My thesis is simple: if you say you care about women, you should be fully against transgenderism in sport. Put another way, if you fully favour trans sports, you really have a very low view of women. Yes it really is that black and white.
Men and women are different. Until just recently this was a no brainer. But now we have to make the case for sex differences. Plenty of important articles and books have highlighted the science on this. See for example the research found in a booklet I helped contribute to, 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters:
http://www.gendermatters.org.au/Home_files/21%20Reasons%20Why%20Gender%20Matters%28low%20res%29.pdf
They keep losing on a regular basis to male athletes who now identify as female. And some of them have suffered in other ways, including trips to the hospital. So much for equality and fairness. So we have come to the place where we need to once again state the obvious: men and women differ in so many areas, including in how they do on the sporting field.
Many have looked at this closely of late. Concerning the differences as found in the world of sport, “Fair Play For Women” is one very important website that you all should be aware of. It is a terrific source of information, statistics and research. The site is found here: https://fairplayforwomen.com/
Consider just one important area discussed: “Biological sex differences: bones & muscles.” This piece contains a wealth of information including the following:
What are the differences between male and female skeletons?
WOMEN ARE SHORTER, about 9% on average. Nigerians have the smallest recorded height difference between the sexes at 4%, while men of the UAE are 11% taller than their women.
MALE BONES ARE BIGGER AND STRONGER, in both size and density. Peak male bone mass is around 50% more than women’s, and women lose bone faster as we age. Black people have significantly stronger bones than whites: black women’s peak bone mass is the same as white men’s.
WOMEN AND MEN HAVE THE SAME NUMBER OF RIBS. We have 12 pairs, though some people are born with 11 or 13 pairs to no ill effect.
MEN HAVE BIGGER HEADS AND LONGER ARMS AND LEGS than women, relative to body size. Sources differ on comparative limb length but they all agree women have smaller, lighter heads & necks. Did you know a human head weighs about 5kg?
The biological sex of an adult skeleton can be determined with 95% accuracy by measuring the hip bones alone, 83% accuracy by the skull, and 80% accuracy by the long bones (femur & tibia).
WOMENS ELBOWS AND SHOULDERS are slightly different from men’s. Our arms bend a little further from our bodies and are more mobile at both joints.
FINGER LENGTH: Greater exposure to androgens in utero leads to a 4th (ring) finger that is longer than the 2nd (index), as often seen in men.
WOMEN HAVE A LONGER TORSO. Our skeleton accommodates extra reproductive organs and finds space to push things out of the way during pregnancy. It makes our legs shorter than men’s.
THE LARGER FEMALE PELVIS is better adapted for childbirth. It’s wider, longer, and held together by ligaments that soften during pregnancy, allowing the two halves to slide apart because of their narrow pelvis. Women’s slanted thigh bones put extra pressure on the knee joints, which have to rotate while men’s do not.
https://fairplayforwomen.com/biological-sex-differences/
Others have also written on these matters. American Political Science Professor Scott Yenor looks at how men and women differ in athletics, offering plenty of details, and then he says this:
The results reflect the fact that women use lighter weights of shot, javelins, and discuses. Women’s Olympic shot are 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds), while men’s shot are over 7 kilograms (16.01 lbs.). Men’s discuses are 22 centimeters in diameter and 1.75 kilograms; women use a discus with an 18-centimeter diameter that weighs 1 kilogram. Men’s javelins must weigh 800 grams and be 2.6 meters long, while women must throw 600-gram javelins that are 2.2 meters long. Moreover, the Russian and East German record holders in the shot put and the discus throw broke the record in the late 1980s—before robust steroid testing….
The physical difference detected in track and field permeates all sports, most measurably in golf and basketball where we can conduct comparisons. Golf courses for the PGA Tour are 7,200 yards long on average; LPGA courses average 6,500 yards. Consider the 2014 US Opens, when both the Men’s and Women’s Open were held at Pinehurst No. 2 course in North Carolina. Presumably the fairways and the greens were quite similar, though some variation from the weather and wear on the course may have factored into the scores. The women’s course played 6,600 yards long; the men’s at 7,500 yards. The women’s winner was Michelle Wie at -2 (the cut was +9), while Martin Kaymer shot -9 to win the men’s event (where the cut was +5).
He concludes:
Sports scream: “Some playing fields can’t be leveled. Some competitors are better than others!” In this, sports speak the truth. There is no fine line between athletic accomplishments for women and men. Men are generally bigger, stronger, and faster. Where strength and speed and agility are the factors determining success, human beings watch men’s sports.
Sports bring out some of the differences between the sexes. Sports are valuable ballast in the American democratic regime. Would that we could acknowledge differences and celebrate them instead of burying them under a mountain of false hopes. Would that we could allow reality to govern our thoughts as they do our actions.
