President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports has sparked harsh reactions among transgender and women athletes.
President Trump signed an executive order Feb. 6 banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports within educational institutions and their athletic associations. The order says it will “protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports,” but for some women in athletics, the order is more about policing women than protecting them.
The executive order also rescinds funding from institutions and associations that allow men to compete in the women’s division. The definition of “men” used in this order is based on a Jan. 20 executive order, which defines sex as “immutable,” or unchanging over time.
Audrey Cantillon, a captain of the women’s club ultimate frisbee team at BU, said a person’s ability to excel in a sport is not a result of their gender.
“As a woman in sports, I think that my peers and myself know that we have to work a lot harder to get where we want to be,” Cantillon said. “I think we also know better than anyone that no one is born or identifies as a certain gender and becomes some kind of super athlete. It takes a lot of hard work and training and dedication.”
Niko Cohen, a trans, nonbinary figure skater and the 2024 national bronze medalist in the US Adult Silver Women’s category, is on a low dose of testosterone, but competes in the women’s division.
“I’m not winning everything because I am on a low dose of testosterone,” Cohen said. “I haven’t won yet… I’ve been doing this for seasons at this point, and I still haven’t won at my level. It is not just ‘oh my god, I’m suddenly so good at skating.’ I can’t do things technically well, and I have to improve to win.”
Grace Brown, the BU Athlete Ally co-president and member of the women’s rowing team, said the scope of the executive order goes beyond the issue of trans athletes.
“It’s not just about barring trans athletes from sports, it’s about controlling women’s bodies,” Brown said. “I think that’s something that’s extremely scary as a predominantly women’s club on campus.”
Brown and Skyler Fong, the other co-president of Athlete Ally, cited Caster Semenya, a South African track star, and Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer, as examples of this point.
Semenya and Khelif are both cisgender women who have been called transgender for their naturally occurring higher levels of testosterone and masculine features.
“[Semenya] had a physical advantage that she was born with, but because it didn’t comply to Olympic standards, she was barred from competition,” Brown said. “But we’re not out here barring Michael Phelps because of his high testosterone levels, right? So it goes back to just controlling women and not allowing women to be like who they want to be.”
Cohen agreed, saying the executive order was not intended to protect women, but to discriminate against trans people.
“It’s so obvious to someone like me that this is not done from any place of real concern or care for women overall, especially when you consider the fact that the president is a rapist,” Cohen said. “It’s a performance in hate with the potential for devastating consequences”
Philip Wohltorf, a BU College Republicans Club member, said the order plays an important role in protecting women’s sports because of the biological differences based on sex assigned at birth.
“Given just the biological differences and the biological natural performance advantages male-born athletes have over female athletes, I just don’t think it is right for transgender females who were born males to participate in women’s sports,” Wohltorf said. “Not because I hate you or I have anything against you, but because of the natural performance advantages you have over females.”
Cohen said the biological separations between men and women are not as clear-cut or all-encompassing as some believe them to be.
“These markers are usually created generally around hormone levels for mostly white women, so then the black and brown folks who could be a cis woman, just naturally have higher testosterone, but it doesn’t conform to predetermined white-centric standards,” Cohen said.
Fong said these standards of separation become the basis for targeting women of color because they do not conform to the same standards as white women.
“It’s not just policing women’s bodies, it’s policing women of color,” Fong said. “Our conception of womanhood and femininity is deeply grounded in white supremacy and in Eurocentric beauty standards. So when you have women that aren’t traditionally feminine in the way that we’ve conceptualized Eurocentric women to be, of course, they’re going to be the first people that are going to be harassed.”
Because of how the executive order affects women and the LGBTQ+ community, Brown said it was important for Athlete Ally, a student group devoted to fostering an inclusive environment for LGBTQIA+ student-athletes, to be a space for conversation. At its Valentine’s Day themed meeting, the club discussed the order and how to interact with it.
“Towards the end of the meeting, we just sort of brought it up and also just talked about how it makes us feel and what we can do better on campus to support each other and our teammates, or even how to get broader awareness across the student-athlete community,” Brown said.
Athlete Ally is working to bring awareness by including information about the executive order in their newsletter, highlighting the club as a space for open conversation on the subject and reinstating the program for coaches to get LGBTQ+ pride stickers for their offices.
Fong said their club advisors have been helpful throughout this process and encouraged those within BU Athletics to do what they can to advocate for students, despite the executive order.
“There’s this understanding that the institution has to comply to a certain extent in order to fit what the executive order is demanding,” Fong said. “But at the same time, how will they as individuals within the institution and within the department be able to work with students, work with student-athletes and not only protect them and support them, but also advocate for them in ways that they can within the confines of the executive order?”
Cohen said they plan to advocate for the transgender and gender nonconforming community in figure skating with their apparel design and costume-making company, Lavender Thread Co.
“I can’t change anything by myself in US figure skating and I can’t change anything by myself at the Skating Club of Boston, but I can operate how I want to in my own company and that hopefully is with respect and dignity towards whoever it is that I’m making costumes for,” Cohen said.
According to Fong, the debate over trans women goes back to the question of what it means to be a woman. Fong said learning more about the subjects of race and gender can be a good starting point for those wanting to understand more about the issues trans women face.
“So much of what we understand about ourselves and about the world is constructed within very reductive and rigid regimes of thinking,” Fong said. “I think taking critical race theory classes and taking women and gender studies classes is a great way to start approaching that and deconstructing that in your own life.”
