Rugby player Israel Folau has drawn anger for linking Australia’s bushfire crisis to the nation’s same-sex marriage and abortion laws. Folau, who was sacked by Australia in May for making anti-gay remarks on social media, described the fires as a “little taste of God’s judgement”.
Six people have died since last month in blazes raging in eastern Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison condemned Folau’s remarks as “appallingly insensitive”.
“He is a free citizen, he can say whatever he likes but that doesn’t mean he can’t have regard to the grievance [and] offence this would have caused to the people whose homes have burnt down,” Mr Morrison told reporters on Monday.
During the 10-minute recording, the 30-year-old says the timing of the bushfire crisis is no coincidence but only a taste of God’s judgment should nothing change. “I’ve been looking around at the events that’s been happening in Australia, this past couple of weeks, with all the natural disasters, the bushfires and the droughts,” he says.
He then reads from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible: “The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.”
Folau links the passage to the twin disasters of bushfire and drought and, in turn, the legalising of same-sex marriage and abortion. “God is speaking to you guys. Australia you need to repent and take these laws and turn it back to what is right.”
Hockey player Harrison Browne, thought to be the first openly transgender athlete in any professional U.S. team sport, didn’t have many trans athletes to look up to when he was growing up.
Then he saw Chris Mosier, a pioneering transgender triathlete being true to himself: “a trans athlete while still being a triathlete,” Browne said. “For me, when you see it, you can be it.”
When Browne came out as transgender in 2016 while playing for the Buffalo Beauts, a team within the National Women’s Hockey League, he said he had “a flood of people reaching out to me on social media saying, “It’s amazing to see you play your sport and be yourself.” His desire to take part in that type of positive representation is what drew Browne to play on a historic all-trans hockey team, which competed this past weekend in Massachusetts: Team Trans vs. Boston Pride Hockey.
The friendship tournament, played in Cambridge, was hosted by Boston Pride Hockey, an LGBTQ intramural organization that has both cisgender and transgender members. The game came about after a trans player reached out to Boston Pride Hockey and asked about its friendship series with the New York City Gay Hockey Association, which led to a conversation leading to the game.
Earlier this year, Hutch Hutchinson, who played defense on Team Trans, and New York player Aidan Cleary discussed how they wanted to create a space just for transgender athletes. Cleary contacted Boston Pride Hockey Vice President Mark Tikonoff about how they might recruit a full team of trans players.
“We have a few trans members, but not enough to make an entire team, so we started to reach out — to other cities we play with in national tournaments — San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Canada — to see if there were other players who might be interested in something like this.” Tikonoff said.
Hutch Hutchinson and Shane Diamond, players on Team Trans for the Boston Pride Hockey League.Courtesy of Kyle Outlaw
After receiving a strong response, the group organized the event, secured the space and raised funds to make sure the tournament went off without a hitch.
“For us, we didn’t realize how much we had in common, and we didn’t realize — I’m speaking personally — how much this community was underserved,” Tikonoff said. “As a cis gay man going into a locker room with other cis gay men, I don’t fear for my safety and I don’t fear judgment and I don’t fear exposing part of myself to people.”
While Team Trans lost to Boston Pride Hockey in both of the weekend games, Hutchinson said it was “an honor” to play alongside Browne and Jessica Platt — the two professional hockey players who competed in the weekend tournament. “The common thread was we have all never been on an all-trans team, and we have all gone through the struggle of ‘Where do I belong?’” Hutchinson said.
“We as trans people fight either big battles or little battles every day,” Hutchinson said. “This was an opportunity to walk into a locker room, and we didn’t have to explain anything to each other — we’re here, we are trans, this is great.”
Platt, a transgender woman who played with the Toronto Furies in the Canadian Women’s Hockey Players Association before it went out of business, said that being out and trans in a professional sport is “a really lonely experience.”
“There are not a lot of out trans athletes playing professional sports, and there are few in professional women’s sports,” Platt said. “I think that’s partially due to the fact that there’s a lot of negativity surrounding trans women participating in professional sports.”
“Growing up, I always played boys hockey and it didn’t feel like a safe atmosphere for me,” Platt said. “I knew there was something different about me but I always tried to be who I needed to be to fit in because I saw anyone who didn’t quite fit in the male hockey atmosphere got made fun of pretty harshly, so I didn’t want to be that person.” And yet she persisted, because she loves to play the sport.
