Laurel Hubbard knows it. When she takes the stage at the Tokyo International Forum on Monday, August 2, and begins competing in weightlifting, she will be the center of attention. Not so much for her potential results, but especially because at 43 years old, the New Zealander, born male, is the first transgender woman to participate in the Olympic Games (Olympics).
Ironically, this premiere will take place in the country most behind the G7 in terms of recognition of minority rights. In June, the Japanese Parliament held
repulsed sine die the adoption of a text aimed at making “unacceptable” “discrimination against [personnes] LGBT ”.
“I don’t want to change the world. I just want to be myself and do what I’m doing ”Laurel Hubbard told Radio New Zealand in one of her rare interventions in 2017. Not that simple, actually. The athlete has, of course, complied with the requirements of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in particular on the level of testosterone required, to claim to participate in the Games and was thus admitted to compete in the category of over 87 kilos of the l women’s weightlifting event.
This move, however, provoked protests from her rivals, arguing that her past as a man gives her an advantage, a fortiori in a discipline considered very masculine.
The Laurel Hubbard “case” illustrates the difficulty of transgender people in entering the sporting sphere, while the CIO has endorsed their inclusion since the Athens Games in 2004. “It’s a conservative and macho world: revealing myself would have broken my career”, recently explained Fumino Sugiyama, who became a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee. A 40-year-old trans man, he was a member of the women’s fencing team until he was 25. “Things are changing but those born before the 1980s have been rocked by the idea that a gender disorder is a disease.. “
Like him and American Caitlyn Jenner, gold medalist in the men’s decathlon in 1976 as Bruce Jenner, 1996 Olympic tandem canoe champion Sandra Forgues only came out trans after giving up. at the sport and to have followed a hormonal treatment in 2016, at the age of 47 years. “If I had been told: ‘You can make a transition at 20 or a high level career’, I would have made my transition, even if I know that behind, I can be Olympic champion”, she tells the World.
Evolution of the IOC regulations
Among the detractors who see in the inclusion of men who have become women the “Death of women’s sport” and those who would like to accept them without hormonal transition, the IOC plays the balancing act: how to ensure this inclusion without compromising security and fairness? In sport, the principle of single sex prevails to respect an equality assumed at the outset: women, on the one hand, men, on the other.
This reading does not reflect “The human being in his complexity”, however considers Sandra Forgues. “The cisgender world [personne dont l’identité de genre masculin ou féminin correspond à son sexe biologique] and heterosexual corresponds to 98% of the population but what do we do with the remaining 2%? “, she asks.
According to its spokesperson, Christian Klaue, the IOC does not have “The ultimate solution”. In 2015, he changed his regulations by no longer forcing trans athletes to have sex reassignment surgery and by conditioning the participation of trans women to a certain level of testosterone: this must be less than 10 nmol / L, for a minimum of twelve months, before being able to compete in the Games.
This development should facilitate the accession of trans athletes to high level, when they are often blocked by the criterion of “legal recognition of the new sex granted by the competent official authorities”, as mentioned in the Stockholm Consensus Statement on Gender Changes in Sport of October 28, 2003.
Laurel Hubbard transitioned in 2012, aged 35. In 2017, she became vice-champion of the world over 90 kilos. Currently ranked 16e world, she was long excluded from competition after an elbow injury at the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and was therefore not scheduled to compete in Tokyo. But the Covid-19 pandemic has reshuffled the cards.
This is why some of her competitors tried to ban her from participation, as the Australian Weightlifting Federation had done in the past, arguing that the musculature and power she had developed when she was still a male, gave him a physical advantage, regardless of his testosterone levels.
“A Ferrari with a 208 engine”
“If you have a skeleton that is heavier, longer arms but not the muscles to move them, that is of no use to you”, retorts Sandra Forgues. The former international speaks knowingly: six months later the ablation of her male gonads (site of testosterone secretion), she went from 3:15 a.m. to a marathon at 3:50 a.m., becoming “A Ferrari with a 208 engine”.
However, she does not think that the approach adopted by the IOC is fair. “We thought that performance was only a question of testosterone when all athletes know that sport is certainly physical, but that it is also technical and strategic”, sums up the Frenchwoman. For this reason, it recommends creating standard deviations: measuring the performance criteria of the 1,000 world leaders in each discipline and then checking that trans people meet these criteria. If so, they would be excluded.
In the wake of the IOC, some federations have supervised the practice of trans athletes from a hormonal point of view. The International Athletics Federation has lowered the level of testosterone required to participate in its competitions (world championships, selection meetings for the Olympic Games), making participation even more restrictive. At the end of June, the American transgender athlete CeCe Telfer was excluded from the American Olympic selections, failing to meet the standards of World Athletics. In 2019, she was the first transgender woman to win the varsity track and field championship.
The story of CeCe Telfer is that of “Candidates for the selections that we do not hear about”, Sandra Forgues blows. While some are calling for the creation of a category dedicated to trans athletes, a major part of the main stakeholders continue to suffer from this stigma: high suicide rate, high risks of anxiety and depression, as recalled. a study Frenchwoman from the Idaho committee and from the Republic and Diversity think tank in February. This is probably one of the main reasons why so few transgender athletes are knocking on the door of the Olympics.