Thanks to St Martin's Press a s NetGalley for the advanced readers copy!

Fair Play is very well researched and thorough. Katie Barnes does an excellent job examining the issues in this book in a way that felt balanced and unbiased. I especially appreciated their view point as they grew up in women's sports and have built a career around women's sports while being nonbinary. I was looking forward to reading what their proposed solutions were and was not disappointed. I very much appreciated their view point and found that I agreed with their potential solutions for moving forward.

The main reason I wanted to read “Fair Play” was the discussion on participation in sports by transgender athletes, especially transgender girls/women, in high school and college. I think that is an issue that does not have an easy answer, and where there can be good faith disagreement. (Unfortunately, quite often the discussions are not conducted in good faith, but rather are used an excuse to denigrate others.)

The author does a good job of addressing the differing opinions, and the bases for these opinions, as well as discussing how much of the argument is based on assumptions about male vs female sports and athletes, and what we know (or at least think we know) about the advantages that a biological male (and therefore also a transgender woman who has not undergone testosterone suppression) will have over a biological female in athletic endeavors.

One of the most valuable discussions relates to the transgender athletes whose success in high school or college sports has attracted controversy, such as Lia Thomas in swimming and Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller in high school track. The author points out that while they won some championships or other significant races, they also were beaten by cisgender girls/women in races, especially higher caliber events. Also, in some of the races where these transgender athletes excelled, there was at least one other transgender athlete whose presence/participation did not provoke controversy because they did not win or place high. In other words, being a transgender athlete does not guarantee success.

I think of my own high school cross country and track experience. I was an average runner and rarely did well enough to earn a medal or ribbon (and I certainly never won a race.) If I had raced on the girls' cross country or distance track team, I would have placed higher overall, but I certainly would not have dominated the races. There were multiple members of my high school’s girls' teams (and other area high school teams) that were faster than me.

In Chapter 12, the author sets forth their opinions on participation in sports by transgender athletes based on age group and competition type (youth sports, college sports, professional/Olympic-level sports, recreational/intramural sports), as well as athletes with differences of sex development (think Caster Semenya in track and field). I pretty much agree with their opinions on where there should or should not be restrictions and the nature of restrictions when appropriate.

This is such a timely and important read! This book tells the story of the gendered nature of modern sports and how it has impacted the discussions around gender, especially around transgender acceptance and access. Most of the book is explained through the stories of young athletes who have accidentally become central actors in the gendered sports debates. These are young athletes who only wanted to play the sports that they love in a way that follows their expression of gender but are now thrust into the national spotlight and the focus of hateful culture wars. The book was so thought provoking and inspiring. The perfect read for the beginning of pride month!

Thank you to St. Martins Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Fair Play is such a thorough look at sports and the gender debate. Full of incredible interviews with trans athletes from across the gender spectrum and their overwhelming humanity, Barnes takes us through the tumultuous 2010s and 2020s and shows us where we may be headed in the future.