Argentina’s Villa San Carlos handed Mara Gomez her debut on 7 December, making her the first transgender woman to play for a top flight women’s team in the country.
Speaking after coming on what ended up a 7-1 defeat at the hands of Lanus in Berisso, Gomez said, “The road was long, there were many obstacles, many fears.
“What one day made me think that I would not be anyone, that I would never have the opportunity to be happy in my life today has turned upside down, because today I achieved one of the greatest goals of my life, the one I believed would never happen. ”
Gomez was able to play after her testosterone levels were tested and found to be below the levels required for Olympic Athletes.
They usually are.
The whole argument over trans women playing sport with cis women is moot when a trans woman is undergoing hormone therapy. It has been shown time and time again that there is no benefit or advantage.
Trans athletes have been allowed to compete for well over a decade, can you name me one champion? You’d think if they really did have the overwhelming advantage many claim, which supposedly makes it unfair for cis women, we’d at least know of one medal-or-championship winning trans athlete. Yet here we sit.
You can’t name any, can you?
While we’re here, ‘cis’ is not a slur. It is a differentiator. It simply means ‘not trans’. Just like ‘brunette’ means ‘not blonde’. We use differentiators all the time. There is no insult in making room to allow others to feel included.
Gomez, 23, had to plead with the Argentine Football Association to be allowed to play while also proving her history did not give her an advantage over other players.
You know, like how they asked Michael Phelps if his unique body gives him an unfair advantage. Or why Martina Navratilova wasn’t quite as delicate as Monica Seles.
The fact is, there is no ‘normal’ range for anything to do with the human body. Think how ridiculous it would be to say that Peter Crouch and Santi Cazorla can’t play in the same league because of their height. There is no such thing as ‘average man’ or ‘average woman’ although we can compile average stats.
There are not only two sexes, nor are their only two genders, nor two sets of levels that define ‘male’ or ‘female’ nor any specific characteristic that you can point to that says ‘all men have x and all women have y’. Even when it comes to XX and XY there are more variations than we were taught in school.
Maybe it’s time more of us just accepted people can be and are different. What harm does that cause you?