Transgender inclusion in competitive sport: athletes’ attitudes toward transgender athlete participation in intercollegiate sport

ABSTRACT

Legislators who support current anti-transgender, sport-focused legislation argue that they are protecting cisgender athletes who oppose transgender inclusion. In particular, laws are being proposed and passed that aim to prevent transgender women from participating on women’s sports teams. However, little is known about whether athletes themselves are concerned about inclusion of transgender athletes. To fill this gap in the literature, we recruited 270 current and former intercollegiate athletes in the United States between September 2020 and April 2021 to participate in a quantitative study. Participants completed questions about scenarios involving a trans man athlete and a trans woman athlete, general attitudes toward transgender people, sport-specific attitudes toward transgender people, and religiosity. Our primary research questions were: do athletes generally support inclusion of binary transgender people in sport and how is support associated with variables measured in the study? Analyses included descriptive statistics, correlations, and t-tests. Results indicated that levels of support for transgender people were associated with a variety of sport-related variables. Namely, women were significantly more supportive of transgender athlete inclusion compared to men, and individuals who had prior contact with transgender people outside of support were significantly more supportive of transgender people both within and outside of sport. Participants demonstrated inconsistencies in beliefs that may be associated with unfamiliarity or misunderstandings of transgender terminology and issues. Policy implications and implications for transgender athletes are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercollegiate sport
• transgender athletes
• transphobia
• legislation
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. This study was not preregistered.