Women's sports may one day consist entirely of men

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I wouldn’t take anything Rod Liddle has to say remotely seriously. The man is a disgrace to his profession.
 
From tthe article: " Writing in the Sunday Times of London, Martina Navratilova described it as ‘insane’ and ‘cheating’ that men who have transitioned should be allowed to compete against women."

And Martina is absolutely right.

I wouldn’t take anything anyone who supports biological men competing as women says too seriously…
 
I don’t disagree with what Martin Navratilova says. But I do think that Rod Liddle is alarmist and offensive. He deliberately discusses transwomen in terms that are intended to be crude and derogatory. This, for example, is what he has to say about Rachel McKinnon:
Her appearance on the podium provoked some discussion. It wasn’t simply that Rachel was quite obviously a man, but that she hadn’t even the grace to disguise herself very much. Usually when men transition, they put a bit of effort into it — maybe some lippy, a pair of staple-on breasts etc. It’s not usually very convincing but hell, at least they tried. Not Rach. She just looked like a large bloke in spectacles. If you rummaged around in her shorts, I wonder what you would discover — possibly the usual frank’n’beans, so to speak.
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It clearly is not the case that ‘Women’s sports may one day soon consist entirely of men’. Just take the case of Caster Semenya. She is a cisgender woman who happens to have an atypical physiology that some people have perceived as giving her an unfair advantage in competition. She has now spent ten years of her career struggling to assert her right to compete as a woman. And she is, by anybody’s criteria, a woman. In light of Semenya’s difficulties, as a woman, is it really plausible to imagine that transwomen will routinely be allowed to compete as women without facing invasive, expensive, and time-consuming challenges which will inevitably be appealed right up to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland?

Furthermore, one has to ask just how likely it is that significant numbers of transwomen will wish to compete, or be capable of competing, in women’s sport at any particularly high level. The fact is that there are very, very few transwomen and that even fewer out of this already small group have any exceptional ambition or ability in sports.
 
Didn’t read the article, but I’ve heard a lot about it in bicycling.

Basically, you get a some professional bicyclists who spend years in the middle-of-the-pack, who suddenly decide that they’re really women… and all of a sudden, they’re brilliant athletes in comparison to the biological women. The biological women are then in the uncomfortable position of either telling it like it is, and looking like (a) bad sports for having lost, and (b) being politically incorrect for not embracing their new competitor’s personal sense of self; or (c) murmuring something polite about how awesome it is that women’s sports are embracing everyone.

In the meantime, the guy is all, “I’m amazed I was able to pull off a victory, because all the hormone therapy has weakened me from my usual strength and stamina…!” and the less-impressed of his biologically female competitors are like, “Um, you still have male lungs and a male skeletal system, even if the musculature on top of them has changed.”

It also comes up in high school wrestling. For example, there was the case of a girl who decided she would transition into a boy-- but because she was biologically female, she was competing with the other girls. And of course, she trounces them, because she’s full of testosterone treatments, and the girls are annoyed.

It would be more straightforward if there were, say, a set of rules about what sort of substances you could put into your body if you were to be allowed to compete… maybe combined with a set of rules about the biological gender you were born with… and if you don’t meet all the criteria, maybe you need to focus on other things besides sports for a bit… Hrmm… 😉
 
This problem did not start with Caster Semenya; at least in regards to World Athletics. Ever since drug testing started within the sport, women have been tested for testosterone levels. This is in an effort to establish a level that is a constant within females. At the early stages (1970’s & 1980’s), the concern was with female athletes taking male base hormone substances to improve their performances. At that time, we were witnessing a lot of females from Eastern Bloc Countries that were clearly on some type of substance.

Semenya introduced a new dilemma. She is not a transgender or a drug induced athlete (she has never failed a drug test). The World Governing body for Athletics (IAAF), conducted an investigation that included physically examining Caster. Unfortunately, that report became public and resulted in an embarrassment for all involve. The latest (that I have read) is that she will have to have her testosterone levels regulated to make certain they stay in compliance to what the IAAF considers acceptable for female athletes. If she does not comply, she will not be able to compete in middle-distance events; where she is the reigning Olympic 800 meter Champion.

Hence, this was not a problem introduced by the arrival of transgender athletes. In athletics, the sports has dealt with the issue of distinguishing the genders. These issues are handled with adherence to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) or Switzerland as you label them.

Female Athlete have fought hard and continue to fight to establish a level playing field for all those that participate. It certainly does not help the cause when libertarian fanatics ignorantly bloviating their comments from some lowly visited website.
 
