Unfair Advantage Discourse in USA Powerlifting: Toward a Transfeminist Sports Studies

This essay follows the social life of testosterone during a presentation at a USA Powerlifting national governing board meeting. While feminist and queer sports analyses focus on the implication of hormone levels for intersex athletes, much less scholarship analyzes how the hang-up on testosterone itself—whether endogenously produced or pharmaceutically regulated—unjustly targets transgender athletes. Paying attention to how testosterone delineates the boundary between “fair” and “unfair advantage” that consolidates antitrans contours of “female athlete,” this essay seeks to model a closer collaboration between transgender studies and feminist sports studies to forge what the author calls transfeminist sports studies.