Targeting Thomas: the gender ideology of "fair" play in the NCAA and professional women's sports

• In Event: Institutions and the Body

Abstract

Lia Thomas’s participation on and competitiveness within NCAA women’s swimming has resulted in a vicious, transphobic, gender surveilling response to already beleaguered women’s sports. The furor over Thomas’s trans identity deflects attention away from the loss of several critical feminist and transfeminist objectives: the tossing out of an ethics fair play, refusal of equity, and the rigid policing of gender binarism in sports. Targeting Thomas instead of the glaring gender inequities already present in the post-Title IX era further devalues women’s sports as a whole and hurts all female-identifying persons.

Presenter

• Aaren Pastor, The University of Delaware