Earlier this month, the UNLV women’s volleyball team competed against the team from San Jose State University. They’re in the same Mountain West athletic conference. Days later, UNR’s volleyball team made it clear that they wanted to forfeit their game against SJSU.
Why? Because one of San Jose State’s players might be a transgender woman. That player has never spoken about her gender identity; one of her fellow players made the claim to an outlet owned by Fox Corporation. That player also joined a lawsuit seeking to change federal protections for transgender athletes.
UNR joined four other Mountain West teams who also voted to forfeit their games. UNR players cited fairness and potential danger.
Administrators at UNR said the players had no right to forfeit, saying the game would go on, but if players chose not to compete, they would not be penalized.
UNR players received support from both Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo and Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony, as well as other politicians who are weighing in. Notably, presidential candidate Donald Trump, after hearing about the matter, said recently he would use an executive order to ban all transgender athletes from competing.
Anthony told KNPR's State of Nevada he fully agrees with UNR players.
“The bottom line is, men should not be playing in women’s sports,” the lieutenant governor said. “I mean, it’s a pretty simple concept to me. If you’re a biological male, you should not be playing against women athletes.”
“It’s kind of shocking to me that we’re even discussing something like this,” he added. “I mean, 20 years ago, if somebody would have said, ‘You know, hey, men are going to be playing in women’s sports one day,’ I would have told them they are crazy.”
Brooke Maylath, past president of Transgender Allies Group, said Anthony’s comments are a repetition of “bigoted, incorrect statements. Trans women are women.”
This issue, she added, “is set up to make everybody lose. (It renders) transgender women as being different and not being human; it renders cisgender women as being weak and inferior, which they are not.”
Citing different studies, she said there is “no advantage, no physical advantage; there’s no danger” from transgender women playing against cisgender women.
“This is going to further dehumanization and anti-transgender actions that are fomented to be able to create an attitude where harming transgender people has tacit approval by politicians that repeat this kind of rhetoric.”
Scientists and researchers have different views on it, as well.
Martin Schiller, a UNLV professor and executive director of the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine, said gender identity is so complicated that “we tend not to deal with (it).”
Schiller’s areas of expertise include functional genomics and bioinformatics, which is the study of genomes and human sequencing.
He sums his view this way: “If you’re naturally a male or a female, you should compete as a male or a female,” but, “if you’ve changed yourself hormonally to one or the other or something in between, then find a different way to compete.”
Of course, not all scientists and researchers have the same view.
“Science isn’t going to give us an answer to the controversy about whether we should include or not include certain athletes in participating in elite-level sports,” Dr. Bradley Anawalt said.
Anawalt is an endocrinologist — which incorporates the influence of genetics on hormones — at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He’s also a volunteer on the NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports.
This is an issue that’s only emerged in the last 15 to 20 years, he added, so research isn’t very robust.
“Studies have not been done with elite athletes,” he also said. "What’s needed is a long-term study with elite athletes before they start gender-affirming therapy, which can involve hormones, and have them continue to do their usual intense training and all the usual things that they do to become 'magnificent athletes.'"
“Follow them over time and compare them to matched athletes,” he added. “And that kind of high-quality study hasn’t been done.”
He also brought up the fact that some athletes naturally have genetic advantages over others —a famous case of a cross-country skier who had more hemoglobin, for instance — “and we don’t ask that person to reduce their red blood cells.”
Some athletes also come from sports programs that have the latest technology and research and trainers to enhance their abilities, “and they have a competitive advantage.”
He also took issue with Anthony calling the San Jose State player a "man."
“One of the things that disturbs me greatly — and I think the lieutenant governor of the state of Nevada might what to rethink things we are talking about — this is a person here and we need to have some empathy for what everybody’s going through with their lives … and I don’t think that should be lost in this whole conversation.”
UNR is scheduled to play the Spartans in Reno on Oct. 26. UNLV faces the team again on Nov. 7.
Guests: Stavros Anthony, lieutenant governor, Nevada; Bradley Anawalt, professor of medicine, University of Washington and member, NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports; Brooke Maylath, past president, Transgender Allies Group; Martin Schiller, executive director, Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine
