One of the most absurd debates of our time is whether or not athletes who are biologically born male but identify themselves as women have the right to compete in women’s competitions.
Original article in Hungarian/Az eredeti cikk magyarul.
For centuries, sports have been the privilege of a narrow class. Even after the Enlightenment, it took several decades before women were allowed to participate in school gymnastics. Competitive sports were a product of the 20th century, and full participation by women only came after the wars that transformed the world.
The separation of men and women in sports is in the spirit of fair play, with men enjoying a physical advantage over women. Men are built stronger, taller, have more muscle mass and stronger bones. If they were to compete together, women would not be represented in many sports except for a few events. Despite this, in recent years, there has been a fight to allow transgender women (biological men who identify as women) to compete among women.
One of Joe Biden’s first executive orders allowed transgender students to compete in sports at the high school and college levels.
This means that women’s events can be contested by biologically male athletes who identify as women. Under the rules, they only have to bring their testosterone levels below a certain level and some states require a year of hormone treatment. While LGBT organizations have celebrated the decision, feminist groups and U.S. conservative organizations have expressed outrage.
The difference in strength between women and men can be seen in practice in the video below.
How did we get here?
Transgenderism is a phenomenon that has existed for thousands of years and has long been accepted in some Eastern cultures within certain frameworks, but its reception in the West only began a few years ago. Douglas Murray has devoted a whole chapter to the issue of transgenderism in his book The Madness of Crowds.
According to the author,
transgenderism has become “something close to a dogma in record time.”
which he says is illustrated by the fact that the press is constantly covering the issue, and Western governments have gotten behind it, despite what he describes as a rather controversial and confusing problem.
Gender identity disorder is a known psychological condition that has now been declared “normal” almost without transition, and those who object to it are branded transphobic.
Murray explains in his book that
the debate is not about whether an adult has the right to change their sex when he or she wants to. It is about whether everyone should be forced by law to celebrate it and to educate their children to do so.
The book asks whether
it is particularly worrying that in Europe and the United States children are already allowed to undergo hormone therapy and even surgery if they are „uncomfortable in their own skin.”
According to Murray, this will have unforeseen consequences, as there have been many cases of people who have undergone surgery changing their minds. Popular author and psychologist Jordan Peterson said in an interview that he believes the issue has not been sufficiently thought through by Western governments, and that in the name of tolerance, they are passing regulations that can often have „unintended consequences.” One such unintended consequence is the relationship between women’s sports and transgender people.
Over the past decades, the doctrine that there is a separate biological and a separate social gender has been developed in the social sciences.
Social gender ideology claims that people are „programmed by society to be a certain gender” and that it is not at all certain that someone is actually a woman or a man just because they are biologically born one. In other words, gender identity is a learned skill. This theory would completely disconnect the notion of gender from biological reality, i.e. that a person’s gender is written into their DNA and that it is decided at conception whether they are born a boy or a girl depending on whether the chromosome pair that determines gender is XX (female) or XY (male). There are exceptions of course; these are intersex people, but they make up less than 1% of the population.
Jordan Peterson said in a BBC interview that he disagrees with the claim that someone is female or male if they think they are. The absurdity of the doctrine is further exposed in another interview of his in which he explains how illogical the ideology is. According to them,
„you can be a man born in a woman’s body, and that’s biological, but if you’re a woman born in a woman’s body, that’s socially constructed. Really? That’s supposed to be an argument? It’s beyond preposterous.”
Peterson says it is a paradoxical argument when they talk about biological determinism and personal choice at the same time. In other words, they claim that a transgender person cannot help it: they are „born that way,” while an individual who identifies with their birth sex is „conditioned by society” to do so. According to Peterson.
the goal is really to destabilize society,
and he does not believe that anything good can come from confusing people — especially children — about their gender identity.
Despite the ideological contradictions, “gender curricula” are already taught in schools in Western countries on the grounds of making children more accepting.
Once the ideology had gained civil rights, political and legal intervention was launched in the United States to put it into practice, which in the American press was dubbed the „bathroom wars.”
