CrossFit: Trans Women Aren't Real Women

The sports world is no stranger to LGBT discrimination, and now a transgender woman is suing CrossFit for refusing to allow her to compete against other women in the intense exercise regime. This is just the latest instance of transphobia rearing its ugly, bigoted head in the world of sports. Fallon Fox, a transgender MMA fighter, had to fight for the ability to compete against women in her sport, along with a host of other Olympic athletes.

CrossFit hosts their own competitions, which are sort of like the Olympics of working out. Chloie Jonsson, a trans woman and competitor, was told by CrossFit leadership that she wouldn’t be able to participate in the women’s division of last year's CrossFit Games because she was assigned “male” at birth.

Jonsson, who underwent gender confirmation surgery in 2006, is now suing the CrossFit organization for discrimination to the tune of $2.5 million. Prior to the lawsuit, Jonsson was not completely “out” as a transgender woman, and said in a statement that if she was “forced to out [herself,] I want it to be for the good for all transgender people and athletes — not because of a company's discriminatory policies.”

CrossFit, of course, responded with the same non-scientific garbage that most transphobes trot out when they’re trying to prove that transgender women aren’t “real” women. "The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women," said a lawyer for the CrossFit organization.

Science, of course, completely disagrees. Once a transgender woman undergoes GCS and begins female hormone therapy, that genetic advantage goes to zilch because female hormones counteract the effects of testosterone. The state of California recognizes Jonsson as a woman, so it’s completely nonsensical that the CrossFit Games would think that they could get away with denying a trans woman the right to compete.

All that being said, the CrossFit studio by my apartment looks to be crawling with dudebro meatheads, so I’m not shocked to hear that their views on trans women are stuck back in the caveman era along with their diets. Maybe if the leadership of CrossFit ate a little more carbs, they wouldn’t be so bigoted?