Ten parents whose daughters are on the UPenn women’s swim team are among the latest to express outrage at a male swimmer being allowed to smash female records. The Daily Mail reports that in a letter to the NCAA, parents wrote that what’s “at stake here is the integrity of women’s sports.” And so, they are asking the NCAA to weigh in with an “official statement.” Good luck with that.
At present, the NCAA’s transgender policy is to allow male trans-identifying athletes to compete in the women’s team if they have undergone a year’s worth of testosterone suppression. Of course, this does next to nothing to mitigate the physiological sex-based advantages.
What the NCAA could do instead is settle the controversy once and for all by requiring transgender-identifying athletes to compete against their natal sex or else join a team willing to have a mixed team status. In many instances, including the case of the UPenn swimmer, the trans-identifying athlete did previously compete in the men’s team. Why does declaring a transgender status suddenly make this impossible? It’s not as if anything materially changes after saying, “I’m trans.”