The stories about transgender women (men identifying as women) are coming from all corners of the U.S. now, especially from states that allow transgender high school athletes to compete without restrictions. According to Transathlete.com, a website that tracks state policies in high school sports across the country, there are 17 states allowing this right now, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Washington, California.

I don't want to warm up the stories about tour player Reneé Richards, who became quite notorious after sex reassignment surgery in the 70ies, but make no mistake, folks, the issue will come up for you, probably sooner than later.

Imagine a transgender woman wants to go onto your 4.0 adult ladies league team. Let's say she self-rates as a 4.0 or maybe had a 4.0 C rating from her time as a man. What do you do? From my time on the USTA Tennislink Team, I remember that a 4.0 man's tennis skills are usually compared to those of a 4.5 woman. This woman is likely to dominate because she should really compete on a 4.5 team. Right? And what happens if two transgender women sign up and play as a doubles team together? Are you as confused as I was when I started tackling that subject?

A whole army of women, athletes, parents, and teachers alike, believe that women's sport must be protected. Others, though, believe that gender identification trumps everything. Where is a fair solution for both sides?

A Facebook friend of mine broke it down this way: If you have a penis, you're a man. If you have a vagina, you're a woman. I know a lot of people agree with this rather simplistic approach.

I decided to learn more about it and share my findings.

Why is the issue coming up now?
With the exception of Reneé Richards who won against the USTA in a landmark Supreme Court decision, we wouldn't hear a lot about the transgender issue in past decades because certain rules were in place since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. The traditional separation of genders in Men and Women was standard. I think the current political climate of disrupting and brazen attacks on everything that's deemed conventional, is the reason we are now facing these challenges.

The traditional standards are going bye-bye, folks. Hard to understand for Baby Boomers who are always suspicious when organizations like the LGBT and others try to shove 'outrageous' rules down their throats. Millennials and Gen Zers have a much more relaxed view of the issue and are open to embrace new ideas unconditionally.

What are we dealing with?
If you follow the news you probably have heard different terms that pop up much more often nowadays. Here are some definitions. Don't be afraid to accept procedures like "assigned at birth" as fact. Whether you are a staunch catholic or not, that's what happens to everyone. No?

TRANSGENDER - A transgender woman is a person who was assigned male at birth but who identifies as a female.

CISGENDER - When a person is cisgender, they identify the gender that matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. A cisgender woman is a person who was assigned female at birth and identifies female.

According to Elizabeth Boskey, Ph.D., posted under 'What it means to be cisgender' in the August 21 issue of verywellhealth, and medically reviewed by a board-certified physician, sex and gender are not the same things. Here is her definition:

SEX - A biological and physiological designation. Refers to both a person's chromosomes and the way that their genes are expressed.

GENDER - A social construct. Refers to the social roles, behaviors, and expectations considered appropriate for men and women.

Cisgender - a new term to cushion the blow?
Dr. Boskey furthermore explains that gender identity and sexual orientation are really not the same things. A cisgender person can bi, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual and asexual. So can a transgender person. When you understand that concept, it'll be much easier for you to see the real challenges posed by this whole new world of biological and physiological designations.

Dr. Boskey ends by noting that many sexuality educators, LGBT activists, and individuals who are cognizant of gender politics use the term cisgender to reduce the stigma associated with a transgender identity. Like, in order to more easily convince us to accept that new view of gender politics, they invent a new term to cushion the blow. Pretty clever, don't you think? The good doctor writes, "Some transgender activists prefer the term non-transgender to cisgender. In truth, the purpose of both terms - cisgender and non-transgender - is the same. These terms are designed to encourage categorization of everyone's gender identity, removing the notion that there is a default or 'normal' category."

The issue for 'real' female athletes
The most prominent recent examples of what many affected high school students and parents call an intolerable unfairness are 16-year-old Selina Soule from Glastonbury, Connecticut, and 18-year-old Feagaiga Stowers from Samoa.
Selina was shocked and disappointed when she placed 8th at Connecticut's indoor track championship this year because two girls who were born biological boys took first and second place. The winner, a junior from Bloomfield High School, set a girl's state indoor record of 6.95 seconds for the 55-meter dash and went on to win the New England titles in both the 55-meter dash and the 300-meter dash.

Kelsey Bolar writes for the DAILY SIGNAL. Her article '8th Place: "A High School Girl's Life After Transgender Students Join Her Sport" is eye-opening. Selina missed qualifying for the 55 meters in New England by those two spots and was consequentially not seen by college coaches at the New England regionals. And to make matters worse for her, a transgender athlete recently started competing in her other sport, one that she deemed safe from transgender participation, the long jump.

