This paper uses the life of Renée Richards to analyze the gender binary in athletics. Richards, a male-to-female transsexual, sued for access to the women’s professional tennis circuit in 1976. Her internalization of gender roles, embodiment of gender stereotypes and campaign for inclusion, along with the resistance she received from other female athletes, illustrate the continued importance of gender segregation in sport.
In addition, rather than provide blanket acceptance for transsexuals in professional sports, the 1976 court ruling pertained only to her and women’s tennis. Not until 2003 did a multi-sport institution raise the issue. For the 2004 Athens Summer Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee created the Stockholm Consensus which outlined the policies for transsexual athletic inclusion. Paralleling Richards’s court decision, the IOC adjusted gender definitions enough to include transsexual participants, yet set the qualifications so that these athletes fit into one of two gender divisions.
As demonstrated by Richards’s legal inclusion in women’s tennis and the Olympic transsexual policy, the possibility of gender malleability embodied by transgendered athletes raised concerns, resulting in decisions that sought to underline the separation between male and female. This paper argues that both rulings necessitated gender segregation in competition and consequently created remolded gender dichotomies for competition.