Authors' Reply to Richardson and Chen: Comment on "Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies"

'It's Just Safer When I Don't Go There': Trans People's Locker Room Membership and Participation in Physical Activity

Building on findings demonstrating that transgender and gender non-binary (trans) people's participation in physical activity is impacted by their experiences in locker rooms, this study examines how trans people navigate transphobia and cissexism in locker rooms. I consider the concepts of membership and belonging to illuminate how locker room access impacts trans people's participation in the public sphere. Drawing on interviews with trans people, this study suggests that-because of iterative encounters of surveillance, scrutiny, harassment, and violence-trans people regularly adopt strategies for navigating locker rooms as nonmembers. To access locker rooms despite a denial of membership, trans people employ various strategies to minimize the visibility of their transness and/or gender non-conformity through managing the perceived threat their gender expression poses to a "cisgendered reality." Strategies such as hurrying, avoiding nudity and eye contact, and recruiting ally support function to facilitate locker room access by minimizing attention to trans nonmembership. The findings of this study suggest that whiteness broadens the availability of strategies for navigating locker rooms. This study offers insight into how people respond to stigma, evade surveillance and exclusion, and access public space despite a denial of membership.

Narrative Review of Sex Differences in Muscle Strength, Endurance, Activation, Size, Fiber Type, and Strength Training Participation Rates, Preferences, Motivations, Injuries, and Neuromuscular Adaptations

ABSTRACT

Nuzzo, JL. Narrative review of sex differences in muscle strength, endurance, activation, size, fiber type, and strength training participation rates, preferences, motivations, injuries, and neuromuscular adaptations. J Strength Cond Res 37(2): 494-536, 2023-Biological sex and its relation with exercise participation and sports performance continue to be discussed. Here, the purpose was to inform such discussions by summarizing the literature on sex differences in numerous strength training-related variables and outcomes-muscle strength and endurance, muscle mass and size, muscle fiber type, muscle twitch forces, and voluntary activation; strength training participation rates, motivations, preferences, and practices; and injuries and changes in muscle size and strength with strength training. Male subjects become notably stronger than female subjects around age 15 years. In adults, sex differences in strength are more pronounced in upper-body than lower-body muscles and in concentric than eccentric contractions. Greater male than female strength is not because of higher voluntary activation but to greater muscle mass and type II fiber areas. Men participate in strength training more frequently than women. Men are motivated more by challenge, competition, social recognition, and a desire to increase muscle size and strength. Men also have greater preference for competitive, high-intensity, and upper-body exercise. Women are motivated more by improved attractiveness, muscle "toning," and body mass management. Women have greater preference for supervised and lower-body exercise. Intrasexual competition, mate selection, and the drive for muscularity are likely fundamental causes of exercise behaviors in men and women. Men and women increase muscle size and strength after weeks of strength training, but women experience greater relative strength improvements depending on age and muscle group. Men exhibit higher strength training injury rates. No sex difference exists in strength loss and muscle soreness after muscle-damaging exercise.

A part of, yet apart from the team: Substantive membership and belonging of trans and nonbinary athletes

Increasingly, bills and policies prohibit the participation of trans women in competitive sport. The current sociopolitical moment begs the following question: how do interpersonal interactional moments function alongside formal policies and rules to shape trans athletes' experiences of belonging in sport? Although formal institutional rules govern trans athletes' ability to compete in sport, informal social sanctioning also denies these athletes equitable, or even de facto, membership in sport. I draw upon two case studies to explore trans athletes' experiences of membership in elite "women's" sport. I apply Evelyn Nakano Glenn's work on citizenship to consider how trans athletes' experiences of belonging are influenced by both formal rules imposed by organizations as well as informal social interactions with members of their sporting communities. Inclusion is not synonymous with membership. Trans athletes render visible the ways in which this system functions to contain the diversity of humanity's gender expression.