Law Commons^™

Challenging Gender In Single-Sex Spaces: Lessons From A Feminist Softball League, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores transgender inclusion within adult recreational women’s leagues by using the example of the Mary Vazquez Women’s Softball League (MVWSL), in Northampton, Massachusetts. A MVWSL policy addressing transgender inclusion became necessary due to a noticeable increase in gender-identity diversity. The resultant policy respects the league’s core lesbian constituency by providing individuals with the freedom to acknowledge openly a gender identity that has or is evolving from lesbian to something else, and reflects the league’s founding feminist principles by refusing to define for others the suitability of a women’s community.

The Author demonstrates the successful creation of a policy …

Better Locker Rooms: It’S Not Just A Transgender Thing, George B. Cunningham, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hormone Check: Critique Of Olympic Rules On Sex And Gender, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

Most sports, including all Olympic sports, are divided into two categories: men's and women's. This Article first presents a history of gender testing in Olympic and international sports to illustrate why past attempts to define eligibility for women's sports have proven unfair to women with intersex conditions. It then describes the shortcomings of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) first effort to articulate standards of eligibility for transgender athletes. In its second Part, this Article explains the more recent efforts of the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to define eligibility for women's sports solely on the basis …

"As Who They Really Are": Expanding Opportunities For Transgender Athletes To Participate In Youth And Scholastic Sports, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

The aim of this Article is to assist the efforts of inclusion of transgender athletes by helping decision-makers in scholastic athletics and youth sports understand why and how to create inclusive policies. These decision-makers include leaders and stakeholders in local, state, and national sport organizations.

This Article begins with an overview of policies already adopted by interscholastic athletic associations and sport governing bodies that regulate youth sport programs. It critiques policies that categorically exclude and otherwise impose limitations on transgender persons who seek to participate in sports in a manner consistent with their gender identities (what this Article will refer …

Transsexual And Intersex Athletes, Erin Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

In her chapter, the Author examines the impact of both past and present policies enacted by many sport organizations, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on intersex and transsexual athletes. At the root of many of these policies, and therefore the issues, are the binary gender system and the concern that fraudulent competitors could gain an advantage relative to the rest of the field. While no longer mandatory, women athletes are still subject to varying degrees of sex verification testing on a case-by-case basis, as evidenced by the 2009 testing of South African runner, Caster Semenya.

Recent policies point …

Gender & Sexuality In The Aba Standards On The Treatment Of Prisoners, Margaret Colgate Love, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, commentators, advocates, and corrections experts have focused increasingly on issues of gender and sexuality in prison. This is due in part to the growing number of women in a generally burgeoning American prison population. It is also attributable to efforts to end custodial sexual abuse and prison sexual violence, which have focused attention on issues relating to women and LGBT prisoners. Also, in part, this heightened attention reflects the influence of growing free-world social movements emphasizing the "intersectionality" of multiple forms of subordination and seeking to secure fair treatment of gay and transgender people.

This …

Instant (Gender) Messaging: Expression-Based Challenges To State Enforcement Of Gender Norms, Taylor Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

Most challenges to state enforced conformity with gender norms are almost solely status-based equality claims. Given that a common term deployed by members of the trans community and in antidiscrimination laws is "gender identity and expression," situating such challenges in expression may, at first glance, appear to be little more than linguistic legerdemain. An understanding of gender as expressive, however, helps capture an often unarticulated, yet central aspect, of the harm enforced conformity inflicts on trans persons---compelled expression of the state's gender message over their profound objection. Consider governmental insistence that a trans student or employee present herself, through dress …

Clothes Don't Make The Man (Or Woman), But Gender Identity Might, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

The Ninth Circuit's recent decision in Jespersen v. Harrah's Operating Co., Inc. reflects the blinders on many contemporary courts regarding the impact of sex-differentiated dress requirements on female employees. Although some courts have acknowledged the impermissibility of imposing sexually exploitive dress requirements, they have done so only at the extreme outer limits, ignoring the concrete harms experienced by women (and men) who are forced to conform to externally imposed gender norms. On the other hand, some transgender litigants have recently succeeded in challenging sex-differentiated dress requirements. This success is due in part to their incorporation of disability claims based on …

Sex And (Sexed By) The State, Taylor Flynn

Media Presence

This Article discusses how the law not only tries to discipline the body into traditional sex roles, but it also has the power to declare you to be a particular legal sex, even over your objection. The majority of jurisdictions follow the orthodoxy of sex as "genitalia-at-birth." Under this view, a male to female transgender woman (who, for example, has undergone surgery and is anatomically indistinguishable from someone born with female genitalia) is deemed in the majority of states to be legally male. In a handful of more progressive states, the law looks predominantly--although unfortunately, not exclusively--at an individual's gender …

A Prescription For Gender: How Medical Professionals Can Help Secure Equality For Transgender People, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

Transgender people have made tremendous legal gains in the last several years. We live in a period of rapid social change, hopefully approaching a time when transgender individuals and our families enjoy the same legal rights and privileges afforded to other members of society. However, we are not there yet. This essay discusses the role medical professionals must play if transgender people are to achieve full humanity in light of legal developments in the areas of employment and family law. Medical professionals are at the heart of directing and implementing policies that have an enormous effect on the lives of …