger transgender rights — and transgender lives..

The women timed their announcement carefully, holding it the day before National Girls and Women in Sports Day, created three decades ago to promote female athletes.

Among them were trailblazers: Donna de Varona, the Olympic swimmer who lobbied for Title IX’s passage in 1972; Donna Lopiano, the former chief executive of the Women’s Sports Foundation; and Nancy Hogshead-Makar, Olympic swimmer and law professor who wrote a book on Title IX.

Before that day in early February, they were universally respected as pioneers in the long fight for women’s equality in sports. Then they unveiled their project: changing the way transgender girls and women participate in women’s sports. Almost immediately, their proposal drew bitter criticism in the fraught debate over transgender rights.

For starters, they said, they planned to lobby for federal legislation requiring transgender girls and women, in high school sports and above, to suppress testosterone for at least one year before competing against other girls and women, making universal a policy already in place in some states and some higher levels of sports. For transgender girls in high school who do not suppress testosterone, they suggested “accommodations,” such as separate races, podiums or teams.

They called themselves the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group .

“To give girls and women an equal opportunity to participate in sports, they need their own team. Why? Because of the biological differences between males and females,” said Hogshead-Makar, CEO of Champion Women, a women’s sports advocacy organization.

They portrayed their proposals as a science-based compromise between two extremes: right-wing politicians seeking wholesale bans of transgender athletes and transgender activists who argue for full inclusion — and who even dispute what some view as settled science about the relationship between testosterone and athleticism. They quickly drew fierce backlash, illustrating how the issue of transgender athletes has become the most vexing, emotionally charged debate in global sports and why it may prove impossible for schools and sports organizations to craft policies that are both fair to all female athletes and fully inclusive of transgender girls and women.

Transgender and women’s equality activists denounced their proposals as transphobic and accused the women of having a myopic focus on sports at a critical time for the transgender equality movement — as the Biden administration fights to expand federal anti-discrimination protections for transgender people and as conservative lawmakers push bills in more than 20 states seeking to ban transgender athletes and criminalize gender-affirming hormone therapy for transgender youth.

Critics also pointed to members of the working group with reputations of engaging in anti-trans rhetoric, including Martina Navratilova, the tennis champion whose commentary on transgender athletes has stoked outrage, and a Duke law professor whose work calling transgender girls and women “biological males” is cited in anti-transgender legislation.

Inside the world of sports — where careers are built on split-second wins and governed by rules that measure testosterone by the nanomole — these women’s proposals have gained some surprising voices of support. They have drawn endorsements from the first openly transgender Division I cross-country runner in NCAA history as well as a leading transgender scientist researching the effects of hormone therapy on athleticism. With enduring credibility in the sports world and on Capitol Hill, they have begun meeting with state and federal lawmakers grappling with this issue.

But even advocates who view their proposed policies as sensible for collegiate and professional athletes wonder whether these women have truly grappled with the impact their policies would have on the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of transgender girls across the country.

“The folks who are pushing these anti-trans bills … they don’t believe transgender people exist. They think they’re faking it for an advantage in sports,” said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director at the Human Rights Campaign. “I don’t know how you find a middle ground between a hate group and people pushing for equality.”

A patchwork of policies

Before 2010, few college or high school athletic associations had policies on transgender athletes, according to a report published that year by the Women’s Sports Foundation and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Noting that “an increasing number of high school and college-aged young people are identifying as transgender,” the report proposed a set of policies: In college sports, transgender women should undergo one year of hormone therapy before competing against other women, a rule rooted in scientific research that suggested such an approach would mitigate any athletic benefits. The NCAA quickly adopted the policy.

For high schools, the report recommended letting transgender girls compete in sports as soon as they transition socially and begin dressing and acting in accordance with their gender identity. Requiring hormone therapy for adolescents is potentially harmful, experts said in interviews, because not all transgender teens have supportive families or access to gender clinics. Ones who do may not want to undergo hormone therapy, which for transgender girls typically involves puberty blockers that pause developmental changes followed by a combination of testosterone suppressors and estrogen.

According to information compiled by transathlete.com and the ACLU , 10 states let transgender girls compete in high school sports after undergoing some treatment. Twelve states prohibit them entirely, including four that passed new laws and executive orders this year. Nine states have no policies at all. And 19 states, as well as the District of Columbia, let them compete regardless of testosterone level.

For the past decade, this policy patchwork has developed largely without controversy. Transgender youth are a very small minority of the U.S. population — 1.8 percent of high school students, according to a 2019 CDC report — and the number of those transgender girls likely to play sports and compete at an elite level is even smaller.

But then, a few years ago, a transgender runner took the Connecticut track scene by storm, catching the attention of politicians, pundits and advocates — including Lopiano, a Connecticut resident and Title IX champion.

Running on the boys’ team as a ninth-grader in suburban Hartford, Terry Miller was an average track athlete, online records show, failing to qualify for any postseason events. But in 2018, Miller came out as a transgender girl. In her first season running against other girls, as a sophomore, Miller dominated. She won five state championships and two titles at the New England championships, beating the fastest girls from six states.

The next fall, as a junior, Miller won another four state titles and two more all-New England titles. In several races, she was followed closely by Andraya Yearwood, another transgender girl who had also won three state titles.

In interviews, Miller and her supporters discussed how important track was for her confidence and stability as she transitioned.

“Track helps me forget about everything, and I love it,” Miller said in a 2019 story on DyeStat, a website that covers high school track and field. (Miller and her parents declined an interview request for this story.)

Support for Miller, however, was not unanimous. Girls who lost to her and their coaches complained that she had an unfair advantage. Parents of other girls started online petitions demanding state high school officials add a testosterone suppression requirement for transgender girls.

I’m not saying transgender girls are going to take over women’s sports. I’m saying that the law protects girls and women, and they shouldn’t have to compete against someone who has an immutable testosterone-based advantage. — Donna Lopiano, Title IX advocate

A lawyer representing a few mothers contacted Lopiano and asked for help. Believing Connecticut’s policy violated Title IX, Lopiano met with state officials and attempted to broker a compromise that would allow the results of transgender runners not to affect the results of cisgender girls.

Title IX doesn’t define what it means to be a girl or a woman. But Lopiano argues Congress intended to restrict female sports to girls and women who haven’t gone through male puberty, when testosterone in boys surges to between four and 10 times the levels found in girls and women.

She points to the 1975 testimony of Bernice Sandler, an activist known as “the godmother of Title IX,” who told Congress that, because of physical advantages men acquire during puberty, any effort to integrate sports between the sexes “would effectively eliminate opportunities for women.”

“I’m not saying transgender girls are going to take over women’s sports,” Lopiano said. “I’m saying that the law protects girls and women and they shouldn’t have to compete against someone who has an immutable testosterone-based advantage.”

Lopiano’s compromise never materialized. The mothers decided instead to work with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative Christian advocacy organization that supports anti-trans lawsuits and legislation across the country. The Alliance helped three girls who lost races to Miller and Yearwood sue Connecticut high school authorities, arguing their policy on transgender athletes violated Title IX. The case is pending in U.S. District Court in Connecticut.

The ACLU has intervened on behalf of the transgender runners. In an interview, Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU, said courts already have found Title IX protections apply to transgender girls and women in cases involving access to women’s restrooms. He views restrictions on transgender athletes in high school, such as hormone requirements, as discriminatory and probably a violation of the law.

Miller did not begin suppressing testosterone until her junior year, Strangio acknowledged, but Yearwood was on hormone therapy throughout high school. Regardless, Strangio emphasized that his clients didn’t win every race they competed in and they quit the sport after high school.

“Their careers were sabotaged by the rhetoric and the attacks on them,” Strangio said.

In early 2019, Lopiano began meeting regularly with de Varona and Hogshead-Makar to discuss what they believe are looming collisions between the transgender equality movement and Title IX. To them, the Connecticut controversy illustrated what they view as the two extreme positions between which they are trying to navigate.

The Alliance Defending Freedom argues that transgender girls and women always have physiological advantages in sports, even if they have suppressed testosterone. Their advocacy has inspired a wave of legislation across the country targeting transgender athletes since 2019.

“You can’t change a person’s biological sex,” said Christiana Holcomb, an Alliance lawyer working on the Connecticut case. “Nothing can undo the physiological advantages that come from being born biologically male.”

Strangio and the ACLU dispute whether transgender girls and women have advantages in sports, even if they’re not suppressing testosterone. Other prominent transgender activists, making this same argument, have called for the NCAA to remove its testosterone suppression requirement.

“The truth is, transgender women and girls have been competing in sports at all levels for years, and there is no research supporting the claim that they maintain a competitive advantage,” a 2019 ACLU article noted.

“Athleticism is complex,” Strangio said. Referring to Lopiano and her colleagues, he added, “I’m not a scientist, and neither are any of them.”

A growing research field

Benjamin Levine, a professor of cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, is one of the world’s leading experts on the science of athletic performance. The founder and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, one of the largest institutes of its kind in the world, Levine has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and consulted for the NCAA, the NFL, World Athletics and NASA.

In an interview, Levine said he understands why this topic stirs intense emotions. But, he said, there is no debate over whether post-pubescent transgender teenage girls and women have advantages in sports until they suppress testosterone.

Regardless of gender identity, Levine said, people who go through puberty with male levels of testosterone, on average, will grow taller and stronger than cisgender girls and women, with more muscle mass, larger hearts and advantages in several other physiological factors that affect athleticism. Puberty in boys typically begins by 12 and ends by 18.

“This is why, for every single record that you see in athletic competitions, boys and girls before puberty are about the same, and then everything diverges afterward,” said Levine, whose scientific research is cited by the women’s policy group.

Transgender advocates dismiss Levine’s research as irrelevant because he studies cisgender athletes. But several small-scale studies have found transgender women do have physiological advantages until they suppress their testosterone for at least one year.

The first was published in 2004 by Louis Gooren , a Dutch endocrinologist and founder of the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria in Amsterdam, one of the largest transgender health clinics in the world. “Testosterone exposure has profound effects on muscle mass and strength,” wrote Gooren, who reported that as he gave more testosterone to 19 transgender men, they saw marked increases in muscle growth, as well as hemoglobin and insulinlike growth factor levels, both relevant in athletic performance. As he suppressed testosterone in 17 transgender women, the opposite occurred: Their muscles shrank, and their hemoglobin and IGF levels dropped.

Gooren’s findings were essentially replicated in November by a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine examining how 29 transgender men and 46 transgender women in the Air Force performed on routine fitness tests — push-ups, sit-ups and a 1½-mile run — as they transitioned hormonally.

After a year of treatment, transgender men were performing better and the transgender women worse. The transgender women were still running slightly faster than cisgender women, however, so the authors concluded elite sports organizations might need to lengthen testosterone suppression requirements beyond one year. In interviews, two of the study’s authors cautioned against drawing conclusions about high school athletes because their research subjects were all 18 or older.

Other recent research has been conducted by a transgender athlete herself: Joanna Harper, a medical physicist and runner. In 2015, Harper published an analysis of what happened to her and seven other transgender women runners as they transitioned hormonally. Seven of the eight women, including Harper, saw their times slow considerably.

After that, Harper left her job in Portland, Ore., and moved to England to research the effects of hormone treatment on transgender athletes at Loughborough University.

In February, she published a systematic review of 24 studies of the effects of hormone treatment on transgender women. Harper found some athletic benefits — such as higher hemoglobin levels, vital in endurance sports — dissipated after only four months of suppressing testosterone. But other advantages, such as increased muscle area and strength, remained even after 36 months.

Harper has consulted for the International Olympic Committee, World Athletics and other elite sports organizations, where she advocates for allowing transgender girls and women to compete after one year of hormone therapy. She also has signed on as a public supporter of the women’s policy group.

In a recent interview, Harper said she has been called both “the destroyer of women’s sport” and “a traitor to transgender people.”

“My agenda is to pull people toward the middle,” Harper said. “The science leads me there.”

My agenda is to pull people toward the middle. The science leads me there. — Joanna Harper, transgender athlete and researcher

When asked for experts to support his belief that it’s unclear whether transgender girls and women have competitive advantages in sports, the ACLU’s Strangio mentioned two people: Katrina Karkazis and Joshua Safer.

Karkazis is a cultural anthropologist and bioethicist. She has not conducted original research on testosterone and athleticism, but she has written extensively on the subject, including the book, “Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography.”

In an interview, Karkazis emphasized many complexities in scientific research of testosterone and athleticism — testosterone alone doesn’t build a better athlete, researchers have found — but did not dispute that transgender girls and women who do not suppress testosterone have advantages in sports.

“Yes, on average … there will be performance differences that will be better,” she said when pressed on this point. “Whether that’s an advantage or not … I actually think that’s a normative statement that involves a value judgment about what is advantaged.”

Safer is an endocrinologist and the director of a transgender health clinic who has served as an expert witness for the ACLU. In court filings, Safer has acknowledged transgender girls and women with higher levels of testosterone will have advantages in sports. But, he has noted, these advantages are less pronounced in high school.

