One thing the transgender movement depends on is pathos. That’s why activists try to frame the issue of women’s sports as if they’re the ones being attacked. It’s about “trans rights,” they say — when in reality it’s about women’s rights. Nobody is saying trans athletes can’t play sports. The argument is that they should play on a team that corresponds with their biological sex. It is men who must work to accommodate their trans-identifying male teammates. Not women.
And if it’s pathos they want, consider how including male athletes in female sports affects women. Yesterday, on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, the mother of a collegiate female swimmer who competed against UPenn’s transgender-identifying Lia Thomas, gave an emotional testimony. She said that male inclusion in female sports, even if hormonally impaired, “is not a measure of female athleticism or ability. This is not something we can aspire to. It is a new standard women are being asked to measure up to: That of a hormonally influenced male body.” National Review’s Caroline Downey has the full story.
Likewise, Cynthia Monteleone, a world-champion track-and-field star, has said she was told to “keep her mouth shut” by Team USA track-and-field after she raised concerns about male inclusion in female sports. “Words can’t describe how I felt walking up to that starting line in Spain next to a biological male-bodied athlete,” Montoleone told Senator Marsha Blackburn during a Facebook live stream.