These transgender cyclists have Olympian disagreement on how to define fairness

'This is bigger than sports'

Jillian Bearden and Rachel McKinnon have much in common as cyclists, Olympic hopefuls and transgender women — and much in conflict as opposite poles of an intractable argument over how to balance what’s fair with what’s right.

Bearden agrees with the International Olympic Committee that naturally occurring testosterone gives transgender women an unfair advantage in competition against cisgender women, meaning women who were born female, while McKinnon believes subjecting trans women to testosterone blocking violates their human rights.

Bearden sees trans women who compete with unlimited levels of natural testosterone as dopers and cheaters while McKinnon says looking at the issue that way only furthers the oppression of transgender people.

And never the twain shall meet.

USA TODAY Sports spoke with the antagonists, both of whom say they are fighting for fairness. Bearden sees it as fairness for all competitors while McKinnon frames it as fairness for transgender athletes. All of this comes in the wake of updated IOC guidelines in 2015 that require women who transition from men to block certain amounts of natural testosterone.

The issue is important now because governing bodies such as USA Cycling, USA Track and Field, USA Fencing and US Lacrosse are crafting, or have recently crafted, policies that more or less mirror these IOC guidelines. And it all comes at a time that Ashland Johnson, director of education and research for the Human Rights Campaign, calls the dawn of a trans movement in sports.

The dispute between Bearden and McKinnon is personal as well as intellectual. They’ve never competed against one another — Bearden is at the highest pro level — but Bearden says she asked McKinnon to leave her cycling team last spring because of their visceral disagreements. McKinnon then formed her own team and members of each cycling club mostly share the orthodoxies of their respective leaders.

“I’ve proven how powerful testosterone is from when I competed” as a male, Bearden says. “That doesn’t mean specifically that the more testosterone you have the stronger you are, but the hormone provides a certain stamina that continues to charge you. It gives you that edge of pushing power.”

McKinnon says whether other competitors believe transgender women have an unfair advantage is irrelevant because she says there is no way to measure if such advantages even exist.

“This is bigger than sports and it’s about human rights,” McKinnon says. “By catering to cisgender people’s views, that furthers transgender people’s oppression. When it comes to extending rights to a minority population, why would we ask the majority? I bet a lot of white people were pissed off when we desegregated sports racially and allowed black people. But they had to deal with it.”

The IOC has long struggled with issues of gender. It instituted gender testing decades ago when men, in rare cases, were suspected of competing as women. At first the testing was of the crude, pull-down-your-pants variety. Later that morphed into chromosomal testing with a cheek swab. And in 1999, the IOC ended compulsory gender testing.

But guidelines adopted in 2004 effectively said trans women had to undergo sex reassignment surgery. New guidelines in 2015 threw out the surgery requirement but said trans women needed to test below a specified level of testosterone for more than one year before they could compete, down from two years.

Bearden thinks the new guidelines make sense. McKinnon thinks they are manifestly discriminatory.

All this comes at a time when President Trump wants to ban transgender troops from serving in the military, a move condemned by generals and many in Congress. The Department of Defense is tasked to develop an implementation plan by March. That will come just weeks after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

No transgender athlete has competed publicly in the Olympics, but advocates believe that will change in coming years. Caitlyn Jenner — who won the decathlon gold medal as Bruce Jenner at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games — told USA TODAY Sports last summer that she believes a transgender Olympian will “undoubtedly” step into the worldwide spotlight by the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games.

Bearden and McKinnon plan to try to qualify for those Games. Bearden is a pro-level cyclist and founder of the Trans National Women’s Cycling Team; she has a reasonable chance to make the U.S. Olympic cycling team for 2020. McKinnon, an assistant professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston, is a category-1 elite-level road cyclist and founder of Foxy Moxy Racing. She is a less likely Olympic qualifier who hopes to make the Canadian Olympic cycling team for her native country.

Tia Thompson hopes to make the U.S. Olympic volleyball team in 2020. She is a transgender woman who waited three years to get approval from USA Volleyball to compete as a woman earlier this year.

The Human Rights Campaign’s Johnson, who recently conducted awareness training for U.S. Olympic Committee coaches and administrators, says governing bodies are “moving away from old stereotypes and moving toward gender decisions based on science, inclusion and fairness.”

There’s the rub: How to reconcile science (blocking testosterone) with human rights (competing as you are).

Winter Olympians excited for South Korea Gus Kenworthy, Michelle Kwan and other Winter Olympians sat down with USA TODAY Sports to discuss what they're most looking forward to about the upcoming games in South Korea.

The power of testosterone

Bearden transitioned in 2015 and she has been a scientific test subject for the IOC by providing before-and-after performance data that she says proves the power of testosterone. She understands that pressing for human rights always sounds like the right thing to do, but she believes in this instance it would actually hinder a transgender sports movement that’s only just begun.

“Two years ago, no transgender woman (cyclist) was out (publicly) racing,” Bearden says. “No one would dare come out of the shadows. Now, because we’ve laid the appropriate groundwork, we have our foot in the door (with the IOC) to where we can compete as our true selves.

“Quite frankly, it makes me feel good racing with 50 other women who know that I’ve passed a USA Cycling policy because I’ve submitted my (testosterone) levels. It stops the questioning, the bullying. I can stand on the podium and feel comfortable. Without a policy, for a lot of women who don’t know me, they’d be, like, what the (expletive)? And I get that.”