Much credit to Martina Navratilova for being one of the few public figures who has the guts and the courage to speak the truth. These men wanting to compete in women’s sports are cheaters and frauds. Pure and simple. I’m sure many public figures agree but are afraid to speak up. Because of their own selfishness and lunacy these men are only benefitting themselves while harming women’s sports.
 
On the other hand, I recall a woman who was the top swimmer in her college women’s swim team. She transitioned to male and became about the 20th best swimmer on the men’s team. She refused to have a hysterectomy because although she identified as a man, she said that she might one day want to bear a child.
 
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You outline very well that this is a complex subject with a long history.

It’s interesting that your post identifies three distinct but connected phenomena: (1) female athletes who use male hormones as a way of cheating, (2) female athletes who have a naturally occurring abnormality that may be an advantage, (3) athletes who are male-to-female transsexuals who may have an advantage because, although their hormones are artificially altered, they retain some masculine characteristics.

I do have a lot of sympathy for Semenya, because to my mind she is simply a woman whose endocrine abnormality makes her an exceptional athlete. I appreciate the argument that her condition means that other female athletes cannot compete with her on a level playing field, but she is not cheating, she just has happens to have a condition that makes her exceptional. You may be familiar with the basketball player Gheorghe Mureșan. He is 231 cm (or 7’7") tall as a result of a disorder of the pituitary gland. He is exactly the same height as another basketball player, Manute Bol, whose height is attributed to genetics rather than an endocrine disorder. I don’t think that anybody has ever claimed that it is unfair that Mureșan is so tall. He is simply a person who has an abnormality that has proven useful in his chosen field. One could say the same about Radu Marian, a male singer who sings in the vocal range of a soprano due to an endocrine disorder.

As you say, Rod Liddle does nothing to advance the state of the debate on the issue. He clearly has no interesting in trying to understand the very difficult scientific and legal issues involved. I’m not even sure that he’s particularly interested in the sport. It’s just another opportunity for him to share his malicious and hysterical concerns about transgender people.

By the way, I mention the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland because it is the final court of appeal for cases referred from the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
 
If these instances are so rare, why the increasingly strident demands to change the rules for them?
 
etcustodiatte said:
Anyone else think this could just be solved by creating additional transgender/gender-neutral categories?
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Not likely. Gender ideology will argue that a transwoman is not fundamentally trans or neutral or between. She is and always was a woman, never was a man, was only mistaken for man earlier in life, and is now correctly recognized as the woman she always was.
 
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That is why I take offence of the article. The Internet has just made it so easy for individuals with extremist views to propagate their message. The article implies as if sports are encountering an invasion of transgender athletes stating among the examples; “the fastest female college sprinter in the US is CeCe Telfer.” But it would not take more than a quick Google search to discover that this is a fallacy. The personal bests (PBs) credited to Telfer would not even be impressive for a High School female. I guess the mantra is true; Your entitle to your own opinion but not your own facts.

I also have sympathy for Semenya. I was enthralled when I first notice her in the Berlin 2009 World Championships. She ran so smoothly and then appeared to pull always effortlessly in the last two hundred meters in a very impressive time. However, when the excitement settled for me, I began to take note of her advantages due to her physique. I was not alone in making the comparison and the sport has found itself having the address a new dilemma.

It is ignorant to assume that sports are just going to openly accept a participant in a female competition because they state that they are a female. The fundamental tenant is to create a level playing field; otherwise a circus is created that takes away from the credibility.

Referencing Berlin 2009 again. How much motivation does it provide an athlete like Jenny Meadows if she finds herself always competing against someone with a unique advantage? I don’t follow basketball but I don’t remember Manute Bol receiving much attention other than for his size? What if his height made him extremely better than anyone else on the court? I am sure the NBA would have introduced a player height limit.
 
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There are so many women in athletics that have worked hard to excel. I personally know a female soccer official that has qualified to officiate men’s games as a national referee. The international governing body for soccer/futbol have established minimum physical qualifications for officials - such as running a certain speed in a certain distance.

Running speeds are not the only qualification for being an elite soccer official - that one is the hardest for women to accomplish due to the nature of our bodies. When males decide to declare themselves as female and beat us at everything - that’s abusive and twisted. It cheapens athletics.
 
Leo2014 said:
How much motivation does it provide an athlete like Jenny Meadows if she finds herself always competing against someone with a unique advantage?
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It’s one thing to be up against someone born with a unique advantage; at least one might be able to come in second or third, but to know that at any moment one might find oneself competing against one, then two, then three, and so on, guys willing to call themselves girls for long enough to get a college scholarship they would have been unable to compete for as their biological sex kinda discourages one from entering into that sport, doesn’t it?
 
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