“Testosterone begins to affect athletic performance at the start of puberty, and those effects increase each year until about age 18,” Safer wrote in a statement challenging a law barring transgender athletes in Idaho. “As a result, testosterone provides less of an impact for a 14-, 15- or 16-year-old than it does for a 17- or 18-year-old.”

In an interview, Safer emphasized that, despite the advantages conferred by testosterone, the list of known examples of transgender girls and women succeeding in sports, at any level, is vanishingly short.

There has never been an openly transgender athlete in the Olympics ; the first three, all women, could compete this summer in Tokyo. There has been one openly transgender woman champion in the history of NCAA: CeCe Telfer, a Franklin Pierce University runner who won the Division II 400-meter hurdles in 2019. On the high school level, there are just Miller and Yearwood in Connecticut.

Said Safer, “The important thing to consider here, as it relates to high school sports and teenagers, is are we addressing a problem that actually exists, or are we simply addressing a fear?”

‘Sports does discriminate’

At their opening news conference, Lopiano spoke first and stressed that the group’s proposals represented “respectful inclusion” of transgender athletes.

“These are our kids. And we have to take care of all of them,” she said.

A few minutes later, the women turned the news conference over to one of their lesser-known colleagues: Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a Duke law professor and former elite runner who, in the late 1970s, was one of the first women to receive a track scholarship to Villanova University.

Over the past few years, Coleman has published law review articles and essays defending the preservation of girls’ and women’s sports for athletes with female levels of testosterone.

“I’ve tried to make clear that I support a science-based approach to inclusion, not categorical exclusion,” she said.

But as the debate moves beyond sports and into mainstream politics, more people have begun to see “science-based inclusion” as a form of exclusion. Which is why, to her dismay, her writings are routinely cited by right-wing politicians promoting wholesale bans of transgender athletes. It’s also why some transgender advocates say her and her colleague’s proposals are not only unfair but dangerous.

Research shows that transgender youth struggle with alarmingly high rates of anxiety, depression and suicidality. Emerging research has suggested affirmative transgender care — letting children transition socially for a period of time and then, if prescribed, start hormone therapy — can significantly reduce those mental health problems. A key to affirmative care, experts said, is to avoid situations where a transgender child is treated in any way that invalidates their gender identity.

When briefed on the women’s policy group’s proposals, several experts sharply criticized the idea of transgender-specific sports teams or events as stigmatizing.

“They have to go through so many obstacles just to recognize they are transgender, and for a lot of them, sports is the turning point. … You’d just end up exiling transgender girls from sports,” said Helen Carroll, former director of the Sports Project of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who co-wrote the NCAA’s policy on transgender athletes.

And even if they do have physiological advantages, some experts argued, transgender teens face a minefield of challenges, including higher rates of bullying, rejection by their families and homelessness.

“The deck is stacked against them in every single way, so, to me, it seems silly to … look at this physiological advantage but not consider all the other substantial disadvantages these kids face,” said Jack Turban, fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.

De Varona and her peers conceded that their concerns about high school sports are mostly hypothetical. As the legal and social climate for transgender people improves, they believe, more situations similar to what happened in Connecticut may arise.

But when asked to describe the harms that occurred to the girls who lost to the transgender athletes in Connecticut, they struggled to come up with anything concrete. Neither Miller nor Yearwood, the transgender girls, received track scholarships to college, and the women concede they are unaware of any cisgender girls who missed out on a scholarship opportunity as a result of Miller’s and Yearwood’s success.

There was other harm, the women argued, pointing to dozens of girls who lost races or opportunities to advance to postseason meets because they finished behind the transgender girls. Research has shown, they emphasized, that when girls succeed in sports, they’re more likely to go to college and have successful careers.

“Everybody here … has worked their entire lives to make sure that girls and women have equal opportunities in competitive sports,” Hogshead-Makar said.

And in those moments, these women tacitly conceded that, despite their talk of inclusion, they view transgender girls and women as different from the girls and women to whom they have devoted their careers — at least when they’re on the playing field.

“Yes, it’s important for everyone to have that opportunity in athletics,” de Varona said. “But sports does discriminate.”

From the field to the courts

The IOC is revising its guidelines on transgender athletes and is expected to announce them after this summer’s Tokyo Games. The NCAA also is examining its guidelines after hearing concerns from transgender advocates last fall.

The battle over transgender athletes in America’s high schools is likely to be settled, at least in part, in the courts. The ACLU is challenging an Idaho law that banned transgender athletes from competing in any public school, including colleges. The Connecticut lawsuit challenging that state’s policy also must be resolved.

Since its February news conference, the women’s policy group has had conversations with several members of the House and Senate, on both Judiciary Committees, according to Coleman, but they declined to specify whom or how many.

They also acquired a prominent supporter: Juniper Eastwood, one of the first openly transgender women to compete in NCAA Division I sports and the first cross-country runner.

There’s no way it would have been fair. My testosterone levels were so much higher than any of the girls I would’ve been running against. — Juniper Eastwood, the first openly transgender cross-country athlete in NCAA Division I history

In an interview, Eastwood said she never would have competed against girls or women without suppressing her testosterone. In high school, she set a Montana state record in the 800 meters that, had she been running on the girls’ team, would have broken the women’s world record.

“There’s no way it would have been fair,” she said. “My testosterone levels were so much higher than any of the girls I would’ve been running against.”

A closer examination of Eastwood’s personal story, however, spotlights the ramifications of policies that would separate transgender youth from sports.

Eastwood always planned to transition after she finished her track career because she knew she would attract unwanted attention as a transgender runner. But in her sophomore year at the University of Montana, Eastwood got hurt and had to sit out the season. Running had always been her way of coping with gender dysphoria. Without it, Eastwood began drinking excessively and struggled with depression.

Eastwood decided to transition and then continue running track on the women’s team. As she had expected, she got considerably slower as she suppressed her testosterone. And, as she had dreaded, her performances were closely analyzed by right-wing news sites, track and field obsessives and transgender activists.

Eastwood’s senior track season ended abruptly because of the coronavirus . She’s in graduate school at Montana, studying environmental philosophy, and would like to work somewhere outdoors. Even though she feels a little out of shape lately, Eastwood said, she enjoys running now more than she ever did in high school or college.

She lives not far from several secluded trails where she can run for miles without seeing another person. When she runs now, she said, she feels free from the worry about what someone will write online the next day about her performance.

“It’s just me, the trails and no one else,” Eastwood said. “And I can just run.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article described Juniper Eastwood as the first openly transgender athlete in NCAA Division I sports history. Eastwood is o ne of the first openly transgender women to compete in Division I sports and the first to run cross-country. The story has been corrected.

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Opinion article, transgender athletes in sports competitions: how policy measures can be more inclusive and fairer to all.

• 1 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
• 2 Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Department, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, United States

Introduction

Recently, there has been much debate over the inclusion of transgender athletes in elite athletic competitions. Since the transgender population in the United States and worldwide is increasing every year ( Meerwijk and Sevelius, 2017 ) and with it the transgender athletic population, it's important to establish athletic policies that are both inclusive and fair to avoid future conflicts. In this article, environmental and social barriers to transgender athlete participants as well as biological differences related to athletic performance are examined. A review of the current athletic policies and suggestions for potential policy updates are provided. We acknowledge that this is a relatively under-researched field and that there is no clear-cut solution. However, we believe this topic is important and we hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion.

Barriers to Participation

It's important to first address some of the barriers transgender athletes face to participate in sports competitions before examining the current policies behind their participation. A recent study showed that transgender men (TGM) are significantly more likely to participate in team sports than transgender women (TGW) but that this difference is not apparent for individual sports ( López-Cañada et al., 2020 ). Transgender women have previously stated that the primary barrier to their participation is the lack of an environment that is both inclusive and comfortable ( Jones et al., 2017 ), and this could contribute to their decreased participation in team sports. More specifically, TGW perceive their voices to be a contributing barrier in their lack of participation ( Stewart et al., 2020 ). Sports that are strongly gendered create an environment for these athletes that makes them feel anxious that speaking out or cheering for their teammates could result in them not being identified as women ( Stewart et al., 2020 ). Similarly, sports clothing may serve as a barrier to participation because it can be physically revealing. For example, a TGW who has not had bottom surgery might use a “tucking” technique to hide the bulge of the penis and testicles. Sports bras can relatedly impact transgender athletes: TGW might add padding to their bras and TGM might bind their chests. Any of these actions could be uncomfortable to the athlete and/or hinder performance in sports competitions. Additionally, locker rooms and other team spaces are often strongly segregated by gender and transgender athletes may be excluded from areas that match their gender identity. Restricting athletes from such areas, regardless of whether they are allowed to participate, may have the effect of causing athletes feeling separated from their teammates and their gender identity invalidated ( Cunningham et al., 2018 ).

There is certainly an additive effect of the numerous barriers to participation discussed, but one of the most important and in some cases least understood barriers is stigma. Although stigma is not a novel concept, stigma in how it impacts transgender athletes is more of a recent phenomenon. The numerous roles of stigma are often under-recognized ( Hatzenbuehler, 2017 ), and acknowledging it prior to developing new policies could help to combat some of its negative effects. Transgender stigma, in general, limits opportunities and can have extremely negative effects on mental and physical health ( Hughto et al., 2015 ). Stigma acts at numerous levels (e.g., structural, interpersonal, and individual), and adopting interventions to address and combat the negative effects of stigma at all of these levels is an important aspect of developing any new policy ( Hughto et al., 2015 ), especially when this policy aims to include transgender athletes. This is especially significant in developing sports policy that addresses youth athletes, as transgender stigma can be heightened when geared toward transgender youth and adolescence is a critical point to target interventions ( Hatzenbuehler and Pachankis, 2016 ; Hatzenbuehler, 2017 ).

To add to these social and environmental barriers, athletic policy restrictions have also contributed to a decrease in participation of the transgender individuals in competitive sports ( Jones et al., 2017 ). The lack of consensus among the various athletic governing bodies makes it even more difficult to determine the exact policies to include transgender athletes in sports competitions. Acknowledging these barriers to participation is an extra element that should be included in the adoption of new athletic policies regarding transgender athletes.

Biological Differences Related to Athletic Performance

The current debate over including transgender athletes in sports competitions (in their current state) is centered on biological differences, most notably those between transgender and cisgender women. Performance disparities based on “assigned sex at birth” vary across sports—they are known to be the lowest for swimming and highest for track and field events ( Bassett et al., 2020 ). These differences in athletic performance don't appear until after puberty and are thought to be most likely due to increased circulating testosterone levels in the “male” assigned sex at birth athletes when compared to the “female” assigned sex at birth athletes ( Handelsman et al., 2018 ). However, there is a general lack of data showing that higher testosterone levels are correlated with improved athletic performance ( Karkazis, 2019 ).

Despite the lack of evidence, hormone therapies are currently being employed by TGW to suppress their testosterone levels to those more similar to cisgender women to comply with competition regulations. Interestingly, the muscular advantage of TGW over cis-gender women is only minimally reduced after testosterone suppression ( Hilton and Lundberg, 2021 ). This suggests that in certain athletic competitions which rely on muscles mass and explosive strength, TGW will still have a physical advantage even if they are able to lower their testosterone levels to the officially requested threshold. Other hormone therapies have been successful at decreasing hemoglobin levels in TGW after only 4 months, but remain unsuccessful at decreasing strength, lean body mass, and muscle area even if undergone for 36 months ( Harper et al., 2021 ). Although only slight changes are seen in TGW after hormone therapies, this is not the case for TGM. After only 1 year of gender-affirming hormone treatment, TGM were able to significantly increase muscle mass and strength ( Wilk et al., 2020 ). Without a scientific evidence that testosterone levels are mainly responsible for athletic performance discrepancies between transgender and cisgender women, TGW could be undergoing unnecessary treatments. More research is needed to show this link before athletic governing bodies can enforce decreased testosterone policies as a requirement for TGW to attend competitions.

While proposed methods for categorization may be considered as a “commonsense and clear-cut assessment” by many, they have all failed as they were not scientifically driven ( Karkazis, 2019 ). Authorities have used physical examination in 1960's, chromosomal testing in 1970's, and testosterone measurements in 2010's and 2020's for “sex testing” athletes to allow them to participate in competitions ( Karkazis, 2019 ). “Physical examination of genitals,” “chromosomes,” “gonads,” and more recently “hormones” have all been used in “sex testing” and as evidence for categorization in sports through the history albeit without success; mostly due to the fact that they were not scientifically based and only considered “common sense.”

Current Athletic Policies

A fundamental issue regarding the current sports policies on transgender athletes is that the governing bodies of different athletic organizations have very different policies these athletes must follow to be included in sports competitions. In 2019, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restricted all athletes from competing in the female category unless they lowered their natural testosterone levels below 5 nmol/L ( Harper et al., 2018a ). This level was recently increased in 2021 to 10 nmol/L and the additional requirement of these levels being maintained for at least 12 months prior to competition was added ( Hilton and Lundberg, 2021 ). Unlike the IOC, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has much less explicit guidelines for the inclusion of transgender athletes. They only require that TGW must complete at least one year of hormonal suppressive therapy to participate on a women's team, but do not require natural testosterone levels to be below a specific level ( NCAA Office of Inclusion, 2011 ). The NCAA's policies have not been updated since 2011, suggesting that there could be room for improvement based on new and more updated research.

