Sporting Authoritarianism

The Gender Ideology Panic

The Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition—a misleading evocation of the influential feminist health guide, Our Bodies, Ourselves—advertises itself as “the largest, most ideologically diverse women’s movement of our time.”^[8] While it’s true that members characterize themselves differently—for example, WoLF is a self-described “nonpartisan radical feminist nonprofit”^[9] while Concerned Women for America (CWA) calls itself a women’s organization that protects and promotes biblical values—the tagline is misleading.^[10] The coalition’s improbable allies are unified by their anti-trans ideology, which they view as widespread and necessary for women’s equality. Though hardly representative of all feminisms, their claims are not novel.

At the OBOS coalition’s inaugural rally in Washington, D.C.^[11]—which was held on Title IX’s 50th anniversary in 2022—speakers like Maureen Bannon, daughter of far-right strategist Steve Bannon, alerted the audience to a covert agenda of “gender ideology” in women’s sports.^[12]

But the term “gender ideology” can be traced back to the Vatican, which used it to oppose the emerging integration of reproductive rights, sexuality, and gender into international policy, led by LGBTQ and feminist movements in the 1990s.^[13] While it was initially used with reference to policy objectives that threatened theological and traditionalist understandings of sex and the family, the phrase changed discursively as conservative actors within European and Latin American countries used it over the decades.^[14] Thirty years later, denunciations of “gender ideology” span the globe and the political spectrum, and in North America, according to researcher Heron Greenesmith, the term is increasingly used to attack trans people.^[15]

OBOS members assert that gender-identity recognition is evidence of an unscientific and misogynistic agenda pervading women’s sports, academia, and political institutions. Activists and scholars Sonia Corrêa, David Paternotte, and Claire House find that anti-gender mobilizations commonly target five areas: sexual and reproductive rights, LGBTI rights, children’s rights, gender mainstreaming initiatives, and protections against hate speech and discrimination.^[16] Such issues figure prominently into OBOS members’ description of the alleged impacts of the Title IX rules—including how they will make teachers “queer all aspects of school programs,”^[17] indoctrinate children “down a dangerous path of social and likely irreversible and harmful medical transition” without their parents’ knowledge^[18] and “forc[e] everyone to accept these definitions and what flows from them.”^[19] Their fearmongering manufactures a panic around gender and sexual diversity that helps justify authoritarian norms.

The (Not So) Unlikely Alliance

In her analysis of the contemporary alliance between trans-exclusionary radical feminists and right-wing forces, professor Joanna Wuest draws a parallel between its current manifestation and the collaboration of women’s groups and the religious Right on victim’s rights and anti-pornography legislation during the 1970s and 1980s.^[20] Though their conceptions of sex had differing origins—the former from biological determinism and the latter from biblical tradition— they mutually agreed women are innately vulnerable and need protection from violent, male perpetrators.^[21] Similarly, coalition members believe that females constitute a coherent, immutable group who are physically inferior to males. They misgender trans women athletes, implying a need to protect cis women from the threat of violent men. Their construction naturalizes the sex hierarchy with the veneer of being pro-woman and projects anxieties over danger, harassment, and inequity in sports onto athletes who, as trans women, disproportionately experience violence.^[22] These rates are higher for Black and trans women of color based on their intersecting marginalized identities.^[23]

Before the OBOS coalition’s formation in 2022, many of its member groups had connections with right-wing organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation. They accepted funding,^[24] awards,^[25] and speaking invitations,^[26] cross-pollinated staff,^[27] shared legal representation,^[28] and advocated together for anti-trans legislation like the deceptively titled Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.^[29] Now, their alliance has influenced the courts. As of August 2024, Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), alongside Parents Defending Education and Speech First, filed a lawsuit that successfully placed an injunction on Title IX implementation in four states: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina.^[30]

