NEW YORK (AP) — They play on the same team, but they couldn’t be further apart.

A member of the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team has signed on to join a federal lawsuit against the NCAA challenging the presence of transgender athletes in women’s college sports. The specific person they are quoting? One of her own teammates.

The situation revolving around the SJSU team — which has become increasingly chaotic in recent weekswith more teams canceling games against the school and politicians and lawyers weighing in – somehow it seems unsurprising in today’s polarized United States that a highly contested elections are looming.

As with other points of contention in the fight over gender identity and transgender rights, one thing the opposing sides have in common is framing their position as a matter of what is just and fair.

Where they stand a chasm apart is on a fundamental point, a tough question in any field: what does “fairness” really mean?

The discussion of “fairness” is complex

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that the idea of ​​what is right or wrong can vary from person to person. After all, a sense of right and wrong is part of the human worldview, formed by highly individual factors such as each person’s environment, the cultures in which they grow up and live, and their experiences.

And while science and research in areas such as hormone treatment and transgender athletic performance, which is currently only in its early stages, may eventually provide more medical information and data, it still won’t answer the question “what is right,” says Dr. Bradley Anawalt, a hormone specialist and professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“Science will enable us to some extent to calculate the advantages and disadvantages. And eventually, with good studies, we’ll have an idea of ​​when, how long you have to suppress someone’s testosterone … how long it takes for the differences in muscle strength and muscle mass to decrease,” says Anawalt , who is also a member of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports.

“So these kinds of questions we can answer, but we’ll never be able to answer this fundamental question of fairness,” he says. “Because this is not a medical or scientific concept. It’s a social justice and a human concept.”

Fairness came up frequently Saturday at a rally in support of the University of Nevada, Reno women’s volleyball team. the last of five teams to lose against SJSU. The players had refused “to participate in any match that leads to injustice against female athletes”, and some reiterated this position at the rally.

The rally attracted several hundred people. McKenna Dressel, a junior from Gilbert, Arizona, told the crowd that her dream since she was a young girl to be a college athlete has been turned upside down.

“Our season has been full of upheavals and headaches. We’ve all been directly affected by the fun of having to stand up for our rights that were established over 50 years ago,” she said, referring to the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX. She added: “The pioneering athletes paid the price so we could enjoy fair competition.”

The public aspect of the situation escalated

Transgender rights issues have been a lightning rod in American politics in recent years and are a key difference between supporters of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this election season. Several states have introduced or passed legislation regarding health care, access to public spaces such as bathrooms, and participation in youth sports. This political and cultural context makes the attention surrounding the SJSU situation easier to understand.

SJSU has not confirmed the presence of a transgender athlete on the team. The player in question has never said anything publicly about his gender identity before or since filing the lawsuit or as a result of the online accounts that made the claim. Because of this, the Associated Press is withholding his name.

That’s not to say the harsh glare of the public eye hasn’t had an impact on the team, which is trying to reach the NCAA Tournament in more than 20 years. San Jose State coach Todd Kress says the team is receiving “hateful messages.”

Transgender rights advocates also call for fairness so that those who are transgender can live as authentically as possible and not be discriminated against or denied access to opportunities because of their gender identity. Fairness, they say, is directly related to access and participation.

“It is disappointing that the politicization of sports has meant that some teams have denied SJSU and themselves opportunities to play simply because a team might have a transgender player,” the local San Jose/Peninsula PFLAG chapter said in a statement about the situation. “All student-athletes, including trans athletes, deserve the same chance to be part of a team, learn from each other and respect the game. Transgender athletes belong.”

The nature of sport makes the ‘fairness’ debate central

It’s no surprise that issues of transgender rights and presence have such a high profile in the world of sports, despite the small number of cases of transgender athletes. This is because sport is an arena in which “fairness”—in the form of a level playing field of rules and regulations that should apply equally to all—is central to the mythology.

“Maybe it’s because of the nice, sanitized way we consume sports as an audience,” says Sarah Fields, who studies how sports intersect with American culture. She says the sport thrives on “our innate, perhaps human — but certainly American — desire for fairness.”

“It’s a standardized field with standardized rules and standardized uniforms,” ​​says Fields, a professor of communication at the University of Colorado Denver. “So it has this appearance of fairness. And then it often falls apart once a game goes on and one side destroys the other or one swimmer is two laps behind the other. But at least at first, there’s an illusion of fairness in the way it looks.”

That masks the reality of the game of sports, especially at the elite level of college athletics and beyond, she says. Humans are born with a number of genetic traits, such as height, reflexes, speed, and body shapes, that can give them advantages. Then there are economic and social resources that can propel one person’s athletic journey in a way that it doesn’t for others.

Fields points to the example of a South African runner in the 1980s who was banned from international competition because of boycotts against her nation because of its apartheid policies. The runner, Zola Budd, became a British citizen and ran in the 1984 Olympics.

Anawalt echoes such an idea—that a solution to the question of “fairness” is murky, elusive, and perhaps ultimately unanswerable.

“When we talk about fairness in competition, what we’re really trying to do is say, well, we’ve created a level playing field,” he says. “And the truth is, we never get to do that. And so where do you draw the bright white line as to what is right and wrong?”

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Associated Press correspondent Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, contributed to this report.