World Athletics recently demonstrated that sporting bodies are likely to handle the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sport differently.
World Aquatics decided to bar trans athletes from competing, unless they had transitioned before their bodies had started the process of male puberty.
Their view is that the changes a boy’s body undergoes in becoming a man, which involves receiving a massive dose of naturally produced testosterone, is too advantageous, even years after undergoing gender reassignment surgery.
World Athletics, however, is taking a different approach, suggesting that trans athletes need to take hormonal medication and keep their testosterone levels below 2.5nmol/L for two years before competing.
It’s the same level that athletes with differences of sexual development, such as Caster Semenya, need to adhere to if they wish to compete in track events from 400m to the mile.
Semenya, wanting to run freely, has taken her case to the European Court of Human Rights. I do not think her case is synonymous with the case of trans athletes — they are two different issues.
My point is that there are different scientific approaches being used in the discussion around the inclusion of trans athletes.
The debate, I believe, can be uniformly settled by logical reasoning rather than science. I once read that Albert Einstein suggested that the mysteries of time, created by his theories of relativity, might be explained one day by philosophy rather than science. And maybe it can play a role in the realm of elite sport accommodating trans athletes or not.
Just to clarify, I believe transgender people are entitled to inclusivity in society.
But the human rights that apply to individuals to operate freely in society cannot be simply transposed into elite sport, and the reason for this should be obvious.
It is surely undeniable that sport is predicated on the idea of fair competition.
That’s why there are weight categories, age groups and, of course, gender differentiation.
Nobody thinks it would be fair to pit Usain Bolt against Florence Griffith Joyner in a competitive race. Their 100m world records are 0.91 sec apart. The American’s time from 1988 would have ranked her tied 1,135th among men in the world last year.
It’s no different in swimming. Mark Spitz’s four individual world records at the 1972 Olympics in Munich would not have qualified him in any of the freestyle and butterfly races over 100m and 200m at Tokyo 2020, though those times would have won gold (and set world records) in the four women’s events.
Gender differentiation is a crucial element of fair sport.
Another aspect, of course, is anti-doping, which seeks to avoid yet another form of unfair advantage.
If they hadn’t previously been elite athletes, they couldn’t possibly have identified as elite athletes in the first place. That would be like me saying that I identify as a Springbok prop and should be accommodated accordingly. It would be bizarre.
The next premise in this argument is that elite sport requires athletes to fulfil certain obligations to compete. Inclusivity cannot be allowed to trump fairness.
First, athletes have to be good enough to be there. Nobody wants to pay money to watch Bolt racing against me or my feisty friends on WhatsApp groups, some of whom even claim to have been fast once upon a time.
Second, those athletes have to fulfil other obligations to be there, for example, competing in the right weight, age and gender categories. They are also supposed to be clean of any performance-enhancing substances.
If they cross any of those lines they are immediately suspected of cheating.
Nobody is likely to disagree with the premise that sport must be fair.
Then we look at how transgender athletes fit into elite sport.
Was the male-born competitor who transitioned into a woman an elite athlete in the men’s gender classification?
If yes, that athlete should obviously not be allowed to compete as a woman because that would be blatantly unfair. Just imagine if Caitlin Jenner, who won decathlon gold while still known as Bruce at Montreal 1976, had transitioned in the 1970s to compete in the pentathlon, the women’s version of combined events back then.
And what if the trans athlete was not good enough to be an elite male athlete, but is now good enough to be an elite female athlete?
Rocketing from mediocrity to elite level is a disconnect in sport. It’s often indicative of drug use and gets flagged as suspicious, but we are supposed to find it acceptable for transgender athletes? Surely not.
Look at it from a different angle. Imagine if Neil Armstrong had leapt 10 metres on the moon and claimed that as a long-jump world record. He clearly would have had the unfair advantage of less gravity.
An average male competitor becoming a top female competitor cannot be considered fair.
As I understand it, identity is an important element for transgender people. I respect that.
But I cannot understand how any trans woman can argue that being an elite athlete is part of their trans identity.
If they had been elite male athletes, it would be intrinsically unfair to undergo gender reassignment surgery to compete against women.
And if they hadn’t previously been elite athletes, they couldn’t possibly have identified as elite athletes in the first place.
That would be like me saying I identify as a Springbok prop and should be accommodated accordingly. It would be bizarre.
The problem, I believe, is that we have stretched the notion of inclusivity into a realm where it does not belong.
Perhaps there are faults in my thinking, but as I see it right now, there is no reason to allow trans athletes to compete against women.
It’s just unfair.
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