Under IOC and USOC guidelines, Olympic-caliber transgender women are required to keep their testosterone below a certain level — 10 nanomoles per liter — before competing, and must present a doctor’s note showing testosterone levels are below that required threshold. Natural testosterone in transgender women is tested with the same methodology as unnatural testosterone created by doping is measured in cisgender men and women.

McKinnon, who teaches a class on ethics and inclusion at Charleston, cites the Olympic charter in saying that sport is a human right.

“We cannot have a woman legally recognized as a trans woman in society,” McKinnon says, “and not be recognized that way in sports. … Focusing on performance advantage is largely irrelevant because this is a rights issue. We shouldn’t be worried about trans people taking over the Olympics. We should be worried about their fairness and human rights instead.”

Bearden makes a distinction between discriminatory bathroom bills and what she sees as rule-makers doing their best to promote equality and inclusion.

“Having your rights violated is very different than a sport you sign yourself up for,” she says. “You have to comply with certain rules. I don’t feel that’s discriminatory. I don’t think (guidelines) infringe on anyone’s rights. I feel like (testosterone blocking) is necessary to achieve fairness. There are so many rules in sports, and complying with these rules allows us to ride with cisgender women because it’s fairest to them.”

Limited research

Bearden lives in Colorado Springs, home of the USOC. She believes compromise can lead to good solutions. McKinnon, originally from Victoria, British Columbia, believes she has an uncompromising call to justice.

Both women want transgender people to thrive — in athletics and in society — and both have received death threats for their trouble. Last August, when Bearden became the first trans woman to race with a pro peloton in the U.S., the Daily Wire (a self-styled commentary site for conservatives) ran a story under the headline: “Man Who Thinks He’s a Woman Crushing Women’s Cycling.”

McKinnon says testosterone testing is insensitive to transgender athletes who are uncomfortable outing themselves. She points out some athletes are at an in-between place in terms of their gender. Scottie Pendleton, who rides for McKinnon’s Foxy Moxy team, identifies as gender nonconforming and goes by the pronouns of they and them.

“I race in the men’s field, but I identify as more of a woman than a man,” Pendleton says. “There are a lot of misconceptions out there about gender and it’s unknown how diverse the transgender community is. We’ve culturally defined gender as these two very specific things and that you have to be one or the other. Transgender breaks that barrier.”

Pendleton says there is limited research to show that natural testosterone “can enhance sports performance metrics. It comes down to: What does fairness in sports actually mean? I think any time you exclude anybody because they are different — regardless of how or why they are different — you’re discriminating.”

Johnson, of the Human Rights Campaign, says: “All athletes, regardless of gender, should be subject to the same testing standards, and a policy shouldn’t single out a trans competitor. But at the same time, I don’t necessarily see (the IOC’s guidelines) as an anti-trans policy because there have been unfair advantages linked to testosterone.”

'We allow advantages'

Chris Mosier became the first transgender man to compete in the Duathlon World Championships in 2016 and is now sponsored by Nike. His success was key in prompting the IOC to come up with its adjusted guidelines two years ago.

“I was not perceived to be a threat to anybody,” Mosier says. “No one expected me to be competitive. But there is an assumption that trans women will dominate in sports.”

The adjusted guidelines said that athletes who transition from female to male, such as Mosier, are eligible to compete without restriction. Those guidelines also said that athletes who transition from male to female can compete with one year of hormone therapy to block testosterone and keep it at the specified threshold.

McKinnon says the IOC’s testosterone cutoff of 10 nanomales per liter is “arbitrary” and there’s no right way to measure it. She says some cisgender women have testosterone levels over the threshold and some cisgender men have levels below it.

“So you can be a really tall cyclist and that’s fine?” McKinnon says. “There are so many natural advantages someone could have physically that there is not a good argument for why singling out testosterone solves the problem.”

The Court of Arbitration for Sport is considering a case on the fairness of testosterone levels for intersex athletes — individuals who are female but develop some male characteristics, including high levels of testosterone. In 2014, the court suspended a testosterone rule of the IAAF, world governing body for track and field, citing a lack of scientific evidence “about the degree of the advantage” that women with high levels of testosterone have over their counterparts with normal levels.

“There were no regulations in place at the 2016 Olympic Rio Games and the same situation will apply to the upcoming 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games,” IOC spokesperson Emmanuelle Moreau told USA TODAY Sports by email. The court case “is still ongoing and we have no timeline as to when it will be completed.”

Author Roger Pielke, in his book The Edge: The War against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports Performance, wrote: “The role of naturally occurring testosterone in athletic performance is scientifically interesting, but it is inherently no more relevant to athletics policy than any other naturally occurring characteristic of the human athlete, man or woman.”

Joanna Harper, chief medical physicist of radiation oncology at Providence Portland (Ore.) Medical Center, has been an adviser to the IOC. She spoke before the Court of Arbitration in the intersex case and later put together a study in the Journal of Sporting Cultures and Identities in which she collected data from herself and seven other transgender runners who had transitioned and undergone hormone therapy. It found all of them were significantly slower in performance as females.

Bearden also saw her times and performances decline drastically as a result of her hormone replacement therapy in 2015. A decade’s worth of elite-level bike racing as a man faded once she transitioned to female and began the therapy.

“People toss the word ‘fair’ around all the time,” Harper says. “The fact of the matter is every athlete has advantages and disadvantages. But sporting bodies need to craft divisions that are equitable and meaningful. We let left-handed baseball players pitch when they might have some form of an advantage. On the other hand, we do not allow 200-pound boxers to fight 130-pound boxers.

“We allow advantages, but we do not and should not allow overwhelming advantages. There’s a way to do that without stepping on anyone’s human rights.”