Platt said that if presented with the opportunity to play forward on Team Trans again, she’d do it. “It was such a special experience for me, it was such a positive and supportive environment, I feel like everyone had no problem being themselves.”
Once the players hit the ice, it was easy playing the game they all know and love.
“A lot folks that I played with this weekend, we put years of our lives into practicing our sports and then we came out as trans and found there’s not necessarily a space for us in that sport anymore,” Hutchinson said. “I think that what happened this weekend it was important on individual levels — for me personally, it was like a full honoring of my identity: I am a trans hockey player and I am on a trans team.”
For her part, Platt said she hoped that the tournament would open more people’s minds to the fact that transgender athletes work hard and compete fairly just like cisgender athletes.
“We need more knowledge, more education, and for people to go into these things with an open mind and be willing to learn something that they might not be familiar with.”
Champion baseball player Sean Doolittle has declined an invitation to a ceremony in the White House because he disagrees vehemently with the policies of Donald Trump.
Doolittle – who plays for the Washington Nationals – told the Washington Post that he cannot justify visiting the White House as he finds Trump’s policies offensive.
He revealed that part of the reason he refused to visit the White House is because his wife has two mothers and he wanted to “show support for them”.
“I think that’s an important part of allyship, and I don’t want to turn my back on them.”
Sean Doolittle refused to visit White House over Donald Trump and his ‘divisive rhetoric’.
“There’s a lot of things, policies that I disagree with, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with the divisive rhetoric and the enabling of conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this country,” Doolittle said.
“At the end of the day, as much as I wanted to be there with my teammates and share that experience with my teammates, I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.”
I think that’s an important part of allyship, and I don’t want to turn my back on them.
Elsewhere in the interview, Doolittle drew attention to Trump’s treatment of race issues, refugees and disabled people.
“I feel very strongly about his issues on race relations,” he said. Doolittle spoke about the Fair Housing Act, the Central Park Five as well as Trump’s comments about white supremacy as examples of problem areas.
Doolittle said that Trump has disrespected the office of the president.
“I have a brother-in-law who has autism, and [Trump] is a guy that mocked a disabled reporter. How would I explain that to him that I hung out with somebody who mocked the way that he talked or the way that he moves his hands? I can’t get past that stuff.”
The baseball player also revealed that some people have taken issue with his refusal to visit the White House and said he should be respecting the office of the president.
However, Doolittle feels that Trump himself has disrespected the office on a number of occasions – and believes that this is the most important issue.
Doolittle and his wife Eireann Dolan have advocated for the rights of LGBT+ people on a number of occasions.
Gold medalist Kerron Clement is finally ready to share his story. The track athlete publicly came out Friday, on National Coming Out Day, exclusively telling Out, “I was tired of loving in the dark.”
“I have been through what a lot of people have been through which is being afraid of being who you are,” he says. “I struggled with my sexuality for 17 years. Over time, as you get older, you care less. Now it’s time to just be yourself and be free. That’s what I’ve become, free.”
Clement competed in the 2008 and 2016 Olympic Games, in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, respectively. The track star won gold and silver medals in 2008, and another gold medal during his Olympic return.
Clement has also worked as a model and actor. In 2011 he made a fleeting appearance in a Beyonce video (at 1:47) despite “being more of a Mariah Carey fan.”
Plans by the International Olympic Committee to tighten guidelines for trans athletes ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Games have stymied because scientists are struggling to agree over the “tricky political and emotive issue”.
Scientists involved in the decision were expected to recommend halving the permitted testosterone levels for trans women competing in elite sport, opening up the field to more trans-inclusive races.
But sources confirmed to The Guardianthat the IOC have pinned discussions because the subject is so divisive, and consensus is not likely before the games begin next year.
Trans advocates have long argued that current regulations –established in 2015 – have limited non-cis athletes making it to elite level games.
An agreement has “proved far more difficult than expected”, says source.
The current regulations – hashed out by board members, scientists and legal advisors – allowed trans women to compete insofar that they “demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months”.
However, these guidelines proved provocative, given that female testosterone levels tend to range between 0.12 and 1.79 nmol/l, while male’s are typically between 7.7 to 29.4 nmol/l.
