Protect Women’s Sports
By The Editorial Board
Biologically, there are two genders, male and female. However, the long-established understanding of gender has evolved in recent decades. The recognition of “gender dysphoria” by the APA in 1980 and the prominence of the trans rights movement within the LGBTQ rights movement has parlayed into increased exposure and acceptance of trans individuals. In recent years, the idea of gender fluidity has come to the forefront, with progressive activists rejecting the idea of binary gender altogether.
Rather than viewing gender as a biological condition established at birth, they insist that gender is a fluid spectrum. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation”— a mouthful of a name that hardly reflects the order’s true ramifications. While the EO protects trans people from discrimination, it also allows biological men who identify as female to compete in women’s sports. This is a massive blow to female athletes across the country and a looming scepter of the losses women could face in the theoretical breakdown of defined women’s spaces.
The denial of basic anatomical differences in males and females is part and parcel to gender-fluidity. Bone mass, muscle density, and testosterone levels make men on average physically larger, taller, and stronger than women. As National Review noted, “The fastest female sprinter in the world is American runner Allyson Felix, a woman with more gold medals than Usain Bolt. Her lifetime best for the 400-meter run is 49.26 seconds. Based on 2018 data, nearly 300 highschool boys in the U.S. alone could beat it.” This fact does not undermine the physical brilliance of Allyson Felix or in any way demean her accomplishment as an Olympic sprinter; it’s just a biological reality that hundreds of unprofessional highschool male athletes are faster. Allowing biological men to compete with women is a slap in the face to female athletes who have trained their entire lives with the expectation of a fair playing field. Such a proposal is regressive for women, whose predecessors fought for decades for the right to enter female sports leagues, only to have their medals and records smashed by unfair competition. We’re already seeing this happen, as the current NCAA women’s record holder in the indoor 55-meter sprint is a trans woman who is allowed to compete against women per current NCAA regulations.
While progressives want us to believe that men can be women and women can be men, the distinct biological advantage of testosterone in physical development shows the errors in their logic. Even trans male athletes (biological women who now identify as men) who took testosterone as part of hormone therapy far outperform their female competitors. Mack Breggs, a trans male wrestler from Texas who reportedly began taking low doses of testosterone in highschool went undefeated as a wrestler with dominant victories like this. While Mack was constrained to wrestling in the women’s division by Texas law, his story highlights the distinct competitive advantage testosterone provides even at lower levels. Mack’s dominance in wrestling symbolizes the danger women can face against biological males and females who have undergone some form of hormone therapy.
Physical danger aside, if the question of equality and equity for trans athletes is to be asked, so too should the question of equality and equity for female athletes competing against them. Is it fair that women lose scholarships to competitors with a biological advantage? Is it actually progressive for spaces that women have carved out for themselves to suddenly be open to all? No! It undermines the very pillars of feminism that progressives claim to uphold. Many people on the Left disregard Biden’s EO because they think relatively few women will be impacted. After all, there aren’t that many trans athletes looking to compete in women’s sports. But women’s sports is a canary in the coal mine; it’s a physical representation of the breakdown of women’s spaces. It also begs the question: what’s next?
From Susan B. Anthony to Betty Friedman, feminist activists have made historic advancements for womenkind in the social, economic, and political spheres. Women today stand on the shoulders of past generations who overcame injustices and lobbied tirelessly for gender equality, from the workplace to the divorce lawyer’s office. However, the rise of fluid gender identity fundamentally unties the meaning of what it means to be a woman, which principally undoes the feminist movement. If the feminist movement is built on women’s inherent power and identity i.e., the things that make women “women,” doesn’t the idea of gender fluidity completely contradict it by espousing that anyone can become a woman?
The woman derives her power through her emotional acuity and empathy, her unique ability to bear and birth children, her intuition and grace, but also through her shared challenges and the risks she and other women collectively face. Being a woman is not an irrelevant label or a state of mind; it’s a lived experience characterized by biological implications and societal expectations.
Despite what the Left may argue, protecting women in the athletic arena isn’t to discriminate against trans people. We can promote common-sense legislation that allows for trans men to compete in men’s sports at their own peril. But a top-down, federally mandated policy that blatantly disregards biological fact for points on the wokeness scale is not the way. Women have fought tooth and nail for their own spaces and channels to achieve academic, professional, athletic, and social success. President Biden’s most recent Executive Order principally undermines that fight.
Photo via Julian Finney of Getty Images