A sensible approach to equality in sports would be to acknowledge differences between men and women. Men are more interested in sports than women. Men are better at sports than women. We acknowledge the second reality through the very existence of women’s sports. We acknowledge the first reality in how we act.
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/04/16614/
And of course female athletes themselves are speaking out loud and clear on all this. I have written before about champions like Martina Navratilova who has taken a beating for stating the obvious: having transgenders in sport is in fact “cheating.”
For daring to say such obvious truths, the leftist media and all the usual suspects have slammed her. There have even been homosexual groups that have given her the flick for her comments. See here for more on this: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/12/23/family-wars-tennis-and-cultural-shift/
But Navratilova is not the only one speaking out. Recently a former British swimming great said that transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete in women’s sport. Sharron Davies, a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, said this in part:
It is not a transphobic thing – I really want to say we have no issue with people who are transgender. Every single woman athlete I’ve spoken to, and I have spoken to many, all of my friends in international sports, understand and feel the same way as me. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are in the races [now] are in a very difficult predicament when they can’t speak out. It maybe falls to the people who were competing [in the past] who would understand the predicament that is being faced at the moment to try to create a debate, and try to explain how we feel there needs to be a fair and level playing field.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/swimming/47428951
Finally, consider the words of a four-time Olympic champion from Brazil. Beach volleyballer Ana Paula Henkel has been quite vocal in calling out this war on women in sport. A year ago she wrote an “Open Letter to the International Olympic Committee” on this matter. It is well worth quoting from at length:
At a time when political militancy condenses and reduces thinking to ideological soundbites that deny reality, it’s not difficult to identify the trap where sports entities have fallen and which can take away all women’s sport. We know of sports strength to elevate the human spirit above conflict and war, especially every four years, when, during three magical weeks, we witness that which is best and most noble in all of us. We need to defend that legacy.
The truth most obvious and most respected by all who are involved in sport is the biological difference between men and women. If this weren’t the case why the need to establish categories separated by sex? Why is the men’s volley net set at 2.43m height and the women’s at 2.24m? A good sense superficial analysis of men and women’s physical traits in basketball is, enough to understand these categories are not interchangeable.
Swimmer Allison Schmitt set the 200m world record at 1:53.61, an admirable feat, but when compared to Michael Phelps’ 1:42-96 in the same modality, it only evidences the physical differences between men and women. Women’s under 17 football teams are used to training and losing against men’s teams. There is an infinity of examples about how it doesn’t make sense to mix men and women in sports where physical strength makes a difference to the end result.
Is it fair, to simply pretend away these undeniable biological differences in the name of a political ideology which will serve to restrict a space so hard won by women who struggled for it for so many centuries? How to accept “biological” men in fighting competitions, pitilessly hitting women, and then gaining acclaim, medals and money for it? Have we all gone so crazy as to permit such degradation?
And some more words of warning from Henkel:
Ever since my adolescence, I needed to prove, scientifically, that I am a woman to compete and, later, to maintain my achievements, titles and medals. How many women did not lose titles or were banned from sport specifically on account of this hormone which is offal in a normal male body? There used to be a mutual trust between athletes, entities and federations to keep sport clean, fair and honest, with no shortcuts nor trickery. This is now a relationship one step from being broken.
The sample material taken years ago for anti-doping tests of all athletes, is still kept today and can be, at any moment, accessed and tested again. A new measurement that proves testosterone levels incompatible with a female body can take away titles, achievements of years or decades ago, retroactively. This level of rigour has been completely abandoned to accommodate transexuals who, not long ago, were men, some of whom having competed professionally as men. What would a female transexual sample show? This is completely unacceptable.
There is a just and pertinent conversation to be had about the prejudices surrounding transexuality and homosexuality. Transexuals inclusion in society needs to be accepted, but this rushed and heedless decision to include biological men, born and built with testosterone, with their height, their strength and aerobic capacity of men, is beyond the sphere of tolerance. It represses, embarrasses, humiliates and excludes women.
We currently look on as sporting entities blind themselves to human biology, in an attempt to hoodwink science in the name of politico-ideological agendas. We currently look on a moral perversion against women and the complicity of sport authorities around the world in a supreme form of misogyny. A declaration of good intentions, on the part of entities responsible for protecting scrupulous and correct sport, is not sufficient to justify such sizeable absurdity.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/martin-dufresne/open-letter-to-the-international-olympic-committee/10160127491350595/
Absolutely. But the militants, the activists, and the reality-deniers do not seem to care. They appear to be hellbent on seeking to destroy women’s sport, and even women themselves, as they push their radical gender-bending ideology.
[1987 words]