As touched upon previously, the center of the debate over the inclusion of transgender athletes in sports competitions is the physical advantages that TGW could have. However, the “female” category for sports in general is ambiguous and not established in the same manner universally ( Ingram and Thomas, 2019 ). In order for competitions to remain fair, universal rules need to be created regarding the inclusion or exclusion of transgender athletes. Currently, policies and perceived fairness of inclusion vary immensely at the level of sporting competition ( Tanimoto and Miwa, 2021 ), meaning that there is a large difference in how transgender athletes are perceived at professional and non-professional levels. Setting the standards for their inclusion at the professional level, may result in other levels of sporting competitions (e.g., recreation leagues, high school athletics, sports clubs, etc.) following suit. However, it has also been argued that the aim of athletics at these non-professional levels is mass participation, and therefore more restrictive guidelines should be avoided ( Cunningham et al., 2018 ; Buzuvis, 2019 , 2021 ; Tanimoto and Miwa, 2021 ).

Both the medical and the scientific communities need to provide input to help guide the creation of such rules ( Ingram and Thomas, 2019 ), especially with hormone therapy expansions as well as increased research into the link between testosterone levels and increased athletic performance. While physicians will play an influential role in developing new sports policy, it is important to also acknowledge the roles of sports managers and others who have experience in sport governance and development. Opening conversations among all of these individuals is the first step to ensuring the success and implementation of new policies at all levels of sporting competitions.

Proposed Solutions

Numerous solutions have been proposed to include transgender athletes in sports competitions while being fair to all athletes. Since numerous nations around the world already allow a “third legal gender,” some have proposed extending this idea to elite sports as a separate category for athletes who identify as this gender ( Harper et al., 2018b ). A problem with this idea that it still excludes athletes who don't identify as the third legal gender, leaving some athletes without a category in which they can compete. Others suggest employing an algorithm that includes all athletes and divides them into categories based on both physiological and social parameters ( Anderson et al., 2019 ). This idea is still relatively new, and more research is needed to determine how inclusive this approach is and how effective it would be to enact.

Others suggest reforming sports policies to favor participation based on gender identity and not on biological sex ( Buzuvis, 2019 , 2021 ). This solution argues that in general, U.S. policies are on the side of inclusion and that this can readily extend into athletic policies, especially for youth athletes ( Buzuvis, 2019 , 2021 ). While there are certainly merits to this argument in terms of inclusion, it is difficult to completely ignore the biological arguments discussed previously. Thus, a solution that balances both inclusivity and fairness is the best approach to this problem in particular.

The most important parameters when assessing methods to improve current sports policies are determining how inclusive a policy is to transgender athletes and how fair it is to all athletes involved in competitions. Many suggest adding more categories under which athletes can compete ( Knox et al., 2019 ), upholding inclusivity without compromising fairness. However, it is unclear how many categories would need to be added to accomplish this feat and if athletic organizations can financially support a large number of athletic categories competing under each sport. For this reason, we suggest adding a third category to elite sports similar to that suggested above, but without the legal third gender requirement. This category would be considered “open,” meaning that any athlete can compete regardless of their gender identity. Male and female sports categories would still be included in this idea but adding an “open” category is more inclusive to all athletes who wish to participate. As we believe that gender is a no longer a binary concept, having an open category supports the inclusion of non-binary, transgender, and genderqueer groups of individuals in sports competitions. While this idea has its advantages and disadvantages, we believe that the language used in naming a third category is especially important and the term “open” is more inclusive than previous suggestions.

The population in the United States, similar to the rest of the world, is constantly changing and it's imperative that elite athletics mirrors these changes. This is especially relevant for the community of transgender athletes as they should be included in sports competitions in a fair and inclusive manner. It is clear that more research is needed to determine what advantages transgender athletes, particularly TGW, could have in athletic competitions. This needs to be accomplished prior to making definitive policy statements regarding the inclusion or exclusion of transgender athletes ( Johnston, 2020 ). In the meantime, current policies need to be careful in the language used in order to promote inclusivity.

Author Contributions

AH conceptualized the paper and AR wrote the first edition of the manuscript. AR and AH contributed to the manuscript with their expertise, read, edited, and approved the submitted version. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: transgender athletes, athletics, sports policy, inclusivity, fairness

Citation: Reynolds A and Hamidian Jahromi A (2021) Transgender Athletes in Sports Competitions: How Policy Measures Can Be More Inclusive and Fairer to All. Front. Sports Act. Living 3:704178. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2021.704178

Received: 01 May 2021; Accepted: 22 June 2021; Published: 14 July 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Reynolds and Hamidian Jahromi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Alireza Hamidian Jahromi, alirezahamidian@yahoo.com

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Highlights in The History, Culture and Sociology of Sports: 2021/22

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I’m Transgender. Here’s How Playing Sports Saved My Life

By Shane Diamond

It would not be an exaggeration to say that sports saved my life.

I grew up in a small town in the American Southwest known as an offbeat refuge for artists and skiers. Locally, the area had a reputation for heroin overdoses, drunk driving fatalities, and high school drop-outs. But after school and on the weekends, my friends and I all played youth sports like soccer and basketball together. Athletics kept us occupied, supervised, and generally out of trouble. We also learned lifelong lessons about accountability, hard work, and time management.

When soccer season ended and the boys started playing ice hockey, I was one of the only girls who was eager to join them; I wanted to do what my friends did. Throughout my youth and into high school, I was often the only girl on the ice, and one of only a handful statewide, but I was welcomed and accepted by both my team and the league. Looking back, it makes sense that I was “one of the boys” because I was a boy, but we didn’t have language or resources to support transgender youth in the early ’90s the way we do today.

After high school, I played varsity women’s ice hockey at Bowdoin College in Maine. I can’t tell you what our record was during my four years of playing college hockey, which team won the league championship, or how many goals I scored, but I can say with absolute assurance that my hockey teammates are still some of my best friends. And that didn’t change after I came out as transgender in 2016 and started transitioning.

We’ve supported each other during marriage and divorce, while caring for ill parents and starting families, and through experiences of racism and discrimination. During the pandemic, we have remained connected online and debated whether or not we’re going to wear pants with elastic waists forever. We share a bond that can only be forged through long hours at the rink and grueling lifting schedules at the gym. We all remember the collective joy of celebrating a win and the shared grief after a loss.

As a kid who didn’t quite fit in, I always found safety and stability among my teammates. When the weight of the outside world felt like it was too heavy for a teenager struggling with identity, I knew that for an hour each day, I could leave it all outside the rink and just play hockey. Then in my 30s, while fighting for sobriety and battling depression, outreach from my college teammates saved my life: They made overt gestures, like flying to Maine when I was approaching rock bottom just so we could lie in a hotel bed, eat Thai food, and watch trashy reality TV. They messaged me on the daily group text where we offer support and accountability.

Only a person who has spent years working out with you can call you up and say, “I love you but you’re being an idiot,” with the sort of bluntness that you know comes from a place of love.

I’m not alone in my experiences. For transgender youth, having access to sports is quite literally life-saving; according to a study recently published by the Center for American Progress, the mere existence of transgender-insluive sports policies lowers the risk of poor mental health and suicidality for trans youth. Even if trans youth don’t participate in sports, the fact that they are able to reduces their risk of depression and attempted suicide. As a community, we need the mental health benefits that sport can offer. The largest survey of transgender people, the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, reports that transgender people are nine times more likely to attempt suicide over our lifetime than our cisgender peers. And almost 75% of transgender people who attempt suicide are under the age of 18. Even without harmful and invasive laws, it is dangerous to be a young trans person .

But lawmakers in 31 states are preying on this already vulnerable population by trying to pass laws to ban trans kids from playing sports . Politicians are targeting young children who are already coping with trauma after a year of wearing masks and only seeing their classmates on Zoom. They are going after teenagers who, like each of us, miss spending time with their friends without being afraid for the future. They are harming college students who are preparing to enter an economy grappling with unemployment and low wages.

It’s important to note that the majority of these attacks are not coming from cisgender athletes. They overwhelmingly welcome their transgender teammates. Earlier this month, over 550 current student athletes from over 85 U.S. colleges and universities recently — and for the second time — sent a letter to the NCAA in support of transgender student athletes. They know that trans athletes just want to be included. I played hockey as a kid because that’s what my friends were doing and I didn’t want to be left out. These laws and policies don’t just leave out trans kids, they intentionally exclude us.

Transgender athletes are not a new trend: the NCAA has allowed transgender athletes to participate since 2011 and the International Olympic Committee since 2004. But trans kids are still facing pushback. In 2018, transgender Texas wrestler Mack Beggs was forced to compete against girls despite wishing he could wrestle with other boys. The story of his fight to participate and show up as himself, along with the stories of Connecticut runner Andraya Yearwood and New Hampshire skier Sarah Huckman, are featured in the documentary film Changing the Game , for which I am the Impact Change Coordinator. Their stories are powerful examples of what happens when we let kids be themselves, participate fully as students, athletes, friends, and family members. Trans athletes aren’t asking for special treatment, nor do we want to be stigmatized for our transness. We simply want the opportunity to play.

Because of the wave of anti-transgender legislation sweeping the country, trans youth are hearing consistently false and harmful messages about themselves: that our inherent identities are deceptive and unfair, that there’s not enough room for us, that we don’t belong. But I am living proof that there is no better lifeline for trans kids than ensuring they are able to play sports with their peers. We owe it to kids, transgender and cisgender alike, to make sure they have the same opportunities to participate in, fall in love with, and be saved by sports the way so many of us have.

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Call your local schools’ athletic directors and demand that athletic policies allow trans youth to participate as themselves, contact legislators in these 31 states — many of whom have never met a trans person — and tell them why this matters to you and your family. Every young person deserves the chance to learn and grow through the transformative power of sports. Many of these bills and laws will likely make their way to the Supreme Court and hopefully be ruled unconstitutional, but the damage being caused to trans kids in the process will have lasting effects.

When I say that I don’t know where I’d be without sports, I mean it quite literally; without the support networks that have lasted well beyond my time on the ice, I would likely have joined too many of my transgender siblings who felt isolated and excluded enough to end their lives. Trans youth need our support now, loud and proud and in unison, before it’s too late to fight for them.

Shane Diamond is a media and communications maverick. Previously the communications manager at TLDEF, he is now the impact campaign coordinator for the film Changing the Game, a transgender advocate, and former college athlete.

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Trans Athletes Are Posting Victories and Shaking Up Sports

Transgender athletes are having a moment. At all levels of sport, they’re stepping onto the podium and into the headlines. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard won two gold medals at the Pacific Games, and college senior CeCé Telfer became the NCAA Division II national champion in the 400-meter run. Another senior, June Eastwood, has been instrumental to her cross-country team’s success . At the high school level, Terry Miller won the girls’ 200-meter dash at Connecticut’s state open championship track meet .

These recent performances are inherently praiseworthy—shining examples of what humans can accomplish with training and effort. But as more transgender athletes rise to the top of their fields, some vocal opponents are also expressing outrage at what they see as transgender athletes ruining sports for cisgendered girls and women.

These issues have come to a head in Connecticut, where a conservative Christian group called Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a legal complaint on behalf of three high school athletes who are seeking to bar transgender girls from competing in the girls category. In Connecticut, as in more than a dozen other states, high school athletes are allowed to compete in the category that matches their gender identity. According to ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb, two transgender athletes—Miller and another runner, Andraya Yearwood—“have amassed 15 different state championship titles that were once held by nine different girls across the state.” The US Department of Education’s office for civil rights is now investigating the group’s complaint.

Nowhere are the debates around transgender rights as stark as they are in sports, where the temptation to draw a hard biological line has run up against the limits of what science can offer . The outcome, at least so far, is an inconsistent mix of rules that leaves almost nothing resolved.

In the NCAA, for example, transgender women can compete on women’s teams after they’ve completed one year of testosterone suppression treatment. But the organization doesn’t place limits on what a transgender athlete’s testosterone levels can be. The International Olympic Committee has more granular rules: Transgender women can compete in the women’s category as long as their blood testosterone levels have been maintained below 10 nano moles per liter for a minimum of 12 months. Cisgender men typically have testosterone levels of 7.7 to 29.4 nano moles per liter , while premenopausal cis women are generally 1.7 nmol/L or less. Meanwhile, the governing body of track and field just adopted a 5nmol/L limit .

So which approach is most fair? “Fair is a very subjective word,” says Joanna Harper, a transgender woman, distance runner, and researcher who served on the IOC committee that developed that organization’s current rules. It boils down to whom you’re trying to be fair to, Harper says. “To billions of typical women who cannot compete with men at high levels of sport?” Or “a very repressed minority in transgender people who only want to enjoy the same things that everybody else does, including participation in sports?”

