In general, I am against all organized sport. These last few weeks of World Cup mania in the US felt agonizingly long. And there’s a special kind of dread I feel when I learn that a writer I admire has a favorite sports team. But while I pine for the day when we see the Olympics abolished (Say no to LA 2028!) I’m still not entirely immune to the cocktail of adrenaline and runner’s high when it comes to watching women’s track and field, which I competed in throughout middle and high school and all of college. I wasn’t especially amazing at running; I was front third of the pack at best in a division considered near the bottom rung of my home state of New York. But it did form the backbone of my social life and my own developing body, and, I’ve realized, my gender. I may be done with track, but track is apparently not done with me.
Watching Sha’Carri Richardson burst onto the scene in 2020 was the first thing that pulled me back in. She was so muscular, so Black, so femme, and so unapologetic. She’d clearly been paying attention, too. Her long nails and mesh outfits exaggerated the feminine, a lesson many Black sprinters internalized after Caster Semenya was banned from competing in 2009 for her naturally high testosterone levels and masculine look. No matter that Semenya was declared female at birth and raised as a woman for her entire life; nevermind that, while dominant in the 800 meters, she never notched a world record; what mattered was that she looked too masculine, and that made other competitors and athletics governing bodies uncomfortable. In women’s track and field, the amount of muscle you have must be in direct proportion to the quantity of femininity you display, lest you arouse suspicion of a disobedient gender. And for Black women, whose femininity in the eyes of white Europeans has always been subject to excessive scrutiny and disbelief, this threshold is even more tightly policed. (One of the women who lost to Semenya even got her complaints confused, saying she was glad she was "the second white" to finish.
There is a long and painful history of gender testing in international sport. In this documentary, they say that while both white and Black women were forced to quietly retire upon suspicion of a biology that did not adhere to the narrow definitions of a woman’s athleticism, Semenya refused to be pushed out. Before writing this, I didn’t know that her case continues to this day, where most recently she received some validation from the European Court of Human Rights, although she hasn’t competed since the 2010s as a result. (Based on another interview, she does however have two cute kids with her partner, Violet, who is also a former training partner!)
All of this is to say that, even before our present era of heightened trans panic in sport and elsewhere, there is a deep history of misogyny and discrimination against masculine women in athletics, one that is unevenly deployed across race and nationality. Nikki Hiltz occupies an interesting position in this history, though (so far) it has unfolded differently for them. (I have to say I am a little hesitant to write about Hiltz in this context lest it draw more undesirable attention to their participation as a gender variant athlete. But Nikki has been openly trans and nonbinary since 2021, and I think this blog is under the radar enough that it should be okay.)
I first remember seeing Nikki Hiltz race in the 2024 Paris Olympics where they didn’t win, but it didn’t matter to me. Hiltz came out in 2021, but because I don’t follow organized sport in any ritualistic way, I’d never seen a trans person run and have their pronouns respected on live TV before. Which to be clear is a low bar (and it sill doesn't always happen.) Earlier this month, after winning the 1500m at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, the same day that the Supreme Court handed down a decision banning trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports, Hiltz said as much in an interview: 'it’s so normalized, and that’s so special to me — but not only to me, to any non-binary person or trans person tuning in to watch a race. They can see, ‘Oh, there’s someone who looks like me and is getting their pronouns respected.’” (*Rare positive trans coverage from the NYT*, who seem to prefer white trans masc folks.) At the Pre Classic Nikki wore a new singlet which is much more androgynous than the spanx and tiny tank tops worn by most women (and which always gave me such massive gender dysphoria), and which (co?)incidentally mirrors the style worn by Semenya when she won gold in the 800m at the Rio Olympics in 2016. (Semenya continues to use she/her pronouns and still identifies as a woman rather than intersex.)
Hiltz confirmed recently that they had top surgery a month after Paris 2024, sharing the obligatory post-OP photos on social media. Every time they step out on the track they look more and more androgynous, more masculine. Being a white middle distance runner, they benefit from a less muscular build and the racist gender norms that accord more femininity to whiteness. I doubt that they’re ignorant of the history of gender policing in their sport. But I am very curious to see what the reaction to Hiltz is as their fame increases—just today they won their 8th consecutive 1500m National Title, breaking an American record previously held by a man in the 1920s. After they won, someone in the crowd threw them a pink and blue trans flag which they wrapped around their shoulders like a new nationality. Hiltz has said they are not taking injectable testosterone (which duh, they wouldn’t be able to race if that were the case, no matter what gender they competed as) and they continue to use they/them pronouns. But if they did throw in a he/they, would they still be allowed to race? I don’t mean to invalidate nonbinary identities, and obviously Nikki Hiltz is perfectly valid in their gender identity and presentation, full-stop. But it’s strange to watch them race and have their pronouns respected while announcers call the field “ladies.”
This is a familiar conundrum for any trans man who’s attended a women’s college (lol). You can identify however you want, but it won’t sway the group identity. How many nonbinary athletes are needed before more modern, less demeaning gender neutral language is instituted? How many before we admit that it’s very silly to separate sport based on gender? How many before we realize that in a violent world bent on harming the most vulnerable, competitiveness is no longer a healthy frame of international relations, and instead we should be lifting each other up? This is the ethos behind the Gay Games, and it’s one Nikki hinted at in their post-race interview after winning a semifinal a few days ago, where they pushed back against the interviewer who asked them how it felt to be “defending” their 1500m title, saying that they don’t like to think of it as defending anything, rather this is a new group of racers and another day to go out and do their best.
One final note that I can’t stop thinking about is just how few women distance runners adhere to the “biological woman” requirement. Eating disorders are rampant in high school and college athletics (and, I assume, beyond); it wasn’t unusual for teammates of mine to go months or years without menstruating due to the heavy training schedules and disordered eating. But apparently winnowing away one’s body down to nothing is an acceptably feminine way of altering one’s body. It’s a method that, according to the bodies that govern sports, doesn’t touch the gender paradigm. It’s a method that makes you weaker, like a woman is supposed to be. That’s why women are rarely allowed to race the mile and instead race the 1500 meters—those 100 extra meters were just too much on their bodies (sarcasm) and the shorter distance gave the slower men a feeling of superiority. But the times are changing; Nikki Hiltz isn’t a world record holder by any means, but their time today in the 1500m was only 16 seconds behind the men’s 1500m winner. Any runner will tell you that 16 seconds is ages when it comes to middle distance, but the gender-segregated fields of competition can only bend closer and closer over time. Seen in this light, I have hope that the current absurd debates over trans people in sport can signify the beginning of the end of competitive sport based on one’s gender.