I’ve tried to write this article a couple of times now. Tried being the key word, because in all of my other drafts, there was always something missing. Some essential ingredients I felt had been misplaced, but couldn’t name.

See, I suffer from this terrible affliction where I sincerely believe that if I can just find the right words, I can make anyone understand me. I think that if I just lay out my arguments cleanly and concisely—but still with character, of course—that I can make people perfectly comprehend my point. That if people had all the pieces put before them, they would be willing to put together the puzzle and see precisely the same picture that I do.

And the kicker is, sometimes I’m right! I know I’ve done good in this world, because I have changed people’s minds. If I want to see the direct impact my voice has had, I know of at least three different places I can look. It’s freaking awesome.

But the problem is, if I’m wrong, I can never fully tell. You can’t prove a negative. So I keep thinking that maybe I can get it, if I just try a little harder, pick up a new argument, spin it a different way, stretch the stories, find the perfect facts—

GOD, it gets tiring! I’ve made myself sick arguing with people who, for reasons I don’t think I’ll ever actually understand, just don’t seem to value all human life equally. Maybe they’ll change their minds one day. Maybe I just have to accept that I won’t always be the one who manages to convince people. But if I’m being honest, when I stop, it’s mostly because I’m tired of being sick.

So, this is for the people who care. Originally, this article was going to be something of a manifesto, bordering on screed. I was going to tackle as many arguments as I could, aim for an unimpeachable array of rhetoric, create a source of reference for any of my fellows, but in the end, none of those things were why I wanted to write an article on how the current system of gender division in sports harms transgender, nonbinary, and intersex athletes.

Do I still think it’s important to point out that “biological sex” is a mis-defined and non-definitive concept? Sure. Besides not meaning what transphobes claim it does (sex simply refers to the production of male or female gametes, and dividing things by sex would actually end up excluding many cis women by virtue of infertility), it also totally ignores intersex people, whose sex characteristics do not conform to the enforced binary.

Do I believe it vital to recognize that the level of athletic dimorphism between the already vaguely defined sexes is poorly understood and warped by centuries of misogynistic research and social biases? Obviously. I firmly believe that if we did away with gender divisions in sports entirely, women would still be competitive for literally every sport. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you chew on The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong, a fascinating article from Scientific American.

Have you caught onto what I’m doing with these rhetorical questions yet? I feel it’s pretty straightforward. I still wanted to mention these things, however passingly, because I really do find them important talking points. But that’s all they are to me. Talking points.

I use these factors to argue my point, but they’re not why I do so. I wanted to write this because the moral panic over trans women in sports has allowed radical extremists to target, stalk, harass, and threaten a literal 16 year old girl for the crime of being good at jumping while trans. I wanted to write this because even if we allow transgender athletes to compete as themselves after reaching some threshold of medical transition, we’ll still be creating a world in which anyone outside the strict gender binary will be alienated, and likely discouraged from entering competitive athletics. I wanted to write this because of Lia Smith, a student at Middlebury College in Vermont, who left her swim and dive team because she was made unwelcome, and later committed suicide. I wanted to write this because while I couldn’t care less about sports, I could not care more about people, and the disgusting transphobic morass that has come to envelop athletics is doing everything in its power to kill them. 

I wanted to write this because I’ve easily spent four years of my life trying to figure out how to create an athletics system that wouldn’t catch someone within its gears, and all I’ve come up with is doing away with the gender division entirely. While I still think this is a great idea (seriously, read that Scientific American paper. I think it could work.), I also recognize that it’s unlikely to be implemented any time soon, and I’d like it if people stopped dying sooner rather than later.

Which is to say, I wrote this article for two main reasons. I wrote it because I want people to understand that to maintain the current system without modification is to effectively sacrifice the lives and happiness of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex lives in order to retain a convenient status quo. And I wrote it because I know someone out there—who hopefully knows more about sports than I do—can come up with the right words, the perfect plan, the sterling facts, even if I can’t.

I figure that those of you who care enough to listen, who care enough to read this article—who care, full-stop—must have one or two good ideas. I can’t answer the titular question of this article, not alone, not completely. But what I can do is get as many people as I can thinking about it. This issue is not without a solution, and I firmly believe that together, we can create an athletic system where everyone is free to be exactly who they are.