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Transgender women’s performances generally decline as their testosterone does. But not every male advantage dissipates when testosterone drops. Some advantages, such as their bigger bone structure, greater lung capacity, and larger heart size remain, says Alison Heather, a physiologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Testosterone also promotes muscle memory—an ability to regain muscle mass after a period of detraining—by increasing the number of nuclei in muscles, and these added nuclei don’t go away. So transgender women have a heightened ability to build strength even after they transition , Heather says.

One way to address these issues, Heather and her colleagues wrote in an essay published in the Journal of Medical Ethics , would be to create a handicap system that uses an algorithm to account for physiological parameters such as testosterone, hemoglobin levels, height, and endurance capacity, as well as social factors like gender identity and socioeconomic status. “Such an algorithm would be analogous to the divisions in the Paralympics, and may also include paralympians,” they write. Instead of two divisions, male and female, there would be multiple ones and “athletes would be placed into a division which best mitigates unfair physical and social parameters.” The algorithm would need to be sport-specific, and Heather and her colleagues acknowledge that producing it would be a difficult task.

Another approach would be to create a third category for people who don’t fit neatly into the male/female dichotomy (including intersex people, who are born with a mix of male and female traits). Although this might sound like a simple solution, Harper says that “As a transgender person myself, I don’t want to compete in a third category, which many people would see as a freak category.” It could also limit opportunities for transgender athletes if there are not enough of them to fill out a team or category.

For all the hand-wringing about transgender women ruining women’s sport, so far there’s little evidence of that happening. Although CeCé Telfer and June Eastwood garnered attention for their outstanding performances on women’s collegiate running teams, they are hardly the only transgender athletes in the NCAA. Helen Carroll is a LGBTQ sports advocate who worked on the NCAA transgender handbook . Through her advocacy work, she has interacted extensively with transgender athletes and she estimates there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 transgender athletes currently competing in NCAA sports. Most of them “you don’t hear a thing about,” she says, because their participation hasn’t caused controversy.

Sport can be a life-saver for transgender people, who are at high risk of suicide , Carroll says. “They’ve been fighting themselves and feeling like they were in the wrong body, and sport gives them a place to be happy about their body and what it can do.”

Where to draw the line between inclusiveness for transgender athletes and fairness for cis ones is an ethical question that ultimately requires value judgements that can only be informed, not decided, by science. Even basic notions of a level playing field aren’t easy to codify. Which means that at some point the question of who is a woman becomes a cultural inquiry: How athletically outstanding can a girl or woman be before we no longer see her as female?

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Gender Identities in Organized Sports—Athletes' Experiences and Organizational Strategies of Inclusion

Associated data.

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because data is part of a funded Project by EU Commission.

In relation to conceptualizing sports, beliefs about sex binary and male hegemony are dominant. To match these assumptions and provide level playing fields, sport systems are based on sex-segregation. Thus, people who do not fit into or reject fitting into sex categories are hindered from participating in sports, particularly organized sports. Studies on social exclusion of gender-identity minorities in sports mainly adopt a qualitative approach and focus on Anglophone countries. This research is the first to provide a comprehensive picture of the experiences of LGBT+ athletes in organized sports settings in Europe and is based on a quantitative online survey ( n = 2,282). The current paper draws special attention to differences between cisgender and non-cisgender athletes (including transgender men, transgender women, non-binary, and non-identifying individuals). Besides athletes' experiences, organizational strategies of inclusion, derived from qualitative interviews with stakeholders from sport systems in five European countries (Germany, Scotland, Austria, Italy, and Hungary) are examined. Theoretically anchored in Cunningham's ( 2012 ) multilevel model for understanding the experiences of LGBT+ individuals and Meyer's ( 2003 ) minority stress model, the paper aims to (1) analyze the assessment of transnegativity and (2) examine negative experiences (prevalence, forms, perpetrators) of LGBT+ athletes from organized sport contexts in Europe; and (3) discuss inclusive strategies in sports organizations in Europe. Data reveal that transnegativity is perceived as a major problem in European sports, and non-cisgender athletes are the most vulnerable group, suffering particularly from structural discrimination. The implementation of inclusive strategies for non-cisgender athletes is perceived as a complex and essential task, but the sports organizations in the five countries differ substantially in terms of the status of implementation.

Introduction

Recent legal decisions inside and outside the sport system, as well as cases of prominent sport stars (e.g., boxer Patricio Manuel, triathlete Chris Mosier, or runner Caster Semenya), highlight the issue of transgender and intersex athletes' inclusion in sports and especially in competitive structures of sports. In discussions on this topic, transgender athletes are often blamed for challenging the binary sex-segregated system of elite and recreational sports, having unfair physical advantages, and calling fairness and the level playing field of sports into question. Conversely, sports organizations are accused of implementing discriminatory policies, of adhering to binary sex-segregation instead of considering gender identity or other competitive categories, and of systematically excluding transgender athletes and preventing the positive effects of sport on transgender individuals (e.g., in Sykes, 2006 ; Karkazis et al., 2012 ; Gleaves and Lehrbach, 2016 ; Jones et al., 2017b ; Semerjian, 2019 ). These arguments about systemic bias are supported by evidence of individual attitudes toward and personal experiences of transgender individuals in sports (e.g., Smith et al., 2012a , b ; Jones et al., 2017b ; Cunningham and Pickett, 2018 ; Devís-Devís et al., 2018 ).

For some time now, transgender issues have been discussed in Anglophone research, mostly under the LGBT(IQ) umbrella (Kavoura and Kokkonen, 2020 ). This approach of lumping transgender athletes together with other sexual minorities has been questioned, because these groups face different challenges and prejudices in sports (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2011 ; Cunningham and Pickett, 2018 ; Semerjian, 2019 ). In the European context, transgender inclusion in sports, as well as experiences of and barriers to transgender sports participation, are rarely quantitatively examined on a broader level. For example, quantitative research in the Netherlands has focused more on sexuality and sexual orientation (Elling et al., 2003 ; Elling and Janssens, 2009 ), while research in Scotland has considered both gender identity and sexual orientation (Smith et al., 2012a , b ). Without reference to sports and sports participation, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA – European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014 ) found that almost half of the transgender respondents in a study reported experiences of discrimination and harassment in the year prior to the study and that transgender individuals are often exposed to physical attacks. Furthermore, in the year prior to the study, 38% of transgender respondents were discriminated against in places and situations other than workplaces, amongst which sports clubs were included (FRA – European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014 ).

Although transnegativity is perceived as a problem in sports (Smith et al., 2012a ), the European research corpus is truly deficient. This was the initial starting point for the current research, which is the first to provide a comprehensive picture of the situation and to present experiences of LGBT+ people undertaking sports in Europe 1 . The current paper focuses on two entangled topics: (1) situations and experiences of cis- and non-cisgender individuals 2 within LGBT+ communities in countries of the European Union, based on a quantitative online survey; and (2) organizational strategies and perceived barriers and facilitators for LGBT+ inclusion, based on qualitative interviews with stakeholders from sports organizations in five European countries.

Sex Binary (in Sports)

Sex binary is based on opposite categories and ignores the spectrum of sex characteristics (Griffin, 2012 ). According to such categorization, a person is either a man/male or a woman/female, or in the words of Krane and Symons ( 2014 , p. 122) “to be male and masculine is not to be female and feminine” and vice versa. Whilst sex refers to biological aspects of the body (e.g., hormones, chromosomes, physiology), gender is a socially and culturally constructed reference for being masculine or feminine according to bodies and behaviors (Enke, 2012 ; Griffin, 2012 ; Krane et al., 2012 ).

The term transgender describes an incongruence between sex and gender: namely, the sex assigned at birth does not fit the inner feelings of gender identity (Krane et al., 2012 ), defined as “one's sense of one's self as a gendered person” (Enke, 2012 , p. 12). Following Enke ( 2012 , p. 19), transgender “may include a gender identity that differs from the sex assigned at birth; a gender expression that differs from that conventionally expected of people according to their bodily sex; and/or a desire for alteration of the body's sex/gender characteristics.” Transgender serves as a category that includes transgender males and females, non-binary persons (i.e., individuals with gender identities that are neither exclusively female nor male), and sometimes also non-identifying persons (i.e., individuals who do not identity as male, female, or transgender). Gender expression focuses on how “people express, wear, enact, and perform gender through behavior, mannerism, clothing, speech, physicality, and selective body modification” (Enke, 2012 , p. 18). Therefore, gender expression can take many forms, ranging from styling and self-presentation, to the changing of names and pronouns, to hormonal and medical treatments (Griffin, 2012 ). Persons who do not conform to the assumed gender roles and expressions are known as gender non-conforming individuals.

Sports and physical activities are a way to express one's gender (identity) by engaging in what is considered typically masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral sports; playing sports in specific ways; or meeting/rejecting sports-related gendered role expectations. Perceptions of adequate sports engagement and acceptable sporting behavior are strongly orientated toward the sex binary and differentiate between accepted and valued behavior for boys/men or for girls/women (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ). Girls/women still face several challenges in the domain of sport, in which masculine characteristics (i.e., playing hard, being aggressive and assertive) are promoted, and the masculine body is the norm, reflecting a “hegemonic notion of athleticism as a masculine trait” (Griffin, 2012 , p. 101). The normative presumption of male dominance in sport and the physical advantages of men substantiate sex-segregation in the sport system, which was theoretically established to provide equal opportunities and maintain fair competitions (Griffin, 2012 ; Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ).

The sport system is based on the sex binary and assumes that athletes can be unambiguously separated into the rigid categories of biological sex assigned at birth. To participate in competitive sports, individuals have to “align themselves as female or male and join the corresponding team,” which is an unconscious decision for the majority of athletes (Krane et al., 2012 , p. 15). Thus, transgender individuals are strongly challenged by having to align to the sex binary and adhere to sports policies that mostly require a match of biological sex and gender identity (Griffin, 2012 ). One of these challenges is because adaption, the movement from assigned sex at birth to gender identity, happens at different levels and stages, ranging from personal and social recognition to hormonal/medical treatment to sex reassignment (Enke, 2012 ).

As sex-segregation is based on the assumption of male bodies' superior physicality, transgender athletes are perceived as challenging gender boundaries (Griffin, 2012 ) and contradicting the level playing field in sports (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ). In particular, female transgender athletes, who transitioned from male sex assigned at birth to female gender identity, are accused of having unfair advantages over so-called natural women. Griffin ( 2012 ) and Semerjian ( 2019 ) question this and emphasize that gaining competitive advantages over others is a fundamental feature of sports, and advantages can occur in different forms, among which physicality is only one of many advantages (e.g., social, economic, environmental, and psychological advantages).

Theoretical Framework on Exclusion, Discrimination, and Minority Stress

Social theorists have developed different perspectives and discourses on social inclusion and exclusion, drawing on social inequality (Durkheim, Bourdieu) or systems theory (Luhmann, Parsons) (Kronauer, 2010a ). Based on Weber's category of social closure, the inequality discourse deals with social exclusion as missed opportunities for social participation and an intensification of social inequality (Kronauer, 2010b ). Following Durkheim's work, social inclusion is based on the achievement of social cohesion and organic solidarity, whereas Marshall sketches social inclusion as linked to the granting of social rights, among others, that provide equal access to institutions and an appropriate standard of living (Kronauer, 2010b ). Access to and participation in organized sport contexts can be understood as a social right, that should be granted to every individual independent of social status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Apart from that, sports and sport engagement are seen as a means for social inclusion or at least as able to contribute to inclusive processes. According to Bailey ( 2005 , p. 76), sports are theoretically assumed to contribute to inclusion on different dimensions: bringing people together from different backgrounds (“spatial”); enabling people to share a sense of belonging (“relational”); providing opportunities to develop competencies and capabilities (“functional”); and increasing relevant social networks and community cohesion (“power”). However, just as the existence of these dimensions can lead to inclusion, their absence can foster exclusionary processes and discriminatory experiences in sports.

For understanding discrimination based on gender identity, Cunningham's ( 2012 ) multilevel model appears to be a useful framework. It is embedded in sports and considers societal, organizational, and individual factors on the macro, meso, and micro levels for explaining “the attitudes toward and experiences and behaviors of sexual minorities” (Cunningham, 2012 , p. 5). The levels are closely interlaced and influence each other in either direction.

On the macro level, cultural norms, and institutionalized practices in society—in which organizations are embedded—influence the situation for transgender persons in sports. The binary gender order and the male hegemony which are reproduced in sports organizations and the rigid sex-segregated competitive structures constitute barriers for transgender participation in organized sports. Transgender athletes are seen “as outsiders or others, because their gender identity did not match the institutionalized ways that sport has been traditionally organized” (Cunningham, 2012 , p. 9).

Meso-level factors operate at an organizational level and impact on exclusion and discrimination via leader behavior, organizational culture, and group spirit. The levels of diversity surrounding activities are strongly promoted by the support of organizations' leaders and the allocation of time, resources, and money. Organizational culture reflects a pattern of values, assumptions, and beliefs that have developed over time and are widely shared by the members and serves as an orientation for (in)appropriate behavior (Cunningham, 2012 , p. 10). Organizational cultures that assume transgender athletes challenge the superiority of male physicality, distinct gender binaries, and the level playing field impede or complicate inclusion. On the other hand, support within groups on an emotional, structural, and instrumental level fosters the establishment of safe spaces and thus positively impacts on the well-being of transgender athletes (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ).

On the micro level, transgender individuals' discrimination in sport can be affected by the personal traits of other participants, bystanders, and spectators. Prejudices against transgender athletes rest upon the widespread assumption of sex binary and heteronormativity and vary between different gender identities, according to how athletes fit into the male-dominated sporting world and the implied (unfair) physical advantages of mainly transgender females (Cunningham and Pickett, 2018 ; Devís-Devís et al., 2018 ). Different perceptions of transmen and transwomen in sports are associated with evidence that transgressions of gender norms and gender non-conforming expressions are less socially accepted for and amongst men than women and thus are more likely to provoke discrimination and self-exclusion (Laberge and Albert, 1999 ). Apart from this, different individual identities, such as gender, racial, cultural, or athletic identity have to be considered when analyzing negative attitudes and behaviors toward transgender individuals. Generally, men articulate more prejudices against sexual minorities than do women in order to ensure male privilege and construct masculinity in heteronormative structures (Cunningham, 2012 ), although a current study disproves differences in trans prejudices between men and women (Cunningham and Pickett, 2018 ).

Apart from Cunningham's ( 2012 ) multilevel model, Meyer's ( 2003 ) minority stress model is valuable for determining the effects of transnegativity. Meyer's model was originally used to explain the high prevalence of mental disorders amongst lesbian women, gay men, and bisexual individuals. Nevertheless, as transgender represent a minority group that is marginalized in dominant cultures and social structures, the model can also be applied for the present target group. In Meyer's ( 2003 ) theoretical framework, minority stress is related to environmental circumstances, status and identity of the minority group, different stressors, and social support. Minority stress culminates in stigma, prejudice, and discrimination and can be traced back to distal and proximal stressors. Whilst distal stressors reflect external events and conditions, in which prejudice, discrimination, and violence occur, proximal stressors are subjective “perceptions of the self as a stigmatized and devalued minority” (Meyer, 2003 , p. 678) and incorporate expectations of rejection, internalization of transnegativity, and concealment of one's gender identity.

Transgender Athletes' Experiences

Having laid the theoretical framework for the current study, the quantitative and qualitative research corpus on transgender experiences in sports will be outlined in the following section.

Quantitative research on sports participation, along with the situations and experiences of transgender athletes in different sports and settings, is rare and sometimes inconsistent. Regarding the general sports participation of transgender individuals, Kulick et al. ( 2018 ) found fairly equal sports frequencies between transgender and cisgender students in USA, but a mediated, negative effect for sports participation of transgender individuals through feelings of unsafety in facilities (locker-rooms, bathrooms). In contrast, lower participation rates in sports and physical activities were found for transgender people compared to cisgender people in USA (Muchicko et al., 2014 ) and compared to lesbian women, gay men, and bisexual persons in Canada (ACT Government, 2014 ).

Personal experiences of transgender athletes in sports, as well as sports-related social and psychological outcomes, are important to determine inclusive or exclusive processes in sports and operate as moderators for (non-)participation (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ). In Scotland, eight out of 10 transgender individuals agree that homo-/transnegativity is a major barrier for sports participation and that homo-/transnegativity is a problem in sport (Smith et al., 2012a ). Furthermore, there is empirical evidence that most transgender individuals have witnessed or experienced transnegative episodes in sports (Smith et al., 2012a ; ACT Government, 2014 ; Demers, 2017 ). The numbers are alarming. In Canada, 85% of transgender individuals personally had negative experiences in sports contexts due to their gender identity (Demers, 2017 ) and in Scotland, 80% of transgender individuals had personally witnessed and/or experienced homo- and transnegativity in sport (Smith et al., 2012a ). Referring to all LGBT athletes of the Scottish sample, the share who had personally experienced (17%) or witnessed (49%) homo- or transnegativity in sport is considerably smaller (Smith et al., 2012b ). In a large Anglo-American study (USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand), 82% of the LGB surveyed reported that they have witnessed or experienced homonegative episodes in different sport contexts (Denison and Kitchen, 2015 ). In the overall OUTSPORT data about 12% of the European LGBTI+ respondents reported personal negative experiences in the past 12 months, with a significantly higher share of non-cisgender people and a slightly increased prevalence in higher performance levels, but independent from the type of sport (individual or team sports) (Hartmann-Tews et al., in press ).

The predominant form of experiencing transnegativity is verbal, as almost all transgender individuals experience verbal abuse, insults, disparagement, and offensive remarks in sports (Smith et al., 2012a ; Demers, 2017 ). Referring to homonegativity, Symons ( 2010 ) found that verbal abuse toward LGBT athletes most frequently comes from other participants and only a small amount comes from coaches, spectators, or officials. Apart from verbal discrimination, 16% of transgender athletes reported having experienced or witnessed physical abuse and 7% reported other discriminatory experiences related to their gender identity, such as sexual assault (Smith et al., 2012a ). After being asked what would help fight discrimination in sport, Scottish transgender respondents mentioned public campaigns, diversity training for different actors in the sport system, and role models (Smith et al., 2012a ).

Transgender athletes receive less social support for their physical activities compared to cisgender athletes and share lower scores for several psychological dimensions, such as the perception of their physical self and self-efficacy for exercise behavior (Muchicko et al., 2014 ). Both social and psychological outcomes are stressors and risk-factors for physical and mental health problems or depression (Symons, 2010 ; Muchicko et al., 2014 ).

To draw a comprehensive picture, transgender athletes' narratives about barriers and facilitators for sports participation, as captured in qualitative approaches, will now be discussed.

Mainstream and organized sports activities are mostly experienced as unsafe spaces by transgender individuals, in which they face several distal and proximal stressors (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ; Caudwell, 2014 ; Elling-Machartzki, 2015 ; Hargie et al., 2017 ; Jones et al., 2017a ; Semerjian, 2019 ). There is strong academic agreement that the changing room is one of the most challenging barriers: feelings of shame, body incongruence, body dissatisfaction, and fears of others' reactions—all resembling major internal proximal stressors—generate distal stressors, such as abjectification and stigma, negotiations of gender (non-) conformity, and discriminatory behavior (Semerjian and Cohen, 2006 ; Symons, 2010 ; Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ; Smith et al., 2012a ; Caudwell, 2014 ; Elling-Machartzki, 2015 ; Hargie et al., 2017 ; Jones et al., 2017a ; Kulick et al., 2018 ; Semerjian, 2019 ). The locker room is perceived as the most challenging situation, “entrenched in cisgenderism and heteronormativity” (Semerjian, 2019 , p. 154), but the entanglement of proximal and distal stressors generally leads to feelings of fear in public sporting spaces, which often impede sports engagement (Hargie et al., 2017 ). Moreover, alienating negative experiences concerning physical education in school are major barriers for further sports participation of transgender individuals (Caudwell, 2014 ; Hargie et al., 2017 ). Also, clothing regulations and norms, participation in sex-segregated team sports, and a lack of acceptance in teams pose further external barriers to transgender sports participation (Jones et al., 2017a ; Semerjian, 2019 ).

Further exclusionary processes toward transgender athletes, discovered by Hargie et al. ( 2017 ), provide supporting evidence for Bailey's ( 2005 ) dimensions of social exclusion. In regard to organizational sports settings, Hargie et al. ( 2017 , p. 234) found that hostility from facility staff and members of the public emerged as relational stressors; high social, and economic distances led to a lack of social networks; social capital acted as spatial stressors; missed opportunities for gaining knowledge, competencies, and capabilities, as well as refraining from specific sports activities, occurred as functional stressors; and internalized transnegative attitudes and reduced self-confidence arose on the power dimension.

Despite the barriers outlined, transgender perspectives stress the positive consequences of sports participation. Being physically active and doing sports contribute to body awareness and satisfaction, gender (dis-)identification, and recognition and accentuation of body changes (Elling-Machartzki, 2015 ; Jones et al., 2017a ; Semerjian, 2019 ). Positive effects from sports on mental well-being and social involvement in welcoming, safe, and comfortable sports settings strengthen transgender individuals' abilities to cope with challenges (Elling-Machartzki, 2015 ; Elling and Collot d'Escury, 2017 ). Several studies have identified safe spaces in sport, in which transgender athletes were accepted, socially supported by the team, and enabled to compete without rigid restrictions (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 , Travers and Deri, 2010 ; Elling and Collot d'Escury, 2017 ). But as these conditions are rather rare in mainstream sports settings, establishing trans-only sporting environments might externally facilitate transgender sports participation (Jones et al., 2017a ).

Reflecting on the findings regarding barriers and facilitators for transgender sports participation, it should be mentioned that experiences are diverse, individual, and often dependent on settings, sports, social environment, or personal traits (Semerjian and Cohen, 2006 ). Nevertheless, most transgender athletes are confronted with prejudices and ignorance in sports and personally experience discrimination, harassment, and scarce access to safe, comfortable, and inclusive sports environments (Jones et al., 2017b ). Exclusionary mechanisms are based on the supposed incongruence of transgender individuals with the dominant assumption of sex binary and the sex-segregation in organized sports settings (Symons, 2010 ; Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ; Elling and Collot d'Escury, 2017 ) and culminate in the “overall effects of being denied the social, health and well-being aspects of sport” (Hargie et al., 2017 , p. 223). Elling-Machartzki ( 2015 ) emphasizes that traditional sports clubs appear to be particularly challenging sports settings due to the changing room situation and discriminatory policies for engaging in the competitive system.

Organizational Policies on Transgender Athletes' Inclusion

(Sport) clubs are prototypes of self-purpose organizations with the main function to serve the interests of their members and trigger them to engage in specific (sport) activities (Müller-Jentsch, 2008 ). Apart from that, in the sense of Ferdinand Tönnies sport clubs can promote communitization in society as well as social change (Müller-Jentsch, 2008 ) and are perceived as drivers for social inclusion. This has become evident in manifold sport for all campaigns or recent diversity management approaches in organized sports (Rulofs, 2012 ). However, as sports clubs have a considerably high “resistance to change” (Cunningham, 2007 , p. 306), inclusion of underrepresented groups is a tremendous challenge. Especially if these groups challenge the logic inherent in the sport system, such as sex binary or the level playing field. Therefore, barriers for transgender sports participation are not only situated on personal and interactional levels but on institutional and policy levels (Symons, 2010 ; Caudwell, 2014 ; Jones et al., 2017b ). In their systematic review of transgender persons' experiences of sports and organizational policies regarding transgender inclusion, Jones et al. ( 2017b , p. 712) emphasize that “the requirements that transgender competitive sport policies place on competitors were instrumental in transgender athletes' negative experiences,” even in recreational sports settings.

To deal with transgender athletes in competitive sports, Griffin ( 2012 , p. 107f) outlined four potential policy forms: (1) use of mandatory sex-verification testing to maintain the gender binary; (2) case-by-case decisions on transgender inclusion using sex-verification testing; (3) implementation of categories other than sex [i.e., Kane's ( 1995 ) idea of a “continuum, whereby sport is organized based on ability and athletes compete in skill level groupings, regardless of gender” (cited after Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 , p. 39)]; and (4) expansion of gender categories to include transgender athletes. Many current sports organizations' policies belong to Griffin's ( 2012 ) second category and are perceived as discriminatory for transgender athletes; more inclusive policies are mainly represented in the fourth category.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) policy 2004, known as the Stockholm Consensus, was one of the first attempts to regulate transgender participation and has been fully or partly (for transgender females) adopted by sports organizations worldwide (e.g., British Swimming Association, 2015 ; USA Gymnastics, 2015 ; Fédération Internationale de Volleyball, 2019 ). This policy requires of athletes a gender-confirming surgery, hormone treatment, and living in the gender identity, each for at least 2 years (International Olympic Committee, 2004 ). Since hormones are supposed to have strong effects on physicality, some organizations' policies require different degrees of hormone treatment and different threshold levels besides the legal recognition of gender identity (e.g., The Football Association, 2014 ; International Association of Athletics Federations, 2018 , 2019 ; International Tennis Association, 2018 ; International Cycling Union, 2020 ). Criticism of these rigid transgender policies centers on the exclusion of transgender athletes who are not undergoing medical treatment; who are just in the process of transitioning; whose gender identity lies outside the gender binary; and on the discrimination toward transgender males who have allegedly no physical advantages (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2011 ; Jones et al., 2017b ; Semerjian, 2019 ).

