At heart of v-ball schism: fairness

NEW YORK — They play on the same team, but they couldn’t be further apart.

One member of the women’s volleyball team at San Jose State University has signed on to being part of a federal lawsuit against the NCAA challenging the presence of transgender athletes in women’s college sports. The specific person she cites? One of her own teammates.

The situation swirling around the SJSU team — which has gotten increasingly chaotic in recent weeks, with several teams canceling matches against the school and politicians and advocates weighing in — somehow seems unsurprising in the polarized United States these days as a highly contested election looms.

As with other points of dispute in the struggle over gender identity and transgender rights, one thing opposing sides have in common is framing their stance as a matter of what’s fair and right.

Where they stand a chasm apart is in one fundamental sticking point, a tough question in any arena: What does ‘fairness’ actually mean?

The discussion around ‘fairness’ is complex

That the idea of what is fair or not can vary from person to person probably shouldn’t be surprising. After all, a sense of right and wrong is part of the human world view, formed from highly indvidual factors like each person’s environment, the cultures they grow up and live in, and their experiences.

And while science and research into areas like hormone treatment and transgender athletic performance, which is only in the early stages at present, could at some point provide more medical information and data, it still won’t answer the question of “what is fair,” says Dr. Bradley Anawalt, a hormone specialist and professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“The science is going to be able to allow us to some degree calculate the advantages and disadvantages. And eventually, with good studies, we’re going to have an idea of when, how long you have, to suppress somebody’s testosterone level ... how long does it take for differences in muscle strength and muscle mass to come down,” says Anawalt, who is also a member of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports.

“So those kinds of questions we can answer, but we’re never going to be able to answer this fundamental question about fairness,” he says. “Because that is not a medical or a scientific concept. It’s a social justice and a human concept.”

Fairness came up frequently Saturday at a rally supporting the women’s volleyball team from the University of Nevada, Reno, the latest of five teams to forfeit against SJSU. Players had refused to “participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes,” and some reiterated that stance at the rally.

The rally drew several hundred people. McKenna Dressel, a junior from Gilbert, Ariz., told the crowd that her dream since she was a young girl of being a college athlete has been turned upside down.

“Our season has been filled with turmoil and headache. We have all been directly affected by the distraction of having to stand up for our rights that were established over 50 years ago,” she said, making a reference to federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX. She added: “Trailblazing female athletes paid the price so that we can enjoy fair competition.”

The public aspect of the situation has escalated

Issues around transgender rights have been a lightning rod in American politics in recent years, and they are one key difference between supporters of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during this election season. Several states have introduced or enacted legislation around medical care, access to public accommodations like bathrooms, and participation in youth sports. This political and cultural backdrop makes the attention surrounding the SJSU situation more understandable.

SJSU has not confirmed the presence of a transgender athlete on the team. The player being referenced has never said anything publicly about gender identity before or since the lawsuit filings or in the wake of online accounts making the claim. Because of that, The Associated Press is withholding her name.

That doesn’t mean the harsh glare of the public eye hasn’t had an impact on the team, which is trying to make it to the NCAA tournament after more than 20 years. San Jose State coach Todd Kress says the team is receiving “messages of hate.”

Advocates for transgender rights invoke fairness as well in pushing for those who are transgender to be able to live as authentically as possible, and not be discriminated against or denied access to opportunities because of gender identity. Fair, they say, is directly linked to access and participation.

“It is disappointing that politicization of sports has meant some teams have denied SJSU and themselves opportunities to play, simply because a team might have a transgender player,” the local San Jose/Peninsula chapter of PFLAG said in a statement about the situation. “All student-athletes, including trans athletes, deserve the same chance to be part of a team, learn from one another, and respect the game. Transgender athletes belong.”

The nature of sports makes the ‘fairness’ debate central

It’s not surprising that issues around transgender rights and presence have such an outsized spotlight in the world of sports despite the fractionally small number of instances of transgender athletes. That’s because sports is an arena where “fairness” — in the form of a level playing field of rules and regulations that are supposed to apply equally to everyone — is central to the mythology.

“Maybe it’s because of the nice, sanitized way in which we consume sport as an audience,” says Sarah Fields, who studies how sports intersects with American culture. She says sports thrive on “our innate, maybe human desire — but certainly American desire — for fairness.”

“It’s a standardized field with standardized rules and standardized uniforms,” says Fields, a professor of communication at the University of Colorado Denver. “So it has this appearance of fairness. And then it often falls apart once a game goes on and one side destroys the other or one swimmer is two laps behind another. But at least at the beginning, there’s an illusion of fairness in the way it looks.”

That masks the reality of playing sports, especially at the elite level of college athletics and beyond, she says. People are born with a range of genetic traits like height, reflexes, speed, and body shapes that can furnish them with advantages. Then there are economic and social resources that can propel one person’s athletic journey in a way that it doesn’t for others.

Fields points to the example of a South African runner in the 1980s who was barred from international competition because of boycotts against her nation over its apartheid policies. The runner, Zola Budd, became a British citizen and ran in the 1984 Olympics.

Anawalt echoes such an idea — that a resolution to the “fairness” question is muddy, elusive and perhaps ultimately unanswerable.

“When we talk about fairness in competition, what we’re really trying to do is say, well, we’ve created a level playing field,” he says. “And the truth is we never quite succeed in doing that. And so where do you draw the bright white line in terms of what’s fair and what’s not fair?”