According to the broadsheet, some scientists have advocated for reducing the permitted testosterone levels to 5nmol/L, which is below most males.
This would ensure more trans women could compete in women’s category sports, they claim.
But a salvo in the struggle to agree was some scientists disagreeing with this. They argued that testosterone suppression for trans women has little effect on reducing muscle strength even after a year of treatment.
One source told The Guardian that the draft IOC proposals “had gone around the houses” without any progress. Therefore, making it unlikely that a new consensus position would be reached before the Tokyo Olympics.
Another source said an agreement “proved far more difficult than expected because this is such a tricky political and emotive issue”.
The process is being led by the IOC Medical and Scientific Commission as well as being informed by inputs from the IOC Athletes’ Commission and the IOC Women and Sport Commission.
Stakeholders alongside medical, legal, and human rights experts will also have a say in the process.
The Guardian reported that talks will continue while other sporting federations are encouraged to create individual policies on trans athletes. But without the IOC taking the lead, these governing bodies may be un-willing to do so.
Former Welsh rugby captain Gareth Thomas has revealed he is HIV positive – and hopes coming forward with his diagnosis can help break the stigma for others living with the virus.
Thomas is thought to be the first UK sportsman to go public about living with the condition, and has revealed that he was driven to suicidal thoughts after being told he had the illness by a doctor during a routine sexual health check up.
The former British Lions captain, 45, who will be a TV pundit in the upcoming Rugby World Cup, added that he “broke down” when he got the news of his diagnosis. Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, he said: “I’ve been living with this secret for years. I’ve felt shame and keeping such a big secret has taken its toll.”
The former Cardiff Blues player won 103 caps and scored 41 tries for Wales between 1995 and 2007, and he is 13th on the all-time international test try-scoring list.
Last November, he was attacked in Cardiff city centre in a homophobic hate crime, but asked South Wales police to deal with the 16-year-old assailant by way of restorative justice.
The sportsman now takes one tablet containing four medications each day, and doctors have said his condition is under control to the point that it is considered “undetectable” and cannot be passed on. Mr Thomas said that his partner – Stephen – who he met after his diagnosis and married three years ago, does not have HIV.
Gareth spoke about his HIV status for the first time in a video he posted on his Twitter page, revealing “evil” people had “made his life hell” by threatening to go public with his condition without his consent.
He explained: “I want to share my secret with you. Why? Because it is mine to tell you. Not the evils that make my life hell by threatening to tell you before I do. And because I believe in you and I trust you. I’m living with HIV.
“Now you have that information, that makes me extremely vulnerable but it does not make me weak.” He added: “Even though I have been forced to tell you this, I choose to fight to educate and break the stigma around this subject.”
Retired National Football League player Ryan O’Callaghan has said he thinks there is “at least one” gay or bisexual player on every NFL team, but that they do not come out for fear of losing sponsorships or even their jobs.
O’Callaghan came out as gay in 2017, and is soon to release a book titled My Life on the Line: How the NFL Damn Near Killed Me and Ended Up Saving My Life in which he talks about being closeted in the NFL.
He told Reuters: “I can promise you there’s plenty of closeted NFL players.
“I think it’s safe to say there’s at least one on every team who is either gay or bisexual. A lot of guys still see it as potentially having a negative impact on their career.”
Between 2006 and 2011, O’Callaghan played for the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs, and he said he regularly hears from other plays who are too scared to come out.
He continued: “I just don’t think people understand the reality. We can still get fired for being gay or denied services for being trans.”
Ryan O’Callaghan #75 of the Kansas City Chiefs in action against the Denver Broncos in 2010. (Dilip Vishwanat/Getty)
Former NFL player Ryan O’Callaghan thought of taking his own life before he came out.
He said the NFL has done some things to alleviate the fear felt by LGBT+ players, such as sponsoring New York Pride, but that more needs to be done with contract guarantees and representation.
“It’s going to take a high profile player who’s playing currently, coming out, to really make a difference,” he added.
When O’Callaghan first came out, he told Outsports that while he was still closeted he thought of taking his own life after his football career was over.
He said: “My plan was to end my life after football. I thought that would be it, and I could never be an out gay man.
“I’m just glad there were people who pushed me in the right direction, and I could get help.”
He has since started the Ryan O’Callaghan Foundation “to provide scholarships, support and mentorship for LGBTQ+ athletes, students and youth”.
