I Reached Out to a "Middle-Aged Trans Woman" to Discuss Women and Sports. Here's How It Went.
"If you believe trans women aren't actually women, just say so, and explain why."
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Have you noticed how upset girls and women are when defeated by males (transwomen)? Have you noticed the protests and boycotts and lawsuits? Do female feelings matter?
Before I initiated the conversation mentioned in the title, I was feeling encouraged that a few trans influencers seemed to be tiptoeing, however tentatively, toward acknowledging the need female athletes have for our own sports category. Maybe, I thought, they could peer-influence people like the soccer player below, who responded defiantly when the U.K.’s Football Association restricted the female category to actual females last month:
Joanna Harper
Joanna Harper, for instance, is a medical physicist who has lobbied for granting men access to female sports. Harper now admits that male performance advantage persists even after testosterone suppression.
Julia Serano
Julia Serano is a writer, musician, biologist, and trans activist. Serano “lived as a man” for 40 years, came out as trans about ten years ago and now, presumably, “lives as a woman” – though what does that mean? Isn’t that something only a man can do — and only by embracing sexist stereotypes of how women should dress and behave? Those are the very stereotypes feminism has long sought to extinguish.
Serano, who has 4,400 subscribers on Substack, grants that “the idea of someone who ‘used to be a man’ being included in the women’s category is likely to strike some people as unfair.”
Right. Almost 80 percent of the American public.
Serano goes on to say:
Characterizing trans girls as boys in a sports context would lead one to characterize them as such in other contexts, too.
Right.
After all, if trans girls are really boys when they’re playing sports, then they would also be considered boys in the bathroom, boys in medical offices and, thus, denied access to female hormones.
Exactly. Sports shine a bright light on the boyness of boys. It’s hard to unsee that.
Speaking of which: Here’s Andraya Yearwood, one of two boys who dominated Connecticut high school girls’ track and field between 2017 and 2020.
Serano’s bottom line:
Trans sports bans are… a stepping stone toward further restrictions. This is why trans people almost unanimously oppose them. And it’s why you should too.
So, okay, I’m too much of an optimist. One concession about “striking some people as unfair” did not mean Serano was about to start waving Save Women’s Sports banners.
Sonja Black
But I felt even more encouraged by Sonja Black, a “writer, editor, dad,” and “middle-aged trans woman who spent over 50 years with the world believing I was a man.”
Here are some quotes from a recent story of Black’s:
Competitive fairness demands that cis [sic] women shouldn’t have to compete against trans women.
I’d rephrase it this way — women shouldn’t have to compete against men — but was hearted to see that Black is thinking about this in terms of what’s fair for women.
That may be a counterintuitive claim for a trans woman to make, but I do. Why? Because there's no point having a competition if you know from the start that it's not fair.
Right. If it’s not fair, it’s not sporting. See why this gave me hope?
Sporting bodies establish divisions and brackets in support of competitive fairness. This is, ultimately the solution.
Yes.
The problem is that our society has made an implicit assumption that gender is an appropriate basis for one of these divisions.
Actually, it’s sex, not gender, that is the appropriate basis, and it’s not an assumption. It’s a fact. We have sports data dating back more than a century. The fact that men have performance advantages is well established. The whole point of the female category is to exclude men so women have a chance to win on their own terms.
“Biological sex is the single most important determinant of athletic performance that is known.” – Dr. Ross Tucker, PhD, Physiology
The Katie Ledecky Example
Here’s an example from just last week:
On April 30, Katie Ledecky swam the second-fastest-ever 1500-meter swim – for women – in 15:24.51. She beat her closest rival, Jillian Cox, by a whopping 39 seconds. Ledecky already owns the world record. It’s hard to imagine a more dominant athlete.
Yet American Bobby Finke set the men's world record for that distance at the 2024 Paris Olympics by swimming almost a minute faster than Ledecky, in 14:30.67.
Imagine everything Finke could have done – raise his arms in triumph, catch his breath, get out of the pool, remove his cap and goggles, dry off, take a seat – in 54 seconds, while watching Katie swim almost another two full laps in the 50-meter Olympic pool.
Without a female category, Katie Ledecky, who holds the 22 fastest times in the women’s 1500-meter freestyle, and has won more world championships than Michael Phelps, would not have even qualified for the 2024 Olympics.
Female is a fact, not a feeling.
Back to Sonja Black
The real question, the one we should be asking but that I have never seen anyone bring up, is this: How can sports maintain competitive fairness while respecting the lives and identities of all participants?
This is the question that has guided the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group for five years. Our tagline: Female sports for females. Respect for all.
Wouldn’t it be lovely, I thought, if trans influencers would tell trans-identified males: “Look, we made a mistake. We need to let women have their sports and spaces. It’s not right to pocket their medals, trophies, and prize money, nor to stand naked in their showers. Go play with the men. You’ll be fine. You need not be ‘affirmed’ every moment of each day. Women who identify as trans (“transmen”) compete in the female category all the time, so it’s an untenable and disingenuous argument that we (“transwomen”) need to play against women.”
