Politics and Ideology, Not Facts, Drive Claim That Transgender Women Have an Unfair Athletic Advantage
The bills discriminate against athletes and ignore scientific evidence. (Photo Credit: nito via Adobe Stock)
When Republican lawmakers filed a bill last month to bar transgender women from competing against other women at schools and universities in North Carolina, LGBTQ advocates called it part of a new national wave of anti-transgender bills. Scientists and doctors who study and treat transgender athletes are calling it anti-science. North Carolina’s House Bill 358 (HB 358), like bills in more than 30 states pushed by the conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom, is predicated on the premise that transgender women are simply men pretending to be women.
As part of LGBT+ History Month, BBC Sport explores the story of transgender tennis player Renee Richards, who won a legal challenge to play at the 1977 US Open as a woman.