Taking some of the reservations and criticisms into account, in 2015 the IOC implemented different policies for male and female transgender individuals. For female transgender athletes, the requirement demands 4 years of declared gender identity and a threshold for testosterone levels, whereas male transgender athletes can compete without any restrictions (International Olympic Committee, 2015 ; e.g., USA Swimming, 2018 ; Badminton England, 2019 ). The National College Athletics Association has already implemented such policies in 2011 and, beyond that, allows transgender athletes to stay on their teams, as long as they do not start medical, hormonal transformation (National College Athletics Association, 2011 ). These policies were also implemented by the National Women's Hockey League ( 2016 ) for elite athletes. More inclusive policies only require legal recognition of gender identity (US Soccer Federation, 2013 ; Berliner Fußball Verband, 2018 ; USA Sailing, 2019 ) or allow participation simply on the basis of gender identity, regardless of legal recognition, medical treatment, and anatomy (UK Roller Derby Association, 2014 ; International Quidditch Association, 2018 ; Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, 2019 ).

Travers and Deri ( 2010 , p. 503) articulate two barriers for inclusive transgender policies: first, the “powerful culture of sex binary logic in the organization of sport,” built on the assumed relevance of testosterone; and second, obstacles to “re-negotiate sexed boundaries,” related to the dissent amongst transgender athletes about appropriate inclusive policies. Jones et al. ( 2017b ) question the inclusiveness of the reviewed policies, concluding that the majority of the applied policies in different organized sports institutions discriminate against transgender individuals and most notably transgender males, mainly because no empirical evidence exists on the athletic advantages of female and male transgender athletes. This is empirically supported by Harper ( 2015 ), who identified times for middle distance runs for transgender females that comparably change according to the bodily status of adaption. From a philosophical point of view, Gleaves and Lehrbach ( 2016 ) call for society to focus on “narrativity rather than physiological equivalency,” so as to include transgender athletes, instead of perceiving sport solely as a comparison of physical skills and competencies.

Methodology

As the theoretical framework and research corpus have shown, transgender athletes are a highly controversial topic, encompassing inherent sports values such as (un)fairness, in-/exclusion, (non)discrimination, and (un)equal opportunities. Thus, inclusion of transgender athletes in organized sports often fails, which leads to discriminatory experiences, humiliation, exclusion, and stress. This paper has three objectives: (1) to analyze the LGBT+ athletes' assessment of transnegativity in organized sports settings in Europe; (2) to scrutinize negative experiences (prevalence, forms, perpetrators) with regard to gender identity, performance level, and LGBT+ reference in organized sports settings in Europe; and (3) to discuss inclusive strategies, as well as barriers and facilitators, for implementing diversity in sports organizations in Europe. The first and the second objective are explored through a quantitative online survey in all European Union countries, and the third objective is explored through a qualitative interview study in five European countries (GER, ITA, AUT, SCO, HUN). Both studies were conducted as part of the European joint research project OUTSPORT, which was developed by the German Sport University Cologne in cooperation with the Italian Association for Culture and Sport (AICS), LEAP Sports Scotland (LEAP), the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation (VIDC), and the Organization for Fresh Ideas, Hungary (FRIGO). In contrast to further publications already issued within the framework of this project (e.g., Menzel et al., 2019 ; Hartmann-Tews et al., in press ), the current paper focuses on: (1) subsample of LGBT+ athletes within organized sports contexts, (2) systematic differentiation between cisgender and non-cisgender athletes, and (3) integration of qualitative interviews with representatives of sports organizations.

Athletes' Experiences: Quantitative Online Survey

The target population of the OUTSPORT survey was defined as anyone who (a) identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or intersex; (b) currently lives in one of the 28 member states of the European Union; and (c) is at least 16 years old. Being currently active in sports was not set as a mandatory criterion. Due to stigmatization, discrimination, and the lack of knowledge about socio-structural parameters—particularly on a European level—LGBT+ populations can be characterized as hard-to-reach, hidden, and vulnerable populations (Ellard-Gray et al., 2015 ). In order to draw a systematic sample of this population, a combination of sampling strategies was applied. Primarily, various LGBT+ organizations in each of the 28 EU member states were contacted and asked for contact details from other LGBT+ (sports) organizations and umbrella sports organizations in their countries. Each of these organizations was asked for support and supplied with standardized packages of promotional material (texts, pictures, videos) to advertise the web-based survey via their channels (i.e., social media, web pages, mailing lists). International LGBT+ organizations such as the European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association also helped to promote the survey. To increase the reach, a snowball recruiting technique among participants was applied. Social media targeting was used in an adaptive process to balance out lower participation rates in specific countries. The survey was promoted in a neutral way. To avoid a negativity bias, words and expressions such as “negative experiences,” “discrimination,” or “harassment” were not used. The online survey was accessible in German, English, Italian, Hungarian, and French. All translations were conducted by ETC Europe, a professional translation agency. To improve validity and reliability, emphasis was placed on precise wording in each language. Sensitive wordings were thoroughly double-checked by native speakers with an LGBT+ background who also worked for the OUTSPORT project. Anonymity and confidentiality for the participants were secured, and the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU was applied. The research design was approved by the ethics committee of the German Sport University Cologne. The online survey was accessible between March and August 2018.

The total sample contains 5,524 valid cases. The share of each country's respondents from the total sample roughly corresponds to the share of each country's inhabitants from the total EU population (mean deviation of percentage points: M = 1.68, SD = 0.019). Within the scope of this paper, the focus is placed on a subsample of active respondents who practice their (main) sport in an organized sports context ( n = 2,282). This could either be organized sports clubs ( n = 1,391), for-profit organizations such as fitness centers ( n = 624), or other organizations (e.g., company or university sporting groups etc.) ( n = 267). Participants from the chosen subsample are between 16 and 75 years old (M = 27.3, SD = 11.2). More than half (51%) have a college or university degree, and more than a third (37%) have completed upper or post-secondary education. Almost two thirds live in urban areas with over 100 k inhabitants (64%), one out of five (19%) lives in towns or smaller villages (20–100 k), and 17% live in rural areas (<20 k). The assigned sex at birth was female in 60% of cases and male in 40% of cases.

Based on the relevant research corpus the questionnaire for the quantitative online survey has been developed by the authors in cooperation with experts from the OUTSPORT project team. To ensure validity and rigor, the questions have been further discussed with scientific experts inside and outside academia and a pre-test has been performed leading to further adjustments. The following section shows precisely how the variables used in this paper have been measured and operationalized.

Gender identity

A two-question gender status measure was used to retrieve data about the gender identity of respondents (Tate et al., 2013 ; Lombardi and Banik, 2016 ). In a first step, respondents were asked to report their sex assigned at birth, with the options 3 (1)“male” and (2) “female,” before respondents were asked about their current gender identity: (1)“female”; (2)“male”; (3)“transgender”; and (4)“I do not identify myself as male, female or transgender.” Cross-analysis of these two questions resulted in six distinct gender-identity categories: female cisgender, male cisgender, female transgender, male transgender, non-binary transgender, and non-identifying people (respondents who do not identify as male, female, or transgender). Within the scope of this paper, the main distinction made will be between cisgender and non-cisgender respondents. Non-cisgender respondents will be further subdivided into three groups: female transgender; male transgender; and non-binary respondents (including non-identifying respondents).

Sports setting

In addition to the organizational context of a sport (e.g., sports clubs, for-profit organizations, or other organizations), two more dimensions are used to describe the sports setting: performance level and LGBT+ reference. Performance level was assessed by a single choice question (“What was the nature of this activity?”), offering the response options (1)“recreational”; (2)“competitive”; and (3)“high performance.” The LGBT+ reference of a sports activity was assessed by asking respondents to characterize their sports context as either (1)“mainstream/not specified”; (2)“explicitly LGBT+ friendly”; or (3)“LGBT+ specific.”

General assessment of transnegativity in sports

To assess the perception of transnegativity in sports on a general level, respondents were asked if they think that there is a problem with transnegativity in sports. Response options were provided on a five-point scale from 1 (“no problem”) to 5 (“big problem”) and a no-choice option (“don't know”). Transnegativity was defined in the questionnaire as “prejudice or discrimination on grounds of transgender identity.”

Helpful strategies and awareness of contact points

Respondents were asked what they would consider appropriate measures to tackle discrimination or harassment in sports due to sexual orientation and/or gender identity. To find out how aware people are of whom to turn to in cases of homo-/transnegative incidents in their sport, respondents were asked whether they know any support contact points (organizations or individuals) they can get in touch with if such an incident happens.

Homo-/Transnegative incidents

Homo-/transnegative incidents were assessed in a two-step approach. First, respondents were asked whether or not (“yes”/“no”) they had personal negative experiences in their sport during the previous 12 months: “Looking back at the last 12 months, did you personally have any negative experiences in this specific sports context as a result of your sexual orientation and/or gender identity?” The question was formulated such that the connection to a specific sports activity and its context, the causal attribution to the respondent's own sexual orientation and/or gender identity, and the topicality (last 12 months) were emphasized. In the second step, respondents were asked how often they had personally experienced several forms of homo-/transnegative incidents in that time span: (1) verbal insults and slurs (ridiculing, name-calling, derogatory words such as “dyke,” “faggot,” “poofter” etc.); (2) verbal threats (involving harm and/or intimidation); (3) physical crossing of lines (shoving, pushing, inappropriate touching etc.); (4) physical violence (kicking, punching, deliberate injuring; sexual assaults etc.); (5) discrimination (unfair treatment, exclusion, unequal opportunities etc.); (6) e-bullying (harassment via social media, messengers, webpages); and (7) other (“please specify”). Respondents were provided with a five-point scale response option (1 = “never,” 5 = “very often”) for each form. Besides the forms and frequencies, respondents were asked about the perpetrators. For every form of homo-/transnegative incidents that occurred, respondents were asked, “Who said or did this?,” offering seven different perpetrators via a multiple-choice option.

Organizational Strategies: Qualitative Interview Study

The qualitative study consists of 15 expert interviews with relevant stakeholders from sport systems in the OUTSPORT project partner countries Germany, Scotland, Italy, Austria, and Hungary. The interviewees represent responsible actors from umbrella sports organizations of the voluntary sector at national or regional levels (DOSB, LSB, CL, SS, UISP, AICS, BSO, AGC, MOB, MA), specific sports federations (bfv, “FA,” FIR), and public sports organizations focusing on specific target groups (SDS, SSS) ( Table 1 ). The semi-structured, guided interviews focused on the broader context of LGBT+ inclusion in sport and organizational strategies for diversity and inclusion. In order to identify facilitators for implementing diversity strategies and inclusive policies for LGBT+ minorities in sport, the sampling aimed at including good practice organizations.

Participating sports organizations from project partner countries (Germany, Scotland, Italy, Hungary, Austria).

The qualitative data collection was carried out between September 2018 and April 2019. The Scottish, Italian, and Hungarian interviews (along with one Austrian interview) were conducted and transcribed by the respective project partner; one Austrian interview and the German interviews were conducted by the authors. All interviews were coded by the authors using qualitative, category-led text analysis (Mayring and Fenzl, 2014 ). Deductively and inductively developed (sub-)categories structured the coding process and the interpretation of the findings; both approaches were critically discussed with colleagues to ensure trustworthiness of the data. For the current purpose, findings on barriers and facilitators for implementing inclusive diversity strategies in sports organizations and the parts on transgender issues are focused on. Due to methodological issues in conducting interviews and different stages concerning problem awareness and inclusiveness for LGBT+ athletes in the five project partner countries, the results on transgender issues focus mainly on interviews from Germany and Scotland.

Empirical Results

Before the results are going to be presented in detail, the sports participation of the respondents will be briefly described.

For findings on the general sports participation of different gender-identity groups, the overall OUTSPORT sample ( n = 5,524) was used. It was found that cisgender and non-cisgender respondents differ slightly in their general sports participation over the last 12 months. Namely, transgender males (68%) have the highest share of active respondents, followed by both cisgender males and females (63%), followed by female and non-binary non-cisgender respondents (57/59%) (Menzel et al., 2019 ).

In the current sample of active respondents in organized sport ( n = 2,282), six out of 10 respondents (61.0%) practice their main sport activity in organized sports clubs, 27.3% practice in for-profit organizations, and 11.7% practice in other organizations such as university or company sporting groups. Cisgender individuals participate more often in organized sports clubs, while non-cisgender individuals engage more often in activities held by other organizations (χ 2 (2) = 12.99, p < 0.01, V = 0.075). The performance level is predominantly recreational (56.5%), while competitive (31.6%) and high-performance (12.0%) levels are scarcer. Eight out of 10 (82.6%) respondents practice their sport in mainstream or LGBT+ unrelated settings and 17.4% practice in LGBT+ related settings—either explicitly LGBT+ friendly (9.1%) or LGBT+ specific (8.3%). With regard to the performance level, no significant differences were found between cisgender and non-cisgender respondents (χ 2 (2) = 2.67, n.s.). The share of cisgender respondents in LGBT+ specific settings (9.0%) is slightly higher compared to non-cisgender respondents (3.9%) (χ 2 (2) = 10.85, p < 0.01, V = 0.069).

