In discussing the ethics of trans athletes competing, some people have made the claim that trans athletes would be cheating if they competed against non-trans women. This requires sorting out the notion of cheating. One obvious approach is to a make a moral comparison between transition and obvious forms of cheating, such as using banned performance enhancing drugs.

Cheating, of the sort that can morally be condemned, requires an intention to cheat and action taken to that end. As such, for a trans athlete to be condemned as a cheater simply by transitioning and competing, it would need to be shown that they did so with the intention of gaining an unfair advantage. Whether they gain an advantage or not would be relevant to the effectiveness of the alleged cheating, but morally the intent to cheat and taking the action to cheat should be condemned whether successful or not. It seems unlikely that trans athletes are intending to cheat and the idea that they gain an unfair advantage can be questioned.

One reason is that if their motivation to transition is solely to gain an unfair advantage, there are easier ways to cheat, such as with performance enhancing drugs. It would be odd for a person to go through the process of transitioning when they could gain an advantage by much simpler means. After all, as noted in the previous essay, an athlete who would be a top competitor as a trans athlete would already need to be a very good athlete and performance enhancing methods might suffice. It could be argued that the advantage gained by transitioning would be greater, but this runs into problems.

There is also the obvious fact that the relative gain weighed against the cost shows that people would be unlikely to “cheat” by transitioning. Transitioning comes with a very high cost when considered solely as a method of “cheating” and sexism towards women’s sports means that the relative gain would be low. Women’s sports tend to have less prestige and less financial reward (although this is changing to some degree). To have a rational incentive to “cheat” by transitioning, a male athlete would need to be good enough to beat top female athletes to get the rewards they desire, but not good enough to get similar (or better) rewards by using some other means. For example, there is often a significant pay gap between men’s and women’s teams that has made being on a losing men’s team more profitable than being on a winning women’s team. To be fair, as women’s sports gain more equality in compensation and prestige, then the incentive to transition to “cheat” would increase; but this would still undergo radically altering one’s entire life to do this, including facing prejudice and abuse for doing so.  An athlete would also have to plan out this “cheating” well in advance, while also knowing that they will be a good enough athlete. As such, it seems unlikely that an athlete would decide to undergo transition solely to gain an advantage in sports, even if they were able to plan it all out. While athletes do sacrifice for their sport, the cost imposed on trans people by others seems far too high for someone to do this just to gain that alleged advantage. As such, it is unlikely that trans athletes are engaged in cheating.

It might be argued that even if someone is sincere in their transition, they could still be “cheating” if the advantage they are alleged to gain is a factor or if they are willing use that alleged advantage. This could be seen as like being sincerely someone’s friend, but also being their friend for the advantages they happen to provide and making use of them. But there is the question of how many athletes would not have transitioned but for thinking they would gain an advantage. If they transitioned and this was not a deciding factor, then they could not be justly accused of intending to “cheat.” The purest case would, of course, be someone who transitions with no interest or intent to gain an advantage and who is not good at sports. They could hardly be accused of cheating or intending to cheat.

In closing, the worry about trans athletes “cheating” is the result of the right’s culture war obsession with a vanishingly small number of trans athletes. And the number of trans athletes decrease as the performance requirements increase, since there are relatively few trans people and the number of athletes at each increasing tier of performance drops dramatically. There are, as noted in the previous essay, strict rules in place for trans athletes. It is most reasonable to see the worry as yet another culture war moral panic aimed at hurting people as part of a political game.