“I’m a talented football player, a damn good writer, a loving son, an overbearing brother, a caring friend, a loyal lover, and a bisexual man.”
A three-year NFL veteran, now a free agent, says in a revealing and personal 2300 word ESPN interview he is bisexual. Ryan Russell, who played for the Dallas Cowboys for one season and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for two seasons says he just interviewed with an NFL team but he knows that “truth is survival,” and he can no longer live his life in separate worlds – a word he uses 16 times.
“My truth is that I’m a talented football player, a damn good writer, a loving son, an overbearing brother, a caring friend, a loyal lover, and a bisexual man,” Russell tells ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz.
“Have I lied to teammates, coaches, trainers, front-office executives and fans about who I am? Not exactly,” Russell adds. “But withholding information is a form of deceit. And I want the next part of my career — and life — steeped in trust and honesty. During the season you spend more time with your team than with your own family; truth and honesty are the cornerstones of a winning culture.”
He adds that he has “two goals: returning to the NFL, and living my life openly. I want to live my dream of playing the game I’ve worked my whole life to play, and being open about the person I’ve always been.”
“Those two objectives shouldn’t be in conflict. But judging from the fact that there isn’t a single openly LGBTQ player in the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball or the NHL, brings me pause. I want to change that — for me, for other athletes who share these common goals, and for the generations of LGBTQ athletes who will come next.”00:3500:44
Russell tells Outsports he “has comfortably settled into the bisexual identity he feels is his true self, as he lives openly for the first time. Now he’s preparing to move in with his boyfriend, Corey O’Brien, as they launch a new YouTube channel together.”
And he adds, “I’ve been able to live this genuine existence and hold my boyfriend’s hand in public. For me now, there’s no going back.”
Caster Semenya will be allowed to run in races of all distances without taking testosterone-reducing medication until at least June 25, a Swiss court has ruled.
Semenya, 28, is appealing an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decision that required her to take medication to suppress her hormone levels for races between 400m and a mile, according to her lawyer.
As part of her appeal, her legal team asked for a suspension of the IAAF ruling while they appeal it.
The Swiss Federal Supreme Court granted this request and has temporarily suspended the IAFF regulation made on 1 May 2019 that limited the testosterone levels of female athletes. The suspension will remain in place until Semenya’s appeal has been finalised.
The Swiss court, in a statement to BBC Sport, said it had “super-provisionally instructed the IAAF to suspend the application of the ‘Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification for athletes with differences of sex development’ with respect to the claimant, until the decision on the request for issuance of provisional measures.”
It added: “At present, it is not known when the Swiss Federal Supreme Courts will issue an interlocutory order concerning these provisional measures.”
Semenya’s lawyer, Dorothee Schramm, said, “The court has granted welcome temporary protection to Caster Semenya.”
“This is an important case that will have fundamental implications for the human rights of female athletes,” she said.
The IAAF now has until June 25 to respond to Semenya’s case.
Imposing testosterone treatment on Semenya is ‘humiliating,’ says UN
The landmark ruling on May 1 that said female athletes would have to undergo testosterone restrictions if their natural testosterone levels were higher than “female levels.”
The Olympic 800m champion had been challenging the implementation of rules that would limit the testosterone levels of female athletes.
An IAAF statement in February explained the proposals: “If a DSD athlete has testes and male levels of testosterone, they get the same increases in bone and muscle size and strength and increases in haemoglobin that a male gets when they go through puberty, which is what gives men such a performance advantage over women.
“Therefore, to preserve fair competition in the female category, it is necessary to require DSD athletes to reduce their testosterone down to female levels before they compete at international level.”
The first time JayCee Cooper walked out onto the platform at a women’s powerlifting competition, everything else fell away: her years-long internal struggle over her gender identity, her decision to leave men’s sports when she began transitioning, her doubts that she would ever feel safe if she returned to competitions.
When she stepped out in front of a hundred people in the gym in Fort Collins, Colorado, last September, all she focused on was the barbell, which she hoisted off the ground. And then she heard the cheers of the crowd: “Come on JayCee!” She had found not only a sport, but also a home.
“In a world that wants to take away our power and strength,” Cooper, 31, said recently by phone from her home in Minneapolis, “powerlifting is a way to gain that strength back and feel powerful and feel ownership of our own lives. It helps us find strength within ourselves and helps us find strength within our bodies.”