Transnegativity in Sport

Transnegativity is perceived to be a “big problem” by the majority of respondents. On the 5-point scale (1 = “no problem,” 5 = “big problem”), 88.9% of respondents chose either category four (25.9%) or five (63.0%), causing a strongly left-skewed distribution 4 . Cisgender (M = 4.47, SD = 0.81) and non-cisgender (M = 4.50, SD = 0.87) respondents show similar mean values, with no significant differences in mean ranks (U = 273199.5, n.s.). Within the group of non-cisgender athletes, respondents with a non-binary gender identity perceive transnegativity to be a bigger problem (M = 4.58, SD = 0.80) than do female (M = 4.17, SD = 1.29) and male (M = 4.24, SD = 0.95) transgender athletes. Accordingly, a Kruskal-Wallis test shows significant differences of means (H(2) = 9.47, p < 0.01), with mean rank scores of 144.11 for transgender females ( n = 18), 133.3 for transgender males ( n = 54) and 166.99 for non-binary persons ( n = 247). Post-hoc tests of pairwise comparisons show significant group differences between male transgender and non-binary respondents ( p < 0.01; r = 0.169), with a medium effect size.

Personal Negative Experiences

Of all active LGBT+ respondents in organized sports settings, 11.8% have had at least one negative personal experience that was associated with their sexual orientation or gender identity in their main sport in the last 12 months ( Table 2 ). The differences between cisgender and non-cisgender respondents are remarkable. The share of non-cisgender athletes who have become victims of homo-/transnegative incidents is three times higher (29.6%) compared to cisgender athletes (8.8%) (χ 2 (2) = 118.22, p < 0.001, V = 0.228). This effect consistently occurs in all three performance levels and all LGBT+ reference types with weak to moderate effect sizes ( Table 2 ). Irrespective of respondents' gender identity, higher rates of homo-/transnegative incidents are weakly associated with higher performance levels (χ 2 (2) = 9.66, p < 0.01, V = 0.068) and more likely to occur in mainstream than in LGBT+ related settings (χ 2 (2) = 6.67, p < 0.05, V = 0.053). Among non-cisgender respondents, differences with regard to the performance level (χ 2 (2) = 4.01, n.s.) and LGBT+ reference (χ 2 (2) = 1.64, n.s.) are not statistically significant.

Personal negative experiences due to SOGI in different settings by gender identity (%).

Question: “Looking back at the last 12 months, did you personally have any negative experiences in this specific sports context as a result of your sexual orientation or gender identity?” Database: Active sports participants in organized sports .

Test statistics (χ 2 ) and effect sizes (Cramer V) are written in italic .

Among those who have personally experienced homo-/transnegative incidents in the last 12 months, verbal insults (79.2%) and structural discrimination such as unequal opportunities, unfair treatment, or exclusion (75.1%) were the most common forms ( Table 3 ). Moreover, verbal threats and intimidations occurred in 39.4% of the cases, and harassment via social media, messengers, or webpages (e-bullying) occurred in 35.3% of cases. Physical types of homo-/transnegative incidents happened to 31.6% of respondents as lighter forms of crossing the lines (e.g., shoving, pushing, or inappropriate touching) and to 15.6% as severe forms of physical violence (e.g., kicking, punching, or injuring). For reasons of clarity, the 5-point scaled data was dichotomized first. Percentages are used to indicate the share of respondents who experienced specific types of incidents.

Forms of personal negative experiences by gender identity, performance level, and LGBT+ reference (%).

Question: “In the last 12 months, how often did you personally experience the following as a result of your sexual orientation or gender identity?” Database: Active sports participants in organized sports who have had personal negative experiences associated with their sexual orientation or gender identity in the last 12 months .

Table 3 shows group comparisons regarding gender identity, performance levels, and LGBT+ reference of the sport. Results indicate that verbal insults are more frequently experienced among cisgender respondents (χ 2 (2) = 13.10, p < 0.001, V = 0.221) and in higher performance levels (χ 2 (2) = 6.85, p < 0.05, V = 0.160). Non-cisgender respondents more commonly experience structural discrimination (χ 2 (2) = 3.53, p < 0.05, V = 0.114) and other negative incidents (χ 2 (2) = 7.08, p < 0.01, V = 0.162), which are typically associated with misgendering (i.e., problems concerning the use of correct pronouns and appropriate naming) or being looked at in a derogatory way. No statistically significant differences were found between mainstream and LGBT+ related sport settings, although a higher rate of physical violence is observed in LGBT+ related settings (χ 2 (1) = 3.44, p = 0.064; V = 0.113).

For each of the seven forms of homo-/transnegative incidents, respondents were asked about the perpetrators (“Who said or did this?”), with multiple-choice options. Table 4 shows the percentages for all seven forms combined (i.e., the share of respondents who named the corresponding perpetrator at least once in any of the occurring forms). Members of respondents' own teams (54.9%) and other sport participants (51.4%) are the most frequently mentioned perpetrators, irrespective of the specific types of incidents. About a third of respondents with homo-/transnegative experiences identified members of opposition teams (36.1%), coaches (34.1%), and spectators (32.5%) as perpetrators, whereas about one out of six indicated that at least one negative incident was caused by other officials (17.3%).

Perpetrators by gender identity, performance level and LGBT+ reference (%).

Question: “Who said or did this?” (Combined for all seven forms of homo-/transnegative incidents). Database: Active sports participants in organized sports who have had personal negative experiences associated with their sexual orientation or gender identity in the last 12 months and who named at least one perpetrator (n = 255) .

Cisgender and non-cisgender respondents referred to roughly the same types of perpetrators except for coaches, who are more commonly indicated by non-cisgender respondents (χ 2 (2) = 6.09, p < 0.05, V = 0.115). Highly significant differences can be found with regard to the performance levels. Perpetrators from respondents' own teams (χ 2 (2) = 17.33, p < 0.001, V = 0.261) or opponent teams (χ 2 (2) = 16.79, p < 0.001, V = 0.257) were more frequently indicated by athletes in higher performance and competitive levels, respectively. In contrast, other sports participants were more frequently referred to as perpetrators in recreational settings (χ 2 (2) = 15.44, p < 0.001, V = 0.246). Spectators (χ 2 (1) = 4.31, p < 0.051, V = 0.130) and other officials (χ 2 (1) = 4.46, p < 0.05, V = 0.133) were mentioned significantly more often by respondents in LGBT+ related sports settings, whereas team members as perpetrators are more widespread in mainstream sports settings (χ 2 (1) = 5.39, p < 0.05, V = 0.146).

Tackling of Transnegativity

Respondents who have had homo-/transnegative experiences at some point in their sport ( n = 616) were asked whether they were aware of contact points for support (i.e., organizations and/or individuals concerned with matters of discrimination). One out of three respondents (32.3%) indicated being aware of contact points in non-governmental organizations outside of the organized sport. One out of five respondents (19.2%) was aware of contact points in local sports organizations, and one out of seven was aware of contact points in umbrella sports organizations on a regional or national level (14.4%). There are no statistically significant differences between cisgender and transgender respondents.

The most frequently named measures to tackle discrimination and harassment on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity are to encourage more sports stars to come out and to run high-profile anti-homophobia/transnegativity campaigns, followed by diversity training and more inclusive policies ( Table 5 ) 5 . More than two thirds of respondents considered tougher sanctions as appropriate measures, whereas almost 9% referred to other measures. The coming-out of sport stars is perceived to be helpful by a higher share of cisgender respondents (χ 2 (1) = 7.32, p < 0.01, V = 0.100). Non-cisgender respondents consider inclusive policies (χ 2 (1) = 22.35, p < 0.001, V = 0.175) and diversity training (χ 2 (1) = 5.67, p < 0.05, V = 0.088) more important and also refer to other strategies twice as often as cisgender respondents (χ 2 (1) = 9.76, p < 0.01, V = 0.115). Better education about gender diversity, gender-neutral changing rooms, and enhancement of social acceptance were most frequently mentioned.

Helpful to tackle discrimination in sport by gender identity.

Question: “What do you think would be helpful in tackling discrimination and/or harassment based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity in sport?” Multiple choice, figures in valid percentages. Database: Active sports participants in organized sports .

Transgender Issues in Sports Organizations

The issue of transgender inclusion in sports is an ongoing and complex topic for organizations in Germany and Scotland, while in the other countries, the organizational approach to the issue of transgender athletes appears relatively vague and sometimes unpopular. In relation to the engagement of several sports federations with transgender issues, the interviewee from the Austrian Center for Gender Competence pointed out that “it's rather an unpopular topic that they have to deal with, not want to deal with” (AGC, 51). Thus, the German football associations interviewed, as well as organizations in Scotland, reported that transgender inclusion into competitive systems is mainly ruled by case-by-case decisions and individually by the responsible organization. Some positive examples of regulations were mentioned in the interviews, as the following quote from sportscotland indicates:

Gymnastics made a regulation change because the rules stated that females had to wear leotards, a certain outfit, and there was a young transwoman who didn't feel comfortable with that. And she actually was getting deducted points because she wanted to wear different clothing. Now again that's something very simple but was creating a massive issue for her competition (SS, 419–422).

The German and Scottish organizations highlight the need for implementing general inclusive policies on a broader level, and in most of the organizations, there are already efforts to develop generally binding regulations and guidelines. The ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany on the option of a third gender (divers) has increased the urgency for inclusive policies beyond the sex binary, as the German Olympic Sport Federation emphasized: “especially in the context of grassroots sport, national organizations are invited to formulate appropriate recommendations” (DOSB, 481–482).

The organizations in Germany and Scotland perceive both cooperation within the sport system and low-threshold offers as beneficial. Workshops, events, and other opportunities enable different actors in the sport system to get in touch with each other and discuss various ways for transgender inclusion into competitive sport structures. Mutual learning and inspiring each other is beneficial, as the Football Association Baden stressed: “the topic is not about competition or who does what better or something like that, but it's simply about mutual stimulation (…) and motivating people to move forward with the topic” (bfv, 155–157).

Facilitators for Implementing Diversity Strategies

Apart from specific issues regarding transgender athletes, the 15 interviews focused on the general inclusion of LGBT+ athletes in sport organizations. With this broader focus, the barriers and facilitators for implementing diversity strategies will be discussed with reference to Cunningham's ( 2012 ) multilevel model.

On the macro level, the majority of sporting organizations demand that politicians and the public lead the way to LGBT+ inclusion, address the situation, and raise awareness about the barriers for the inclusion of LGBT+. These external factors were perceived as beneficial for implementing the topic of diversity in sports organizations. Many interviewees perceived hardly any rejection of the topic but rather perceived a lack of knowledge and awareness, as highlighted by sportscotland: “If you're looking at resistance, the only thing we tend to come across is lack of awareness and education” (SS, 216–217). The Italian Culture Sport Agency perceived some areas of resentment, but only when this agency started to deal with LGBT+ issues: “And even those cultural resistances that existed at the beginning (…), slowly absorbed this new situation and have accepted it, and today frankly LGBT issue is not a sector we put a “different” effort in, it is a sector like all the others” (AICS, 25–26). In contrast, however, the Hungarian Olympic Committee expected rejection of their member organizations when addressing the issues of LGBT+ inclusion: “But our member clubs are independent; we have no legal ways to interfere. What we can change is the mentality. But if we start to deal with these issues, there will be problems” (MA, 20–22). Therefore, communication, education, and role models serve as important tools for raising awareness and increasing sensitivity to the issue of diversity and inclusion of sexual minorities in sports. The interviewee from the Italian Sport Union For All emphasized this: “The fact that there are athletes who come out is very important (…) as well as the fact that there are more and more moments where various subjects and institutions address LGBT issues and try to question themselves on this matter” (UISP, 38–39).

Moreover, male hegemony that is reproduced on various levels in sports is perceived as a barrier for LGBT+ inclusion. Individuals who are not representing heteronormative and male stereotypes do not fit into sporting realities as the interviewee from the Austrian Center for Gender Competence stressed: “I think anything that runs counter to the typical male ideal is simply insecure in sport. Women, lesbians, gays, transgender people, girls in headscarves, people with disabilities” (AGC, 368–371).

On the meso level, cooperation with governing bodies, along with relevant stakeholders inside and outside the sport systems, served as an important facilitator for the integration of LGBT+ issues into sports clubs and organizations. Furthermore, a welcoming organizational culture and robust inclusive values were mentioned as instrumental for the inclusion of LGBT+ athletes: “We definitely live and breathe our values (…) we try and theme things around them. So, our values are at the core of everything we do” (Scottish Student Sport, 266–269).

The organizations believe that both top-down and bottom-up strategies are needed to implement LGBT+ inclusion. The interviewee from the State Sports Confederation of Saxony-Anhalt considers umbrella organizations as important role models for implementing the topic: “It is also important, of course, that the umbrella organizations take the appropriate steps, because then, I believe, it will be easier for the smaller associations, organizations, and clubs to support the issues, if the umbrella organizations put them into practice” (LSB, 919–922). However, the implementation of LGBT+ inclusion solely via top-down strategies in sport might ignore “barriers of volunteering, lack of time, and lack of personnel” (BSO, 313–314) that most sports clubs experience, as the Austrian Sport Organization mentioned.

