ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a feminist counterargument to the nominally feminist trans exclusionary stance. It specifically focuses the transmisogynist line of argument that excludes trans women from strength sports. The USAPL policy, misleadingly called the “Transgender Participation Policy,” is mainly focused on the possible lasting effects of testosterone on muscularity, stating. Both the history of muscularity as threatening to femininity and the exceptionalism of strength sports as pure forms of athleticism are faceted part of the current crisis over women whose muscles may exceed a blurry threshold of gendered bodies. The effects of high levels of cortisol are reminiscent of Ahmed’s description of Fanon’s phenomenology of blackness as one of “restriction, uncertainty, and blockage” in that high levels of stress hormones alter the body’s regular processes.