Anti-trans feminists have previously justified their involvement as a strategic necessity, claiming to be abandoned by the Left and desperately requiring the Right’s resources and legal power.^[31] These right-wing allies benefit by having their message legitimized and spread to broader audiences. However, coalitions like OBOS are more than a temporary circumstance. Their anti-gender logic mirrors the authoritarian Right by scapegoating minoritized groups for increasing economic and social precarity and embracing paternalistic responses.^[32] They promote cisgender supremacy as women’s liberation and aid the Right’s onslaught on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Being attuned to how feminism has played a role in oppressive projects is necessary to combat these strands and avoid replicating them in our movements.^[33]

In their analysis of Project 2025, researchers Annie Wilkinson and Chancie Calliham outline how the demonizing of vulnerable communities is a strategy within a larger plan to impose a Christian, cisheteropatriarichal order.^[34] Unsurprisingly, OBOS is tied to this political infrastructure. Two coalition groups served on the Project 2025 Advisory Board^[35] and the coalition itself is funded by the Defense of Freedom Institute, a nonprofit founded by two Department of Education officials who served in Trump’s first administration.^[36] While not all members support the President, they are furthering his authoritarian campaign promises to codify the sex binary and ban trans athletes.^[37]

Our Sex Stereotypes, Our Sports

The coalition’s sex essentialism defines and constrains fairness and safety in women’s sports. Their website includes a report, produced by the right-wing Independent Women’s Forum and IWLC, alleging that trans athletes will demoralize cis women, decrease their athletic opportunity and success, and increase their chance of injury.^[38] These claims are as harmful as they are false. Similar accusations have been lobbed against women with hormonal variations and intersex characteristics, and are imbricated in a fraught history of invasive sex testing and unnecessary medical intervention.^[39] Research has consistently found that binary biological markers for athleticism are myopic and overestimated in elite sports,^[40] and that—contrary to anti-trans activists’ arguments—inclusive policies have resulted in an increase in girls’ participation in youth sports.^[41]

Any woman athlete whose ability or physicality transgresses the coalition’s stereotypes can be considered suspect. During a panel on Title IX, hosted by WoLF with several coalition partners, a member recounted her experience as a coach for a girls’ volleyball team when she suspected a “biological male” was competing based on the competitor’s appearance.^[42] Often, these interrogations fall along racial, national, and class lines. Western sports institutions have routinely scrutinized women of color and those from the Global South according to hegemonic standards of White femininity, accusing them of being too masculine or inordinately good.^[43] Notable examples in recent years are the South African runner Caster Semenya and the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.^[44]

Made up primarily of White, American cis women, the OBOS coalition relies on reductive, racialized understandings of sex that have been enforced within sports—to the detriment of the autonomy, privacy, and opportunity of trans, intersex, and some cis athletes. In fact, as scholar Elizabeth Sharrow concludes, sex-segregationist arguments scapegoat trans women for enduring structural inequalities in women’s sports, ^[45] including underfunding, insufficient leadership opportunities, and sexual harassment, which are exacerbated by intersecting forms of racial and socio-economic discrimination.^[46]

Toward A Sports for All

Though OBOS employs a scarcity approach to rights, there is a mighty resistance of athletes and advocates who are working towards a version of sports that benefits cis, trans, nonbinary, and gender-diverse people alike. As Auden Perino, Senior Counsel for Education and Workplace Justice at National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) writes, “Efforts to pit transgender women against cisgender women, falsely claiming there is a zero-sum struggle for rights and protections in sports or any other sphere, are a deliberate strategy… to divide our community and undermine collective work against discrimination.”^[47] Legal organizations like NWLC, InterACT, and Advocates for Trans Equality have been active in the fight to enshrine gender inclusivity in Title IX, and organizations like Athlete Ally are supporting trans and queer student athletes.^[48] While much remains unknown about how another Trump presidency will impact Title IX, blocking coalitions and campaigns like OBOS will require joining together with all those advancing a multiracial, transinclusive feminist democracy.