Something a few of you have heard from me privately and something that may raise some eyebrows. Namely gender in lieu of biological sex in athletic events.
It's generally agreed there are three important issues in sport: safety, fairness and inclusivity. Many sports have categories to promote fairness and even safety -- age and weight categories for example. Some areas of sport - parasports are a good example - have dozens of categories. And females (I'll try and avoid the term women as it's more closely associated with gender these days) have their own protected category as, for most sports, males have a serious advantage.
Currently the IOC and many pro-LGBT groups have come down on inclusivity trumping fairness and safety. When males go through puberty a number of athletic advantages are bestowed. Testosterone is the primary trigger, but most of these changes are permanent and chemically lowering testosterone levels after the fact only has a marginal impact on athletic performance. There are a few pieces of work that the science in "unsettled" and there are areas that need more study, as in all science, but the basics are well-established.
I tend to be very liberal and pro-LGBT, but the violation of fairness in sport for biological females is a bridge too far for me.1 Female events exist to give women a fair chance to compete. I'm biased as a good friend who happens to be a World Champion, Olympian, four time first team All American and Honda Award winner.. she also happens to be female. Additionally I know a few other world class athletes who are women. They're afraid to speak openly on the subject, but anonymous polls are usually at the 90% level for keeping female events open only to XX competitors. This does not mean to exclude trans-women from sport. They can compete with men in an open category where they're more fairly matched. If need be the open category can have trans and non-trans divisions, but there's a strong belief among female athletes that their category needs protection. Unfortunately they're not being listened to.
Recently 20 of the top sports scientists published a paper in fairly clear language on the subject in one of the most recognized sport science journals. It's unfortunately that people who are coming down on the side of fair competition are being lumped with heavily politicized anti LGBT hysteria. It's something of a wedge issue and I hate seeing it being used as part of the hammer to come down on the LGBT community.
__________
1 There are real genetic edge cases that happen to be quite rare and mechanisms exist to deal with some of these issues - but that's looking at less than 0.1% of the population rather than 99.9+%
Comments