The Politics of Social Categorization: The Case of Transgender Women’s Athletic Participation in the United States

Abstract

Political institutions often provide rights and protections for particular groups (e.g., refugees, groups that faced historical discrimination). Who belongs to a given group, however, can be contested. We study the politics of social categorization by focusing on transgender women’s athletic participation in the United States. We offer a framework that integrates work on frames, social construction, and group categorization. We predict a substantial change in attitudes about transgender women’s athletic participation between 2019 and 2024—a period during which the issue became highly politicized with the emergence of an exclusion frame. We use unique cross-sectional data from those years to show that support for transgender women’s participation substantially dropped. Strikingly, among Republicans, the relationship between support for a non-discrimination policy (Title IX) and support for transgender women’s sports participation flipped from positive to negative—thus, support for a non-discrimination policy correlated with exclusion beliefs in 2024. The findings highlight how existing non-discrimination policies can become mechanisms of category exclusion when the contested group is framed and then perceived as a threat to long-standing stakeholders.