Many believe that male weightlifting athletes have a genetically dominant advantage over the female athletes and is therefore is seen to be an unfair advantage for a male-to-female transgender athlete when competing in a woman’s weightlifting competition that even with the transgender athlete having hormone therapy there will still be the advantage of the strength and muscle mass that was built while still a male, and would still allow a higher strength level than that of a non-transgender female athlete. While the inclusion of females-to-male transgender athletes are more acceptable due to the view that a female-to-male weightlifter would not have a physical advantage over other athletes competing. At this point in time people are unsure about …show more content…
The inappropriate stereotypes of female weightlifters and bodybuilders are partly responsible for this, but with the increased growth and the popularity of CrossFit, the ideology of weightlifting has been changing due to an increase of exposure that is resulting in a greater increase of interest from women. Women’s divisions are now being created in weightlifting completions due to how the perceptions of women have begun to change in society, as such women today have started to develop more of an athletic interest and independence in relation to Olympic weightlifting. Because of this, there has also slowly become an increase of transgender athletes starting to participate in Olympic weightlifting. The evolution of gender roles in society today has begun to have a significant change in how transgender athletes are now represented in not only weightlifting but in sports generally, thus because of the changing gender roles over the years that many of the male dominated sports organizations involved in weightlifting have decided to open and include women’s divisions and due to the increase of transgender athletes, are now slowly starting to become included. While achieving such a change on an international level of including transgendered athletes is a “tough ask” for many sports administrators and participants, at this