Public discourse surrounding queer sport is often limited to debates about inclusion and fairness, narrowly focused on hormone levels and alleged biological advantage. This misses the structural critique that queer athletes inherently embody. International bodies like the NCAA and the IOC use policies regulating hormone levels to enforce “fair competition,” but these regulations function as biopolitical surveillance, reinforcing the assumption that women must be protected because they are physiologically inferior to men.
This binary logic becomes painfully clear in the experience of MMA fighter Fallon Fox, who faced a “damned-if-she-wins, damned-if-she-doesn’t” conundrum. To prove her legitimacy as a woman, meaning she was to prove she was no more biologically advantaged than cisgender women, Fox perversely had to lose. This illustrates how rigid structures of winning/losing and success/failure shape the sporting world, forcing trans athletes into an unwinnable contest for validation. Fox’s loss becomes politically and personally significant. After her professional defeat, she reflected, “I guess this means that people will realize that I'm just a woman after all. I'm female. I'm human.” Her defeat became a moment of undoing and unbecoming, breaking the racialized and gendered scripts that constrained her identity.
In a climate where activists like Riley Gaines reduce complex debates to moralistic calls for exclusion, centering the power and possibility of failure shows the creative and disruptive potential of queer sport. It reminds us that resistance, identity, and liberation are not always about winning. They are often found in the courage to fail on your own terms.
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