During Barack Obama’s second term, transgender students in several schools sued to use the toilets and changing rooms that corresponded to their identity. Large companies began announcing en masse that they were gender-neutralizing their restrooms. The controversy died down with the election of Trump, but this year, with President Biden’s executive order, the fight is starting all over again, especially after the Supreme Court last year upheld a lawsuit by several transgender students who wanted to use the bathrooms that corresponded to their identity.
Now women’s sports could be the new theatre of war, as in recent years
17 U.S. states have already allowed athletes who are biologically male but identify as female to compete in girls’ junior age groups, without even having to have undergone surgery.
At the beginning of 2020, three girls filed a lawsuit against the Connecticut State Athletic Association because two transgender biological male athletes in their age group won 12 events at the state athletics competition. One member of the trio, Selina Soule, who had to compete against the two transgender athletes, said:
“It’s very frustrating and heartbreaking when us girls are at the start of the race, and we already know that these athletes are going to come out and win no matter how hard you try.”
If the debate were truly scientific, there would be no question of biological men not being allowed to compete in women’s events. But the issue is being approached by lawmakers primarily from a „tolerance and acceptance” perspective.
The fact that trans rights are already higher up the pyramid of progressive rights than women’s rights is proven by the fact that if feminists do not speak out on the issue properly, they are also hit by “cancel culture.” Such was the case with Germaine Greer, one of the most famous feminists of the 20th century, whose own university revoked her honorary doctorate after she made an “offensive” statement on the issue. In a subsequent interview with the BBC, she said:
„I’m not saying that people should not be allowed to go through that procedure. What I’m just is it doesn’t make them a woman.”
Trans rights vs. women’s rights
LGBT organizations that support the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports usually refer to „trans rights” and equality. Professor Ellis Cashmore made the following argument for transgender athletes on the British ITV morning show:
„This is the 21st century, a century in which we are embracing gender fluidity. The prison service, educational institutions, the military, you name it; all the major institutions of society are getting to grips with gender fluidity, and they are going to have to accommodate trans people in the future. Sport is not exempted. (…) Sport has never been fair. (…) Nature endows her gifts unevenly in society.”
– said Cashmore, suggesting that transgender women are simply more fortunate than biological women. One of the largest civil rights organizations in the U.S., the ACLU took a stand for transgender athletes in a Twitter message stream. According to them, it is a myth that transgender women have a physical advantage and that “including trans athletes will benefit everyone.”
Jordan Peterson had this to say on the subject:
„I can’t imagine how you could be a man who transformed himself into a woman in all the ways that that’s possible and then decided to go compete in high-level sports (…) with women who’ve been training their whole lives to hit the peak of their ability, and then to absolutely bloody demolish them, say after a year of work, and then to tout that as some sort of victory for the oppressed. It’s narcissistic, beyond comprehension”
Three transgender women have already been allowed by the Olympic Committee to compete in the Tokyo Olympics. Among them will be Brazilian volleyball player Tifanny Abreau, who has previously played for the men’s volleyball teams of several European countries under the name Rodrigo Pereira de Abreau. Abreau has previously said he doesn’t care about criticism, he has “the right to be happy.” His coach acknowledged that Abreau is stronger than other players, but he says that is not an advantage because he is less mobile.
In 2016, the Olympic Committee let transgender athletes to compete in the Games in a spirit of progression, not even requiring them to undergo surgery, only to bring their testosterone levels below a certain level. The organization has promised to consider possible changes to the rules after Tokyo.
Several famous female athletes, including Martina Navratilova, have spoken out against the idea of biological men competing in women’s sports. Following her comments, several gay rights organizations distanced themselves from the tennis player and declared her transphobic. Early in 2021, Navratilova joined several athletes in a campaign to change Biden’s order. Some have suggested that a solution could be to create a separate championship for transgender athletes, but this is opposed by the majority of organizations supporting them (e.g., the ACLU).
It is feared that by relaxing the rules, more countries and athletes will abuse the “tolerance” laws. One only has to recall the East German doping scandal, which showed us that some powers are even prepared to cripple their athletes for political reasons if winning is the most important thing. And if sports federations ignore women’s rights on the grounds of trans rights, then the idea of fair play in sports will disappear forever.
Cover photo: Trans athlete CeCé Telfer took first place at university level in the 60m hurdles in 2019/ Screenshot
