The Trans Swimmer Dividing America Tells Her Story
si.com
si.com
I am a big supporter of trans rights. Trans women are women. Gender is between the ears, not between the legs.
Women's athletics is about both sex and gender. It recognizes that women play sports in a somewhat different way from men. Partly because the bodies of cis women are different from those of men, and partly because of the culture that arises around that. Sometimes the whole sport is different because of it -- women's gymnastics is radically different from men's, and figure skating only a bit less so. Women's basketball and soccer are noticeably different, and interesting to watch because of the differences that go beyond strength and speed.
Defining "women" in that athletic context has thus always been tricky. We've always had intersex athletes, and outliers whose bodies were recognizably female. But they were rare enough that it didn't force itself to the front of our minds.
Trans people are more numerous, and will become even more so. I don't think anybody would consider it a good thing if all of the women's records were dominated by athletes assigned male at birth. That is not yet the situation, but it's not hard to imagine that it could be.
I wish the article had been able to make a better case that it wouldn't be a problem. I absolutely support the fact that Lia is a woman. She should be able to participate in women's sports as a woman -- because women play sports differently. It is great that she gets to be on the podium with other women.
I don't, however, know how best to handle that. A separate set of cis-women's events or cis-women's records is crude and awkward. Leaving cis women out of the record books will make nobody happy.
I also don't like borrowing this trouble. Focus on this is, I fear, more about finding ways to marginalize trans people than real concern for women. So I really wish the article had left me with a knock-down way to agree with Lia.
As a coach of two nationally ranked club teams (one boys the other girls) and father of three nationally ranked biological girls in their sport I am also conflicted. We have a family friend who is transitioning/transitioned to a woman and I want to be supportive of her.
For me it comes down to this.
There are no biological women competing as men at the world level and dominating a strength/speed (field) sport. At least none that I am aware of. However, I am aware of a handful of counter examples where biological men dominate (sometimes to the point of catastrophic injury) biological women.
As you observe, almost all field sports have different brackets for men and women and as you also observe, sometimes different rules and equipment. My sport is one such sport. Women wear much less safety equipment as a result of the observation that that women are not generating projectiles with speeds in the 160km/h range. In my sport, men are required to wear specific heart protection to guard against fatal projectile injury. Women cannot wear this protection.
This is no joke or exaggeration. it would be reckless to allow biological men to compete with and against biological women with the women's rules and equipment. I will not support allowing biological men to compete against the women's teams I coach nor would I add a biological man to my women's roster.
I know you feel that trans-only or cis-only leagues would be clunky and I do believe at the moment it would be hard for trans-athletes to find places to play as there are comparatively few of them. However, this also casts a spotlight on the problem. There are relatively few biological men competing as women but we already see that there are situations where they dominate to the point of setting international records and causing catastrophic injuries.
Keeping sports fair and competitive for biological women unfortunately needs to come at the expense of supporting biological men who want to participate as women. Hopefully trans-athletes can carve out a niche that supports fair, competitive, and safe play in a widely supported and accessible way but playing at the expense of biological women is not the answer.
I hope that does not make me a transphobe, I don't feel like I am or that I am not supportive but my feelings on women's sports are settled.
There's 2 good videos on this subject.
Joe Rogan on Fallon Fox. This is his domain of expertise and he clearly argues that there are sports in which trans shouldn't be able to compete against women.
Neil Degrasse Tyson interviewed Joanna Harper on the subject of trans people competing against women in sports.
It certainly seems like society needs to discuss this issue and make some hard decisions.