The organizations emphasized the need for a distinct commitment of the organizations' leadership to the topic of diversity and inclusion, along with the willingness to act and to allocate respective resources for initiating activities and implementing strategies. Conversely, a lack of commitment and a lack of financial, staffing, and time resources are viewed as major barriers for implementing strategies, campaigns, or other measures. “I suppose the only barrier that we have is the size [of the team/organization] in terms of our resource” (Community Leisure Sport UK, Scotland, 163).

Official regulations, guidelines, and charters on the appreciation of diversity, diversity management, and prevention of violence are supposed to be beneficial. The Austrian Sport Organization stressed the importance of clearly naming the dimensions of diversity, such as sexual orientation, in the official guidelines and regulations. Furthermore, the implementation of the topic on diversity and inclusion of sexual minorities in the educational structures of sport—for coaches, officials, referees, employees, board members and so on—is seen in a positive light. To justify to higher management levels and potential funding bodies the need for inclusive strategies and measures and to draw a comprehensive picture of the situation of LGBT+ in sports, many organizations stress the relevance of empirical facts and figures.

On the micro level, the organizations are highly aware of the significance of using sensitive and inclusive language in the context of discrimination in sports. People using homo- and transnegative language are often not aware that it might be perceived as discriminatory by LGBT+ individuals. Instead, the word “gay” is commonly used in sport contexts to describe something in a negative way, but not with the intention to harm LGBT+ individuals. Raising awareness for the discriminatory effect of homo- and transnegative language in sports is an important concern of the organizations. “And I think particularly with LGBTI [inclusion], you want to have language that is inclusive (…) because it does, it seems to change quite a lot” (Scottish Disability Sport, 216–217).

Apart from that, it became obvious that the organizational engagement with the topic of diversity and inclusion often depends on highly dedicated individuals within the organizations (not necessarily at the leadership level), who are committed to advance the issue, implement initiatives and measures, involve relevant stakeholders, and cooperate with them.

Against the background of growing empirical research on LGBT+ people in sports from Anglophone countries, this paper enhances the research body on both the experiences of LGBT+ people in organized European sports in general and the various challenges with regard to gender identity in particular. Aside from that, the combination of quantitative findings on the experiences of LGBT+ athletes and qualitative findings on organizational strategies for diversity and inclusion represents a major contribution of this study.

The current findings indicate fairly equal sports participation rates of cisgender and non-cisgender individuals in Europe (Kulick et al., 2018 ). Transgender males, being the most active group, reflect structural conditions of the sport system. Compared to transgender females, transgender males challenge the level playing field less strongly because they are not accused of unfair physical advantages. Similarly, transgender males challenge the level playing field less than non-binary athletes because the former fit into the sex binary (Fink, 2008 ; Griffin, 2012 ; Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ). These perceptions culminate in fewer barriers for and fewer prejudices against transgender males in the domain of sport, which in turn increase transgender males' participation (Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ).

LGBT+ athletes in organized sports contexts in Europe perceive transnegativity as a major problem in sports and even as a bigger problem than the Scottish respondents perceived in the studies by Smith and colleagues some years ago (2012a,b). National differences in the prevalence of transnegativity amongst European countries, as indicated in the overall OUTSPORT results (Menzel et al., 2019 ), as well as negative changes over time might have contributed to this difference. Within the group of non-cisgender respondents, those who reject the binary assess the problem to be the biggest, reflecting the sex-segregation in sports, which is an even higher barrier for non-binary athletes than for male or female transgender athletes.

Despite the generally high awareness of transnegativity, the share of respondents with personal negative experiences is relatively low, compared to findings by Demers ( 2017 ) or Smith et al. ( 2012a ). Different periods considered may partly account for the differences: while the current study looked at incidents in the last 12 months, Demers ( 2017 ) and Smith et al. ( 2012a ) focused on lifetime experiences. Apart from methodological issues, the spread of more inclusive sporting realities for LGBT+ individuals (Travers and Deri, 2010 ) and self-exclusion processes based on proximal stressors serve as arguments for reduced transnegative episodes in sport. Elling-Machartzki ( 2015 , p. 9) and Hargie et al. ( 2017 ) stress that expectations of being harassed or discriminated in sport contexts and the “fear of the felt stigma” that is “related to transgenderism” led to self-exclusion and thus to LGBT+ sporting populations that are less vulnerable to harassment and discrimination.

Within the group of LGBT+ athletes, non-cisgender athletes are identified as the most vulnerable group in organized sports in general and particularly with regard to structural discrimination (i.e., facing unequal opportunities, unfair treatment, or exclusion) (Jones et al., 2017b ). Non-cisgender athletes challenge the sex binary and sex-segregated sport systems and the alignment to either male or female teams that is required for participation in competitive structures (Griffin, 2012 ; Krane et al., 2012 ; Hartmann-Tews et al., in press ). Even LGBT+ specific settings seem to be less safe for non-cisgender than for cisgender athletes (Travers and Deri, 2010 ; Caudwell, 2014 ; Semerjian, 2019 ), which emphasizes the importance of trans-only sporting environments as an external facilitator for sport participation of transgender individuals (Jones et al., 2017a ). Transgender athletes' negative experiences are reflected in calls, particularly from non-cisgender athletes, for diversity training and more inclusive policies. The disadvantages of non-cisgender athletes are also evident in the different status of transgender athletes' issues, lagging behind diversity strategies and inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals, as the interviews indicated. But the will “to overcome resistance to change” (Cunningham, 2007 , p. 306) is evident in many sports organizations, which stress the need for inclusive policies instead of the case-by-case decisions currently being taken.

Concepts of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity have been identified as important determinants for LGBT+ discrimination. Verbal abuse, the most common form of discrimination (particularly for cisgender athletes) is mainly anchored in expectations of heteronormative, male hegemony, which strongly devalues homosexual orientations (Kossakowski et al., 2020 ). Moreover, the impact of performance level on discrimination experiences of LGBT+ athletes is closely related to the importance of hegemonic masculinity in competitive sport, which is more strongly anchored in higher performance levels than in recreational sports settings (Bush et al., 2012 ; Cunningham, 2012 ; MacDonald, 2018 ). Individuals who are embedded and socialized in sporting cultures identify more strongly as athletes, particularly if they are engaged in competitive sports, and therefore express more sexual prejudices than athletes with a lower athletic identity (Bush et al., 2012 ; Cunningham, 2012 ).

The high prevalence of verbal abuse and severe physical incidents supports findings from Demers ( 2017 ) and Smith et al. ( 2012a ), but the pervasiveness of incidents related to physically crossing lines (i.e., being shoved, pushed, or inappropriately touched) is an alarming sign for the sport culture. Referring to gender identity, being looked at in a derogatory way, or being misgendered happen more often to transgender and gender non-conforming athletes (Travers and Deri, 2010 ; Devís-Devís et al., 2018 ; Semerjian, 2019 ). The interviewed organizations recognize these problems and emphasize the need to raise awareness and knowledge on the importance of a sensitive language in sports contexts and perceive the integration of LGBT+ (particularly transgender issues) into educational structures as an important measure. The need for this is strengthened by two aspects: first, the finding that coaches discriminate against non-cisgender athletes more often than cisgender athletes; and second, academic agreement on coaches playing a major role in raising awareness, establishing an inclusive climate, and addressing problems concerning correct pronouns and the changing room situation (Rulofs, 2012 ; Morris and Van Raalte, 2016 ; Demers, 2017 ). Implementing the topic into educational structures and offering diversity training are not only perceived as important measures to tackle transnegativity by the organizations but also by the respondents themselves. Additionally, non-cisgender athletes express the need for more awareness and acceptance and the need for gender-neutral changing rooms, with changing rooms having been consistently identified as very unsafe spaces (e.g., Lucas-Carr and Krane, 2012 ; Smith et al., 2012a ; Elling-Machartzki, 2015 ; Jones et al., 2017a ).

Before concluding thoughts will be presented, some limitations to the studies and future perspectives have to be mentioned.

First, it should be noted that the generalizability of the study's results is limited, since the present sample consists of self-selected respondents from an international population with unknown socio-structural parameters. Second, the questionnaire was only available in five languages, leading to a considerable percentage of the European respondents who could not respond in their mother tongue. This might have resulted in problems in understanding the questions and therefore in biased results and/or a biased sample, accounting for the rather high education level of the respondents. Third, although the sample size is satisfactory, the subsamples for non-cisgender athletes with negative experiences in specific contexts is sometimes insufficient to draw reliable conclusions. Additional quantitative research on transgender and non-conforming athletes is needed to further examine some discriminatory experiences that have been indicated in the current study, such as LGBT+ settings as unsafe spaces for non-cisgender athletes (Travers and Deri, 2010 ; Tagg, 2012 ; Caudwell, 2014 ). Fourth, the quantitative approach is unable to reflect the manifold, diverse, and different individual experiences of LGBT+ athletes in various sports contexts, settings, countries, and so on (Semerjian and Cohen, 2006 ). But it is able to provide comparable insights into the experiences of LGBT+ athletes with regard to different dimensions such as gender identity, performance levels, or LGBTI+ reference of the sport setting. Thus, the necessary reduction of complexity in quantitative research highlights the need for further research and, preferably, mixed-method approaches. Fifth, the qualitative study is limited by some methodological issues in conducting the interviews, which complicated drawing differentiated and comprehensive pictures in all project partner countries. Moreover, due to the broader focus on LGBT+ inclusion and the rather elementary stages in non-cisgender inclusion of sports organizations in all countries, transgender policies could not have been adequately discussed. Integrating more countries in future research and providing scientifically based support for the inclusion of transgender individuals in sports organizations (especially competitive structures) might be beneficial.

The aim of the paper was to shed light on the often neglected inconsistencies between LGBT+ athletes in sports in Europe. Our findings strikingly support the necessity of disbanding the LGBT+ umbrella, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary athletes are facing different challenges and different proximal and distal stressors in participating in organized sports contexts. Two realities seem to account for the different sporting realities of cisgender and non-cisgender athletes: first, transgender athletes thoroughly challenge people's assumptions of distinct gender binaries and heteronormativity, and second, they challenge the gender boundaries of the sex-segregated (competitive) sports system. Transgender participation in sport “belies the myth of the level playing field and the myth of gender binary on which it rests” (Griffin, 2012 , p. 100). Instead of discussing the implied unfair physical advantages of transgender (female) athletes, Lucas-Carr and Krane ( 2011 , in Semerjian, 2019 , p. 151) call for a shift to discuss the “trans disadvantage” due to negative experiences and ongoing challenges in sports that complicate sports participation, practice routines, competition, and so on. Together with the positive outcomes of being physically active, this strengthens the need for establishing welcoming organizational cultures and inclusive structures enabling transgender athletes to participate in organized sports settings without the fear of being verbally insulted, misgendered, stigmatized, or discriminated against. These calls are being heard in sports organizations but are not yet sufficiently implemented as the interviews with the sport organizations indicate. The study emphasizes that change is needed on macro, meso, and micro levels (Cunningham, 2012 ): first and foremost, to raise awareness for transgender issues and implement inclusive policies that allow transgender athletes “to compete as they wish” (Semerjian, 2019 , p. 159); secondly, to bring the coaches in to establish welcoming and safe sporting realities; and lastly, to provide gender-neutral changing/locker rooms in sports facilities and promote sensitive and inclusive language.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics commitee of the German Sport University Cologne. Written informed consent from the participants' legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

BB: head of the manuscript: first draft of the structure and content of the manuscript, writing everything except for methods and results, and finalizing and submitting the manuscript. TM: involved in the planing process, wrtiting the sextions on methods and results, and feedback on the final manuscript. IH-T: involved in the planing process and data selection, and feedback on the final manuscript. BB, TM, and IH-T: members of the OUTSPORT Project Team of the German Sport University. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Tim Schlunski for his extensive support during preparing the manuscript.

1 As part of the project OUTSPORT the research was funded by ERASMUS+. The aim of OUTSPORT was to develop innovative and educational approaches to prevent violence and tackle discrimination in sports, based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

2 The term “non-cisgender individuals” is used as a catchall term for transgender women, transgender men, non-binary and non-identifying individuals, and thus goes beyond the umbrella term “transgender.” It is not intended to denote otherness or deviation.

3 Respondents had to be at least 16 years old to participate in the survey. At the time of respondents' birth or earlier, none of the EU member states had officially recognized a third sex at birth.

4 From all 2,282 cases, 7.5% chose the option “don't know,” and 0.1% did not respond.

5 Due to an unintended permeability in the filter guidance, respondents who had not had negative experiences in the last 12 months also answered this question. As perceptions about helpful actions to tackle discrimination are probably (mostly) independent from immediate experiences of discrimination and for the sake of a higher number of cases, the table includes all active sports participants in organized sports who made a valid statement in this question ( n = 733).

Funding. As part of the OUTSPORT project the research was funded by the ERASMUS+ Programme. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot held be responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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