If only trans influencers would admit males’ maleness and relinquish all claims to female sports and spaces, society would surely become more amenable to granting all males — regardless of attire, belief, identity, or degree of sex-stereotype conformity — what Sonja Black calls “social fairness”: decency and respect. The law already grants them the same legal rights as everyone else.
I drafted this article, reached out to Sonja, introduced myself, noted that we agreed on some points, and offered to send Sonja the draft. Here are some of Sonja’s comments, edited only for length, reprinted with permission, and interspersed with a few replies:
Hi! Thanks for getting in touch, and for the inquiry. I appreciate it! You're right; there are different ways of seeing it. My particular way of seeing it is, "it's dumb to have gendered sports at all."
Yes, this is a radical take. Yes, it would upend the way sports are currently conducted. It is the only path I can see for providing both competitive and social fairness for all.
Your language in this article is problematic. Trans women are not "trans-identified males". Trans women are women. Referring to us as "male" is as incorrect as it is offensive and disrespectful.
No, I will not tell trans sportswomen to "let women have their spaces," We are women, too.
On what grounds do you declare that trans women "need not be affirmed every moment of each day"? If you have not lived a life experiencing what lack of affirmation feels like, what it does to a person, I suspect you cannot understand the importance that affirmation holds.
Mariah: True. But if you’re saying this is a mental health issue, then I sympathize but will not stand aside as girls and women are asked to sacrifice their own rights to fair sports and safe spaces for the sake of anyone else’s feelings. We have our own feelings, our own athletic needs. Have you noticed how upset girls and women are when defeated by males (transwomen)? Have you noticed the protests and boycotts and lawsuits? Do female feelings matter?
You consistently misgender trans women athletes as "male" or "men". You referred to Andraya Yearwood as a "boy." If you believe trans women aren't actually women, just say so, and explain why.
Mariah: Transwomen are male. I use the word male not to offend anyone, but to educate. I understand that some men feel alienated from their own bodies and from the traditional masculine role. I hope they learn to accept their bodies, reject stereotypes, and dress as they please.
But males cannot magically change themselves into females through feeling (and how would they know what “feeling like a woman” feels like? Female is a fact, not a feeling) or belief (that’s what freedom of religion is for) or medical procedures, which are dangerous and irreversible, even after feelings change.
If “gender” indicates a belief, sure, people can change gender as often as they like. But women’s rights, including the right to single-sex sports and locker rooms, are not based on mutable beliefs or identities. Like other legally protected classes, women are granted rights based on our unique biology – and our unique need for protection from male violence.
If society were to expand the definition of “woman” to include male people, it would render women’s rights “incoherent,” as the U.K. Supreme Court recently ruled. “Woman” must mean what it has meant for millennia: “biological women,” the court said.
My response sent directly to Sonja:
You gave me a lot to think about, and in a very respectful way. There aren’t many conversations going on, as far as I can tell, that involve this kind of cross-cultural dialogue, especially among strangers. I really appreciate it. I’ll revise the story.
Sonja’s reply:
Thank you for taking all of that in the spirit in which it was intended. There aren't many cis people, either pro- or anti-trans, who can take any kind of criticism or disagreement without immediately turning defensive. I appreciate that more than I can easily convey.
As always, I look forward to your comments.
See also:
Mariah, you have been more than reasonable, more than accommodating, more than "kind" (gawd, how people have perverted that word), more than generous, for years now.
Sorry, but these people are fucking nuts. They're not interested in being reasonable, accommodating, generous, kind. They're interested in shoving their ideology down everyone else's throats. I am so sick of it.
I think it’s getting clearer that reaching out to middle aged male transvestites to dialogue about the immense damage they have wrought and continue to wreak on women and children is not going to result in any changes in their behavior. What they are doing *is* intended to harm women. We’ve been pluckily approaching this problem from a normal, considerate, female and fairness perspective and what we are up against is the opposite of that. The term ‘narcissism’ has been overused of late but it certainly fits the trans behavior. Asking these men to consider their impact on others is simply not going to work. They do not care because it *is* all about them. The lie that they ‘just want to live their lives’ is the perfect new masquerade for this cohort and a suitably bold and egregious one; a demure and eminently reasonable facade hiding a deep loathing of women. A loathing so twisted it has always been expressed by the mocking caricature and degradation of its target. These demonstrably mentally unwell men have no business being in women’s and children’s spaces. We used to know that. We still know that. They’ve gotten shockingly far on the uncritical, victim-obsessed myopia of much of the progressive left but it can’t continue. The dissonance has to peak. And it’s anyone’s guess what that will look like, but it won’t be due to these men admitting what they’re about.
On the flip side, well done to you for documenting and being one of the reasonable people in the room—the old adage of giving a person enough rope, etc. has run smack into needing a bigger boat. This is madness like Ahab. We’re along for the ride until we decide not to be.