Cooper signed up for more competitions, but, to her astonishment, USA Powerlifting, the sport’s biggest federation, told her that she could not compete in the women’s division because of her gender identity.
In an email, USA Powerlifting said she was denied because she had a “direct competitive advantage” over the other women who were competing.
“It took me aback,” Cooper said. “I didn’t want to put myself into a situation where I obviously wasn’t welcome.”
Cooper says powerlifting makes her feel connected to her strength. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
It was just the latest in a growing number of battles over the place of transgender women athletes in competitive sports.
As transgender women have become more visible and sought to participate in women’s sports, athletic organizing bodies have grappled with how to respond, and critics of their inclusion have grown increasingly vocal, as well.
In March, tennis legend Martina Navratilova apologized for calling trans women “cheats” in a Sunday Times op-ed in which she wrote that “letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair.” Weeks later, marathoner Paula Radcliffe told BBC Sport that it would be “naive” not to institute rules. In an interview with Sky News in April, Radcliffe said that if trans people were permitted to compete without regulations, it would be “the death of women’s sport.”
For transgender people watching this issue play out, the debate — often based more in bias and assumptions than in science — is dehumanizing. Those who seek to exclude transgender women from sports sometimes imply that the athletes are adopting their identity to gain an edge in competition, a suggestion many find offensive.
“They don’t understand what it means to be a trans person,” Chris Mosier, a competitive runner and cycler and the first known transgender athlete to make a men’s U.S. national team, said.
“The folks who are improperly reporting on this are making it seem like cis men are pretending to be women to dominate sports,” he added, referring to people who are assigned male at birth and identify as men. “I can say that the amount of discrimination, harassment and challenges trans people face in their everyday lives would never be offset by glory.”
‘IT’S BEEN A ROLLER-COASTER’
Before becoming a powerlifter, Cooper lifted weights as part of her training for other sports. As a teenager growing up in Clarkston, Michigan, she was on the U.S. junior national curling team, competed in track and field in high school and rowed in college.
But she never felt fully comfortable on those all-boys teams.
“It’s been a roller-coaster,” Cooper said. “One of the reasons I stepped away from curling was that I wasn’t being my authentic self, and I was super depressed, and I needed some time away to figure out what that meant for me.”
Four years ago, she began hormone replacement therapy as part of her transition. She now identifies as transfeminine, which she sees as a more expansive identity than simply female.
Cooper first came across powerlifting in high school, but didn’t decide to compete until last year while recuperating from a broken ankle, and she was struck by the sport’s simplicity and supportive atmosphere. In powerlifting, athletes are divided into categories by sex, age and weight, and they compete in three types of lifts: squat, bench press and deadlift. Each movement is a test of static strength, force and focus.
Cooper holds a lifting medal. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
“The barbell for me has been a very empowering way to be in my body, which is politicized every waking second, connect with it, and feel like I’m achieving something,” Cooper said.
“It’s a very almost spiritual feeling in the sense that I’m carrying all of this trauma with me and I’m literally focusing all of that into the barbell. In that moment, I get to control what’s going on.”
To lower her testosterone levels, Cooper takes spironolactone, a drug that is also used to treat high blood pressure and can mask steroid use.
USA Powerlifting, which follows rules set by the World Anti-Doping Agency, requires athletes to apply for an exemption to compete while taking the drug. The group has granted exemptions to powerlifters who have taken spironolactone to treat acne or polycystic ovary syndrome, Larry Maile, USA Powerlifting’s president, said.
As part of her medication exemption application, Cooper provided documentation that her testosterone levels have remained under the International Olympic Committee’s accepted limit for two years. (USA Powerlifting falls under the International Powerlifting Federation, which adopted the IOC’s guidelines that allow transgender women to compete in women’s divisions provided their testosterone is below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months.)
But in December, Cooper’s exemption request was denied. She was told she could not compete in the women’s division of powerlifting because she had a “competitive advantage” as a transgender woman, according to an email exchange obtained by NBC News between Cooper and Dr. Kristopher Hunt, the chair of USA Powerlifting’s committee that reviews applications for medical exemptions.
“Male-to-female transgenders are not allowed to compete as females in our static strength sport as it is a direct competitive advantage,” Hunt said in one email to Cooper.
