Trying to undo an injustice

It is NOT transphobic to oppose inclusion of male-to-female transgender athletes in sports where they compete as individuals rather than on a team or as part of a relay.

The accusation is just a further example of how fraught the debate has become in recent years and the power of messaging — who controls the semantics, the definition, the allegedly more enlightened perspective.

In just about every contentious issue, the prevailing posture should be to cause the least harm, do the lesser wrong. Transgender individuals have certainly borne more than their share of stigma, animus and even violence. Which is an awful lot of bilious energy expended on a constituency that accounts for about 0.6 per cent of the population.

The small numbers make them further vulnerable to discrimination, attitudes that have driven anti-trans legislation in the United States — 78 bills passed so far in 2023, with more than 370 still actively working their way through the political process, laws that severely compromise trans health care, education and legal recognition.

Yes, the trend has been largely driven by the political right. But there is some mainstream consensus that doesn’t cleave to a political divide: Forbidding gender re-assignment surgery (which in fact has been a rarity) for minors and, increasingly, disallowing male-to-female (a disapproved phrase but I don’t know how else to put it clearly) competition against cis-gender females by athletes who’ve already gone through puberty. Because puberty changes everything — biologically, physiologically and hormonally.

Trans inclusion in this context has often meant erasing accomplishments of cis female athletes. I’d go so far as characterizing it as expunging those who were born and who continue to identify as girls and women.

This isn’t about preferred pronouns and who uses which washrooms because most sensible people don’t give a huge damn. Just be kind, be tolerant.

But the over-reach has been ridiculous on both sides. In January, for instance, Florida’s High School Athletic Association’s sports medicine advisory committed suggested high school athletes should submit proof of menstruation. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is poised to sign a bill that would ban trans athletes from playing college sports on teams that align with their gender identity rather than gender assigned at birth. Meanwhile, some companies have hired trans females to shill such female hygiene products

as tampons. It’s not going over well.

The research literature is too recent to draw absolute conclusions either way, including a report published in March by EAlliance – which describes itself as a “research hub for gender equality in sport” – claiming trans women have no biomedical advantage in elite sports, though “social factors such as nutrition and training qualities can affect this result.”

There’s just as much research — let’s not leave out common sense — concluding the opposite.

Last week, British Cycling, following a nine-month review that included consultation with 14 focus groups, became the latest sports governing body to bar transgender women competing in the female category at events , tightening participation rules to “safeguard the fairness” of the sport. The new rules will come into effect at the end of this year.

British Cycling did its best to tread carefully by not actually excluding anybody. The female category remains for those whose sex was assigned female at birth and transgender men who’ve not yet begun hormone therapy. The compromise is establishing a new category for male athletes, transgender women and men, non-binary individuals and those who were assigned male at birth.

The new policy is at odds with the International Cycling Union, which allows transgender women with reduced testosterone to take part in female

events. The ICU, however, is scheduled to announce results of its own policy review in August.

The British Cycling decision triggered an immediate backlash, most scathingly from 22year-old British cyclist Emily Bridges, who came out as a trans woman in October 2020. Earlier in her career, Bridges set a national junior men’s record over 25 miles, registering a time that was two minutes faster than any female cyclist had delivered before or since. She has considerable pedigree from when Bridges raced as a male competitor, albeit for the last three years adhering to testosterone-suppression therapies, as required for trans athletes.

In an Instagram post, Bridges called British Cycling a “failed organisation” that has forsaken its authority on the debate. “I’m having to consider an exit plan from this terrible island and figure out what point enough is enough. It terrifies me to exist at the moment … I don’t even know if I want to race my bike any more.”

Yet retired British swimmer Sharron Davies, silver medallist at the 1980 Olympics and author of “Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sports”, applauded the move, arguing that the trans row engulfing sports is “unfair” to aspiring female athletes.

Other notable athletes such as tennis luminary Martina Navratilova have steadfastly spoken out about trans athletes competing with women — and she has the social media bruises to show for it. Because beating up on women is also a sport.

World Aquatics, the governing body for swimming, voted last June to bar trans women from elite competition if they had experienced any part of male puberty. World Athletics followed suit this March. President Sebastian Coe said the decision to exclude trans women who had gone through male puberty was based on “the over-arching need to protect the female category.” British Rowing is considering banning transgender athletes from the women’s category as well unless they were born female — also in defiance of the sport’s global governing body.

World Athletics regulations around “Differences in Sex Development” has cut the maximum amount of plasma testosterone for affected athletes in half, to 2.5 nanomoles per litre. The athletes will also have to reduce their testosterone levels before the new limit for a minimum of 24 months to compete, double the previous time.

Among those impacted are two-time Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya — born female, raised female, with a body that naturally produces testosterone at a level much higher than most females. Hyperandrogenism is the term applied to a tiny percentage of female athletes who don’t fit neatly into predetermined gender classifications. Throughout her glittery career, Semenya has been forced to jump through all kinds of humiliating hoops. But she’s an outlier and not trans. In Tokyo, Semenya, from South Africa, was missing from the 800m starting line, along with the silver and bronze medallists from the Rio Games, all three refusing to take drugs that would reduce their naturally high testosterone levels as intersex athletes — meaning they were born with atypical chromosomes or sex characteristics, including in some cases internal testes that produce average male levels of testosterone.

It’s complicated. It’s a sensitive matter. But it’s sports, which is inherently selective. Doesn’t rise to the level of discrimination against transgender individuals that denies them proper health care or jobs or employment.

I’ve covered international competitions where female runners have lost to these exceptionally different athletes — not trans athletes but females born with unusual testosterone advantages — and at the end of a race the “losers” have held their own little separate celebrations.

It was poignantly sad to watch. There is no right or wrong. But with trans female athletes, there was a rush to accommodate, to include, which was arbitrary and unjust for cisgender women and girls.

It wasn’t fair. The wiser sports governing bodies are trying to un-do the inequity.