{"id":47074,"date":"2019-02-27T03:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T08:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47074"},"modified":"2019-02-26T11:19:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T16:19:22","slug":"transgender-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/02\/27\/transgender-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barbara Kay<\/a> explains why she is against allowing transgender athletes to compete with cisgendered women:<\/p>\n

Sport is one area where the community\u00ad will resist \u201csocial justice\u201d initiatives if they conflict with sport\u2019s bedrock principles of a level playing field and zero tolerance for cheating. Up until about five minutes ago in the long history of sport, that meant women competed against women and men competed against men in all sports where advantage lies in size, power and\/or speed.<\/p>\n

When a biologically male runner or cyclist who ranks as middle of the pack in men\u2019s races becomes the gold medallist in a Women\u2019s race, he cheats the silver and bronze women athletes beside him on the podium, and especially the woman who came in fourth. But he also cheats people who came out to see a clean race. Joe and Jane Public know unfairness and reality denial when they see it, and it sucks all the joy out of the word \u201ccompetition\u201d for them.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Athlete Ally is one of a constellation of LGBT advocacy groups that \u201care helping sport organizations in Canada become more inclusive.\u201d This quotation is taken from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport\u2019s most recent policy paper, \u201cCreating Inclusive environments for Trans Participants in Canadian Sport.\u201d Designed as a policy guidance tool for sport organizations, it was developed by the \u2018Trans Inclusion in Sport Expert Working Group,\u2019 which I will hereafter refer to as the EWG. If you want to get a flavour of the kind of anti-science Kool-Aid our sports brain trust is drinking, read this document.<\/p>\n

It begins factually enough. The paper notes that the vast majority of sport participation in Canada is focused on recreation and development. At this level, trans inclusion is not a big deal, because it\u2019s all about fun and skill building. It is only for the \u201cvery small minority\u201d of Canadian athletes who continue into high performance that competitive advantage becomes an issue. Enter the EWG. And here we leave facts behind and enter La La Land.<\/p>\n

Sex, the EWG says, \u201cis usually assigned at birth.\u201d No. Sex is established during gestation according to chromosomal development. Sex is observed at birth, not assigned. Gender, the EWG says, \u201cis not inherently connected to one\u2019s physical anatomy.\u201d No. Sex and gender are connected for 99% of humanity, and therefore \u201cinherent\u201d by normal metrics.<\/p>\n

The definition of the word \u201ctrans,\u201d for sports purposes, according to the EWG, \u201cincludes but is not limited to people who identify as transgender, transsexual, cross dressers (adjective) or gender non-conforming (gender diverse or genderqueer).\u201d This is quite a puzzling mashup. Cross-dressing males do not believe they \u201care\u201d female. Neither do non-conforming males and females who have no wish to transition.<\/p>\n

But the document does not address this important inconsistency, nor the alarming imprecision of \u201cnot limited to.\u201d From what they state in this definition, EWG is okay with cross-sex competing by biological males who do not believe they are females and females who do not believe they are male, but whose appearance or fetishes are atypical for their sex. We\u2019re off to a very confusing start. Things don\u2019t improve.<\/p>\n

Indeed, to be trans can mean almost anything an individual wants it to mean (\u201cnot limited to\u2026\u201d), according to this document: \u201cIt is important for sports organizations to understand that each individual is different. There is no single transition process and each person will make different choices,\u201d including, significantly, \u201cwhether they undertake hormonal or surgical transitions.\u201d <\/p>\n

And \u201c[a]n individuals\u2019 personal choice to not use hormones does not make them any less trans nor do these choices change their right to be recognized as the gender with which they identify \u2014 man, woman, both or other.\u201d In short, the definition of trans, to be accepted by official governing sports bodies, is left entirely to an individual\u2019s \u201csense\u201d of gender identity, completely untethered from biology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Kay explains why she is against allowing transgender athletes to compete with cisgendered women: Sport is one area where the community\u00ad will resist \u201csocial justice\u201d initiatives if they conflict with sport\u2019s bedrock principles of a level playing field and zero tolerance for cheating. Up until about five minutes ago in the long history of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,53,18],"tags":[198,254,196,997,43],"class_list":["post-47074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","category-sports","tag-equalrights","tag-gender","tag-lgbt","tag-socialjustice","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cfg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47075,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47074\/revisions\/47075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}