Pressed for clarification, he wrote a follow-up. “The fact that transgender male to female individuals having gone through male puberty confer an unfair competitive advantage over non-transgender females,” he said.
Cooper hopes to someday compete in powerlifting again. Caroline Yang / for NBC News
In a phone interview, Maile defended the decision and said the organization’s policy of barring transgender women — as well as transgender men who take testosterone — was not new, though it was not posted on USA Powerlifting’s website until this winter after Cooper applied for the exemption. Maile said that the IOC’s guidelines ultimately give organizations the discretion to make their own decisions about fair play. To reach the decision, he said USA Powerlifting researched the physical differences between men and women in terms of muscle density, connective tissue and frame shape.
“We’ve been referred to as bigoted and transphobic and a whole lot of less kind things, but it’s not an issue of that for us,” Maile said. “It’s an issue that we have to consider dispassionately and make our best judgment collectively about what the impact on fair play is for us, and that’s the basis on which we’ve proceeded.”
He added that powerlifting “is really unique, because we’re a high strength and low technique sport” — so the physiology of the competitors is particularly important.
Cooper doesn’t buy that argument, noting that women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes, which may confer advantages for different sports.
“You look at a WNBA player, they’re pushing 6 feet versus someone doing gymnastics who’s 5 feet tall,” she said. “Their bodies are built completely differently. That’s what sports are about.”
‘THE SCIENCE IS IN ITS INFANCY’
The policies governing transgender athletes vary by sport.
The NCAA has policies similar to the International Olympic Committee and does not require athletes to undergo gender-confirming surgery, while USA Gymnastics does require it under some circumstances, according to research compiled by TransAthlete, a database of professional, recreational, college and K-12 sports’ policies on trans athletes.
Others aim to be more inclusive. USA Hockey, for example, offers options for nonbinary athletes who do not identify as male or female, as well as guidance for trans athletes.
While opponents of inclusion point to the “bigger, faster, stronger” argument as the basis of their fear that transgender women are taking over women’s sports, there are few examples of trans women who’ve excelled at a national or world level, according to Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of OutSports, an outlet that reports on LGBTQ athletes.
The scientific research on transgender athletes is in the early stages, and there is disagreement among experts about how to determine fair rules of competitions.
“There’s no simple or even complex biological test you can apply that tells you who’s a man and who’s a woman,” Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, said.
In the absence of such a test, testosterone levels are often used as a proxy to determine whether trans women are eligible to compete in women’s leagues. There is evidence that transgender women who are on hormone therapy have lower muscle mass and less aerobic ability than they did before, said Joanna Harper, a scientist who studies gender-diverse athletes and advises the International Olympic Committee. In a 2015 study she published on trans women who are distance runners, Harper, who is a trans woman and runner herself, found that after being on hormone therapy the women were running more than 10 percent slower.
But testosterone is an imperfect metric. Even among cisgender men and women, there is variance in the amount that is considered normal.
To deny Cooper “the right to compete based on ridiculous fear is completely unfounded,” Harper said.
‘TRANS LIFTERS BELONG HERE’
At the Minnesota State Championship in February — a USA Powerlifting meet where Cooper hoped to compete — almost a dozen athletes and 20 people in the audience protested her exclusion, according to Maxwell Poessnecker, a transmasculine-identified lifter from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Flanked by signs and wearing T-shirts that said, “I support trans lifters” and “trans lifters belong here,” the athletes stood on the lifting platform without competing to show their disapproval of the policy, Poessnecker said.
From little leagues to the Olympics, questions over transgender inclusion will continue to surface. Advocates who say concerns about “competitive fairness” are often rooted in gender stereotypes and scientific research is lacking believe policies should be as inclusive as possible.
“It’s hard to call anything model when it requires an individual to be tested and questioned,” said Breanna Diaz, a powerlifter and co-director of Pull for Pride, a charity deadlifting event that benefits homeless LGBTQ youth. If athletes “have a sincerely held gender identity, that should be sufficient,” she said.
Cooper, who co-directs Pull for Pride, hopes to use her experience with powerlifting as a way to drive the conversation about trans athletes.
On May 9, USA Powerlifting’s national governing body will meet to discuss its transgender inclusion policy.
“I really do love this sport,” Cooper said, “and it’s not fair to genetically eliminate an entire group of people.”
