By Madeleine
Kearns
Tuesday,
December 07, 2021
The New York Times recently
reported that “since 2019, nine states — all controlled by Republican
lawmakers — have enacted legislation to ban or limit athletic
participation by transgender students.” Despite such claims, American
legislators are not banning transgender-identifying athletes from competing in
sports. What they are trying to do is preserve single-sex teams. If, in this
endeavor, the sex a person identifies as is considered irrelevant, it is only
because the sex a person identifies as has no bearing on a person’s actual sex.
Take the recent case of Will Thomas, a
swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team between 2016 and 2019.
Thomas took a break from swimming during the pandemic and, upon return, adopted
a transgender name and identity, Lia. Last week, Lia Thomas made headlines for
setting new female records in the 200-meter and 500-meter freestyle event
during a swim meet with Cornell and Princeton. Sports website OutKick estimates
that Thomas’s times — 1:43:47 and 4:35:06, respectively — would have
earned Thomas second and third place in the NCAA Women’s Championships. Just
one problem, if we dare mention it — Thomas isn’t a woman.
Consider the terms male/man and
female/woman in their original anatomical context. Women are adult human
females. They have XX chromosomes, have female reproductive organs, and produce
eggs. By contrast, men are adult human males. They have XY chromosomes, have
male reproductive organs, and produce sperm. Since sex is an immutable
characteristic — and only superficial changes can be made to sexed bodies
— no one can really change sex. Saying so is not bigotry. In fact, it is
important to say so given that young women are being displaced and
disadvantaged by the failures of so many in leadership to recognize this basic
fact.
Sex isn’t just about chromosomes and
gametes. Physical advantages are conferred on young men during the
androgenizing process known as puberty. These advantages are irreversible.
That’s why, in general, men exceed women physically in size, strength, and speed.
That’s also why there is such a stark performance gap between men and women in
sports. As Duke professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman has explained, even the
world’s best female Olympic athletes “would lose to literally thousands of boys
and men, including to thousands who would be considered second tier in the
men’s category.”
The NCAA, as with other sports bodies, has
tried to reach a compromise. They propose that a “trans female” — i.e., a
biological male — is eligible to compete as a woman after undergoing a
year’s worth of testosterone suppression. This is unsatisfactory for everyone.
First, there is no evidence to suggest that suppressing testosterone can
reverse intrinsic male advantages. In fact, research published in the British
Journal of Sports Medicine indicates that even after suppressing their
testosterone for two years, “trans women” (i.e., biological men) retain a 12
percent advantage. Second, at the college level, such a standard encourages
young people who may be confused or experimenting with their gender to begin
medicating toward their preference.
In its press release, the University of Pennsylvania
shamelessly boasted that Thomas “won the race by nearly seven seconds and her time was
the fastest in the country,” yet failed to mention Thomas’s sex or even
transgender status. Thomas told the student newspaper Penn Today in
June that “being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport.” Which may
be true. But being male most certainly has.
Allowing men to thrash women at their own
sporting competitions is humiliating and unfair. When it comes to single-sex
sports, male swimmers should stay in their lane.
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