Feagaiga is another tragic example of transgender unfairness. Sean Ingles writes in The Guardian that the young weightlifter missed out on two gold medals at the Pacific Games to a 41-year-old transgender named Laurel Hubbard, a woman who "as a male named Gavin did not make a ripple on the international stage until becoming a woman in her mid-thirties. Now, though, Hubbard is a realistic contender for an Olympic medal (Tokyo 220) and creating a tsunami of protests from women who fear she has an unfair advantage because of residual benefits of being a male."

What are the residual benefits of being a male?
(As seen in LifeSite) A new study recently published in the Journal of Medical Ethics reinforced what many claim to be obvious yet LGBT activists intensely deny: that men who "identify" as women enjoy significant physical advantages from male biological characteristics such as high testosterone, and sets out to "determine whether the advantage is unfair."

Here is the abstract:
The inclusion of elite transwomen athletes in sport is controversial. The recent International Olympic Committee (IOC) (2015) guidelines allow transwomen to compete in the women's division if (amongst other things) their testosterone is held below 10 nmol/L. This is significantly higher than that of cis-women. Science demonstrates that high testosterone and other male physiology provides a performance advantage in sport suggesting that transwomen retain some of that advantage. To determine whether the advantage is unfair necessitates an ethical analysis of the principles of inclusion and fairness. Particularly important is whether the advantage held by transwomen is a tolerable or intolerable unfairness. We conclude that the advantage to transwomen afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness. This does not mean transwomen should be excluded from elite sport but that the existing male/female categories in sport should be abandoned in favour of a more nuanced approach satisfying both inclusion and fairness.

LIFE SITE writes, "The conclusions are consistent with those of organizations like USA Powerlifting, which contends that men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone, do not go away. While MTF (male-to-female) may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than (sic) of a female."
It's those traits (larger bone structure + higher density, stronger connecting tissue, higher muscle density) that are really at the cusp of this issue. LIFE SITE also writes that Olympic swimming silver medalist Sharron Davies warned that letting "trans men" into women's categories "has the potential to ruin women's sport."

The question is, should we abandon traditional male/female categories in sport in favor of a more nuanced approach of relaxing those old standards?

Many are afraid to speak up
And then there is another side of that issue: Fear. Selina says, "Everyone is afraid of retaliation from the media, from the kids around their school, from other athletes, coaches, schools, administrators." People usually only dare to speak up when assured anonymity. Another girl in Connecticut says, "There's really nothing else you can do except get super frustrated and roll your eyes because it's really hard to even come out and talk in public just because of the way with the far left, and how just immediately you'll just be shut down."

Kelsey Bolar writes, "We have college down the road-I'm scared that that could get impacted," a fourth girl said. "Sometimes the coaches will just like look at the lists … and if you're not No. 1 then they won't choose you."

More and more people feel that the door has been shut over and over again and they are afraid to speak up.

One solution to preempt challenges for tennis teams - UTR
I had to think long and hard to wrap my head around possible solutions for tennis clubs and teams to master the challenge looming from transgender women. While it seems clear to me that if you were a good tennis player as a man you may undoubtedly have advantages as a woman that are being labeled unfair, I want to still have an open mind and cannot deny transgender athletes their right to compete.

And then it dawned on me. The solution is right in front of us, readily available and with absolutely no downsides: UTR.

Billie Jean King alluded to the advantages of putting men and women on college teams at this year's WTCA conference in New York. She's right, but for recreational players, this is only half of the solution. UTR provides the other half because it is gender-neutral.

Remember, UTR is a global rating for all tennis players, regardless of age, gender or nationality. Ideal for dealing with the above-mentioned challenges, don't you think? I can see this not only work on a small scale for club leagues and tournaments, but also for USTA Adult Leagues with its over 318,000 players. Billie Jean, how do you like that assumption? Potentially hundreds of thousands of league players could have a whale of a good and competitive time if the USTA adopted UTR for their Adult League program. Heck, they could actually also migrate completely to the WTT format and have even more fun!

UTR is the way to go, in my opinion. Powered by Oracle and supported by a lot of high-profile investors such as Novak Djokovich, Tennis Australia, Tennis Channel, Iconica Partners (Mark Leschly), Larry Ellison, and Major League Baseball Ventures, they are currently creating the world's largest community for level-based tennis. I am confident my friend Kim, who has a UTR of 6.5, would welcome a UTR 6.5 transgender woman with open arms on her team.

Let that sink in, folks.