Adult males who have only recently ‘identified’ as women are taking top prizes away from female athletes.
Adult males who have only recently ‘identified’ as women are taking top prizes away from female athletes.
T he Biden administration has proposed a rule — purportedly based on Title IX, which bars discrimination in education “on the basis of sex” — that would make it illegal for schools to bar males who “identify” as transgender women from competing in women’s sports teams.
The stakes are high: A school that fails to comply could lose federal funding.
The Biden rule would encourage aggressive campaigns by radicals and transgender activists to allow males to compete against girls and women and deprive them of athletic championships, medals, trophies, and related honors.
At the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships, for example, Lia Thomas — who as William Thomas had competed for three years on the University of Pennsylvania men’s swimming team — won both a championship final and preliminary races to qualify for three other women’s championship finals. Allowing Thomas to do this took away a gold medal from a woman and prevented other women from reaching championship finals.
In 2019, CeCe Telfer, formerly Craig Telfer, who had previously competed for three years on the Franklin Pierce University men’s track team, similarly won the NCAA Division II women’s 400 meter hurdles championship.
And in 2017–2019, two men who identified as transgender women won 15 Connecticut high-school track championships.
The harm to women extends beyond losing. “We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia,” said University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who tied with Thomas for fifth place in one of the championship finals. “We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room, we turned around and there’s a 6-foot-4 biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia.”
The new rule proposed by the Biden administration contains an exception. It will allow schools to bar men from women’s teams in “competitive high school and college athletic environments” when barring them will support “an important educational objective, such as fairness in competition.”
Good luck with that. The risk of costly prolonged litigation is likely to deter schools from attempting to apply the exception — particularly because the rule reportedly will not include specific guidance on criteria that schools may consider in deciding to prohibit males from women’s teams.
The Biden administration, moreover, is already under pressure from transgender activists to eliminate the exception. These activists are so militant that this month they violently attacked swimmer Riley Gaines after she gave a speech at San Francisco State University.
The Biden administration’s proposed rule is wrong. The policy adopted in March by the World Athletics Council, the international organization that governs competitive running and track and field, is the right model for sports governance.
The World Athletics policy bars males who identify as transgender women from competing in the female category unless they transitioned before the onset of puberty and have, since puberty, kept their testosterone levels below a prescribed limit.
World Aquatics, which governs competitive swimming, diving, and water polo, recently adopted a similar policy.
In addition to providing rules for competition, the World Athletics policy explains its solid foundation:
World Athletics wants to give equal opportunities to all athletes to participate in and excel at the sport, and to provide them with fair and meaningful competition conditions. . . . The substantial sex difference in sports performance that emerges from puberty onwards means that the only way to achieve the objectives set out above is to maintain separate classifications (competition categories) for male and female athletes. That difference is due to the physical advantages conferred on male athletes by the testes producing much higher levels of circulating testosterone than ovaries produce from puberty onwards in female athletes.
The World Athletics policy seeks to be inclusive but recognizes that its rule provides the minimum conditions for fair competition. It notes that transgender women “may wish to compete . . . consistent with their gender identity,” respects their dignity, and seeks “to be as inclusive as possible.” It “therefore seeks to place conditions on such participation only to the extent necessary to deliver fair and meaningful competition conditions.”
Males are welcome to identify as transgender women, but, at least at this stage of human development, they cannot (at least after the onset of puberty) transform their biological characteristics to substantially match relevant biological characteristics of females. This is the key point because for almost all competitive sports, biology is a critical factor, and that cannot be wished away.
John Fund is National Review’s national-affairs reporter. David M. Simon is a lawyer in Chicago.