For Gender Identity Activists, Biological Reality Is Now Just an ‘Idea’ That Needs Defeating

Transgender rights group members protest against an “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally at the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

Commentary

For gender identity activists, allowing males to compete on female sports teams isn’t fundamentally about “inclusivity”; it’s about redefining reality. Now, however, even they are starting to admit this.

Laws that protect fairness in women’s sports are often ridiculed as “solutions in search of a problem.” Those of us who advocate such legislation are told that the specter of female athletes being forced to compete against males is just that, a specter—a product of our imaginations, a made-up nonissue.

Major media outlets mock these laws. A Huffington Post headline last month read, “These States Had Few, If Any, Trans Student Athletes. They Passed Sports Bans Anyway.” Teen Vogue agreed: “In reality, there are relatively few trans students playing high school sports, and one state even banned trans students from sports when there were no known trans athletes in the state.”

The implication: This isn’t a big deal.

But it is a big deal. Protecting women’s sports isn’t about targeting males who identify as transgender; it’s about preserving spaces for girls to compete against other girls. Increasingly, those spaces are being threatened.

Consider a hypothetical: What if girls had to compete not just against boys who identify as transgender, but against all boys? Absurd, right? Apparently not to the editors of The Atlantic, as a recent essay in the magazine makes exactly that case.

“Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense” is the title of the piece, and its author, Maggie Mertens, frames her argument as a “more integrated and inclusive approach” to sports.

Mertens attempts to argue from both ethical and scientific perspectives. She claims that having separate teams for boys and girls is “rooted in the idea that one sex is inherently inferior” and dismisses “sweeping generalizations about biological athletic advantages.”

The main thrust of her argument, however, isn’t ethical reasoning or scientific evidence. Instead, Mertens pits “traditional structures” against a “new generation of kids”:

“School sports are typically sex-segregated, and in America, some of them have even come to be seen as either traditionally for boys or traditionally for girls: Think football, wrestling, field hockey, volleyball. However, it’s becoming more common for these lines to blur, especially as Gen Zers are more likely than members of previous generations to reject a strict gender binary altogether. Maintaining this binary in youth sports reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting.”

Note the wording here. The “idea” of biological differences between the sexes reinforces a “gender binary” that some “reject.” But are differences between boys and girls just an idea? And can the “gender binary” be rejected?

Consider this: Male athletes enjoy a 10 to 50 percent performance advantage over comparably gifted and trained female athletes. And study after study has shown that testosterone suppression doesn’t eliminate that performance gap.

What’s more, male athletic advantages exist even before puberty. One recent study found that even at age 6, boys have significant advantages in cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, speed, agility, and power tests.

These differences are real. And they have real consequences.

In Connecticut, for example, two male athletes identifying as female won 15 state titles in track and field—titles that were previously held by nine different girls.

Or consider the case of Lia Thomas, the male swimmer who identifies as female and who competed this year on the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas dominated the competition all season long and in March won the NCAA women’s championship in the 500-yard freestyle.

These aren’t “sweeping generalizations.” They are facts, and they underscore biological realities.

Mertens bemoans the “gender binary’s influence on schoolkids” and argues that “a different youth-sports world is possible.”

On that point, she’s right: Such a world is possible. In fact, we know what that world looks like; it’s a world in which girls are almost never seen in the most elite divisions. Is such a world desirable? Fairness, scientific evidence, and common sense all answer a resounding “no.”

At its core, the debate over women’s athletics isn’t a debate over sports. It isn’t even a debate over gender identity, really. The biggest issue at stake—bigger than concerns about fairness, bigger than questions of “inclusion”—is the issue of reality.

And The Atlantic essay admits as much.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.