Should transgender females (male to female) compete with biological females in sports? I have asked eight people to share their opinions through five questions on this topic. Two of the individuals that I interviewed had opposing views on the matter, while the rest agreed that trans female athletes should not be permitted to compete with and against biological females. For the first question I asked, what do you think defines one’s gender? I received three continuous answers. "Gender is defined by the physical features you were born with." This statement is referring to the genitals that a person is born with which leads to the second answer, "gender is defined by the X and Y chromosomes that a person is born with." The X and Y chromosomes
Sex is the biological composition of either a male or female. For example, females have XX chromosomes in their DNA; their reproduction system consists of an egg and a vagina, and they also have functional breasts. Males, on the other hand, have XY chromosomes in their DNA; their reproductive system consists of sperm, testes, and a penis. Gender is the array of characteristics that distinguish a male from female and according to their attributes. However, there are some people whose sexual organs are imperfect, according to the roles of gender and sex, an example are hermaphrodites, because they have both a male and female’s sexual organs. Hermaphrodites tend to stay in the middle, grayish area between a male and a female. Society uses binaries to classify a male as men, with masculine traits, and a female as women who have feminine traits. Masculine traits are the roughness, muscles, broad shoulders, and deep voice men, or women, can possess. On the other hand, feminine traits include the long hair, soft skin, angelic glow and soft voice that either a women or men can own.
Transgendered people in America have made many great strides since the 1990s. They have encountered violence, lack of health care, and the loss of homes, jobs, family and friends. There have been many phases of the struggle of being transgendered in America over the years. The current phase we must be in now is equal rights. There are many variations of discrimination against the transgendered community. In our society we simply do not like what we do not understand. It is easier to discriminate than to try and understand. We are all created different and we should appreciate our differences. The change must come by addressing the views of the public. There is much justification in the unequal rights of transgendered peoples. The Human Rights Campaign has been started to achieve equal rights for all Americans including the LGBQ community. A serious injustice is in the world of sports. Professional sports are one of societies major traditions totally based on rules and regulations that are meant to preserve the integrality of the games, but may not be inclusive to all its players.
Why do female athletes receive less media coverage than male athletes? Male athletes dominate professional sport that airs on television. The media easily overlooks female athletes except during occasion like the Winter Olympics. The articles Media Coverage of Women’s Sports is Important (Lopiano, 2008) and Take Back the Sports Page? (Sommers, 2010) acknowledge factors that determine the amount of media coverage female athletes receive. [Lopiano and Sommers address this issue in regards to media coverage on female athletes differently. Lopiano focuses on the general message the media broadcasts and Sommers uses statistics to show the difference between female and male media. Lopiano and Sommers agree that the media considers female sports less valid. Both focus on different aspects such as problem and solutions and the different consequences of unequal media coverage]. The authors discover similar as well as different factors that contribute to the inequality media coverage of both female and male athletes obtain.
Women have forever had this label on their back of being too small, too weak, too feminine, and too boring. The traditional gender roles of the female interfere with the extortionate nature of competing in sports. Men are usually the ones to go 100% and give whatever they got, and to show masculinity while doing it. The standard masculinity of being strong, smart, and taking charge over dues the feminine traits of being soft, gentle, and polite. That’s what society has taught us to learn and accept. But the traditional female gender role is diminished when participating in athletics and people may think it’s weird to see females compete at the same level as males do. Men have always had the upper hand in the professional, collegian, and high
As it becomes increasingly acceptable for women to be athletic in American culture, a new question arises: in which sports should women be allowed to participate? From a physiological standpoint, it has been scientifically proven that female bodies do not differ significantly enough from male bodies to prevent them from participation in any "male" sports. This division between "male" and "female" sports clearly stems from age-old, socially constructed norms of femininity and masculinity. When women attempt to challenge these societal molds by participating in sports that are traditionally male, the intricate web of norms is disrupted. Like many other instances where traditional social constructions are tinkered with, individuals and communities are forced to reevaluate how they think about and categorize their surroundings. I would argue that women's participation in athletics, especially in non-traditional sports, is instrumental in breaking down stereotypes and social confines that have plagued women for centuries
It has taken many years for women to gain a semblance of equality in sports. Throughout history, women have been both excluded from playing sports and discriminated against in sports. Men’s sports have always dominated the college athletic field, but women were finally given a fighting chance after Title IX was passed. Title IX, among other things, requires scholarships to be equally proportioned between men and women’s sports. Although this was a huge gain for women, gender inequality still exists in sports today. An example of this persisting inequality can be seen when looking at men’s baseball and women’s softball. In college, baseball and softball are both major NCAA sports. It is widely accepted throughout today’s society that baseball is a man’s sport, and softball is a woman’s sport. Very few people question why the two sexes are separated into two different sports, or wonder why women play softball instead of baseball. Fewer people know that women have been essentially excluded from playing baseball for a long time. This paper will focus on why softball has not changed the way women’s basketball has, why women continue to play softball, the possibilities and dynamics of women playing baseball with and without men, and the most discriminating aspect of women being banned from playing professional baseball.
