Emily Fritz | a&e editor

A 31-year-old athlete was disqualified from the remainder of USA Fencing’s Cherry Blossom Open at the University of Maryland on March 30 after she decided to take a knee rather than face an opponent that she believed to be transgender.

USA Fencing clarified that Stephanie Turner had been issued a black card, the most severe penalty an athlete can get in the sport, because she refused to participate against an eligible opponent, not because of her opinion on trans athletes in sports.

“A fencer is not permitted to refuse to fence another properly entered fencer for any reason,” USA Fencing said in a statement released to the Associated Press. “This policy exists to maintain fair competition standards and preserve the sport’s integrity.”

In the case of Turner’s opponent, who has not been named by the Associated Press and several other news outlets, guidelines exist within USA Fencing to be inclusive of transgender and nonbinary athletes, so the argument was dead upon kneeling.

Whether or not Turner’s opponent was indeed transgender is a moot point — just like when Imane Khalif, Algerian professional boxer and gold medalist in the 2024 Summer Olympics, was accused of being born biologically male … even though she wasn’t.

Outside the scope of whether or not trans athletes should be included in gender segregated sports, there lies a more dangerous precedent: To what degree do we acknowledge and reinforce the idea that “transvestigating” — the act of trying to determine whether someone may be transgender based upon their appearance — is okay to do?

Looking at what sort of features inspire suspicions of transness, many point to characteristics like curvy hips, broad shoulders, a jawline, Adam’s apple or the presence or lack of cleavage and body or facial hair.

There are several women who grow facial hair, and many men who don’t. Similarly, bodies of all sexes come in all shapes, sizes and bone structures.

What defines a man or a woman? With the discernment between sex as biological and gender as social, the ladder spectrum takes many forms and is no longer binary.

If the limitations for womanhood pertain to her sex organs, what then for the cancer survivor who no longer has a uterus? Each set of characteristics, visual or otherwise, can be used to exclude any number of people from a category and its set of privileges or acknowledgements.

Regardless, if the solution of trans exclusionists is to assign gender based on what they see, they may find themselves to be sorely mistaken. Whether a man chooses to wear a skirt and still identify as a man or a lesbian chooses to present more masculine, the innate sex characteristics that they have don’t always show up within the boundaries of societal expectations.

Moreso, those same characteristics are only indicative of sex. Gender is and should be treated as a different beast entirely. It is fluid and ever changing, not based upon clothing choice, body composition or mannerisms.

The ways in which we determine for others who they are or should be results in the intrusion of their lived experience — something that lends to homophobia, ableism, xenophobia and religious discrimination.

In the context of sports, the most successful swimmers often have broad shoulders, basketball players are taller than the average person and boxers like Khalif have muscular physiques. Whether an athlete does or does not possess those qualities does not determine their status as a swimmer, player or boxer.

To compound the more “masculine look” for women’s sports, many athletes don’t wear makeup or go with a full updo for their competitions (sans ice skating, dance or gymnastics), thus further assassinating the Western ideal beauty standard that produces the desirable feminine looks seen in Hollywood and Vogue.

If we allow this kind of behavior, we begin to let go of second wave feminism and the symbolic unshaved underarms. The new social contract of womanhood would require us to shave, pluck, tweeze or wax and curl, straighten or crimp our style into the constraints of what others believe we should look like.

Policing what is appropriate and acceptable for femininity is a stepping stone for how Black hairstyles in the workplace became an issue, later requiring diversity, equity and inclusion amendments to corporate dress codes. Instead of wearing natural curl patterns and protective styles, Black women were encouraged, if not forced, to wear weaves in order to be taken seriously.

If not those physical attributes, what then works as a litmus to determine if someone is trans?

The more invasive transvestigators, also called trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERF), sink down to the level of perversion — finding grossly invasive ways to inspect what genitals or other sex characteristics a person has, like peeping through the cracks of bathroom stalls.

The act of transvestigating is a violation of the receiving party’s privacy. Caring enough about another person’s gender to the point of stalking them says a lot more about the transvestigator than it ever would about the person being transvestigated.

In an era where women are supposed to be free to be or do anything that a man can, TERFs are imposing their own glass ceilings when it comes to accepting or operating alongside their transgender peers.

With the exception of a contact sport, which could be solved with a weight class division instead of a gender segregated setup, what danger do trans people pose?

Perhaps the solution is breaking up every activity into an applicable set of genetic dispositions — height, weight, body fat percentage, performance classifications, etc. But if we have to fraction a sport or competition into a million subcategories in order to appease every contestant, then the whole basis for holding a contest becomes null and void.

The conversation around sex and gender is ongoing and evolving, as are the rules surrounding sports participation. But as our society becomes more diverse, the solution is to create a policy that includes more people, rather than eliminating or excluding.

If we continue to placate those who have dedicated themselves to imposing restrictions and limitations on who can be of a certain gender expression, then we open everyone up to be transvestigated, whether it results in a positive identification or not.

Emily Fritz can be reached at fritze1@duq.edu.