What are the social and cultural costs and benefits of an individual (male or female) entering a non-traditional sport for their gender/sex (e.g. women enter body building, power lifting, boxing; men enter synchronized swimming or field hockey)?
There are two different viewpoints on this issue. Some people simply think there can be gender integrated sports, while others think gender segregated sports are better. Deborah Brake explains arguments for and against segregated sports teams. Some of the concepts brought up for having gender integrated sports teams is that having separate sports teams would send out a message that women are less than men. Integrated sports teams accommodate both genders and abilities.
People do not seem to raise as much attention to transgender males playing sports because the transgender males are the ones with the disadvantage. They might have lower testosterone levels than the other males competing. Transgender women competing in sports is a completely different story. Transgender women might have higher testosterone levels than the other women competing. There is medication for transgenders to take which makes their testosterone levels match the average level for the
In the world of sports it started off that girls could never play sports and then in 1972 a public law called Title IX came to existence which allowed girls to play sports but not with boys. Today the question is asked should girls play on boys’ sports teams? One would think that girls should not play with boys on a sports team because boys are just naturally taller and stronger than women and they would dominate the girls in a fully contact sport. Another may think that if a girl is truly capable to play on an all boys’ sports team, then she should not be denied the opportunity to try out for an all boys’ team. Some other people may believe that sports at younger ages should remain co-ed because boys and girls body types are still similar, but once boys and girls are in high school sports should separate based on gender. Females and Males are equal but not in physical stature, having a girl on an all boys team will negatively change the dynamics/flow of a game, having the best girl player on an all boy’s team will hurt the girls’ sports teams. So sports should strictly stay separated between males and females.
Gender in sports has been a controversial issue ever since sports were invented. In the early years, sports were played only by the men, and the women were to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was another area of life exemplifying the sexism of people in which women were not allowed to do something that men could. However, over the last century in particular, things have begun to change.
There is, of course, a huge difference between the ways women are typically supposed to act and what is expected from a typical athlete. Whereas women are expected to comply to their gender role prescribing passivity and compliance, athletes are connoted with an aggressive, competitive nature. Furthermore, society trains women to be ashamed of their bodies and supplies an unrealistic ideal body type and encourages restricting feminine clothing, whereas athletes must have a keen understanding and appreciation of their bodies. In this way, athletes are implicitly coded as male. Though women and men can both be great athletes, of course, gender roles limit the social image and expectations for individuals based on their sex. It is culturally impossible for a woman to be considered both fully athletic and fully feminine – or, in the words of a Bend It Like Beckham character – "There's a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one without a fella!" This is particularly problematic for films portraying women in sports. Mainstream cinema tends to glamorize women and portray them in ways that comply with their gender role. To at the same time depict them as athletic presents conflicts with their filmic image. As a result, films which feature a female athlete tend to compromise her athletic image and apologize for her gender-nonconformity and participation in sports in a variety of ways.
The more the current conception of what is permissible for either gender as well as what is possible is challenged, the closer we come to a re-examination of how unequal the history of sport has been for both sexes and the actions that need to be taken in order to prevent such inequalities from existing in the future. The more individuals take on challenges like this, the more they force society to closely examine the way they think about what makes people and their activities different in the first place. These re-examinations and re-evaluations all lead to one eventual goal: the elimination of a true inequality between men and women in terms of their positions in society and in sport. The fewer inequalities that are allowed to exist, the closer society comes to a point at which it can be described as being truly tolerant and accepting.
Sex and gender are terms that are mixed up from day to day and seen as similarities rather than differences. Sex is what distinguishes people from being either male or female. It is the natural or biological variation between males and females (Browne, 1998). Some of these variations are genital, body hair, and internal and external organs. It is the make-up of chromosomes, men have one X and one Y chromosome and women have two X chromosomes, which are responsible for primary characteristics (Fulcher and Scott, 2003).
Most of today’s theorists and scientists have a different perception of determining whether or not gender can be based on biological factors, or evolutionary factors. Gender determination involving humans can be identified by evaluating male and female chromosomes. Theorist of Penn State (2005) contains that chromosomes is a combination of instructions used to produce organism. As previously stated, the male chromosomes consist of X and Y. These two chromosomes are responsible for creating male gender and their ability to produce sperm. The female egg consists of double XX chromosome. Based on this theory, the X chromosomes carry a more dominant instruction manual than the Y chromosome.