Jettison the Johnson: Transwomen Athletes Crashing Female Sports Will Only Hurt the Game

As the Biden administration moves to make it illegal to deny the participation of birth males in female sport, a number of courageous athletes and academics are beginning to speak out on the issue, warning that the presidential orders will have disastrous consequences on their profession, and possibly their lives.

On the very same day of his locked-down inauguration, Joe Biden signed off on dozens of executive orders, including one gem entitled, ‘Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation’. The controversial legislation, which has never been the subject of serious debate at the governmental level, moves to allow transgender women (i.e. biological males that self-identify as females), who have undergone male puberty, to compete in women’s sports. What could go wrong?

To better understand what the future of women’s sports may look like in the future, take a moment and watch the Mixed Martial Arts fight between Fallon Fox (see featured image) and Tamikka Brents from 2014. Fox, the first openly transgender athlete in MMA history, subjected Brents to a brief but brutal pummeling that resulted in a fractured skull and concussion. Now with the passage of Biden’s order, such displays of aggression on the field of broken dreams and bones promise to occur with increasing regularity. What is very odd about Biden’s executive order, clearly the brainchild of the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is that it aims to protect a minuscule segment of the population, while leaving the majority exposed to tremendous risk of injury. Are the social justice warriors only interested in protecting minority groups for the supposed moral high ground it gives them when preaching their flawed message of ‘equality and inclusivity’?

In any case, the Democrats, despite the conceit that theirs is the ‘party of science,’ blatantly ignore any medical evidence that disproves the notion that females can compete on a level playing with the males. After all, just because a person feels that they are trapped in the wrong body with the wrong sex does not mean that those feelings can alter biological fact.

“Males are five inches taller than females, they have longer arms, a greater reach and they can generate more speed and larger hand spans,” explained Dr. Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist and university lecturer. “Males have 40 percent more muscle mass, and forty percent less body fat. The muscle they have is denser…and higher proportion of fast-twitch fibers, which are the fibers responsible for explosive movement…”

What is the main driver of these significant physical differences between males and females? That would come down to testosterone, the powerful game-changing hormone released in males during puberty that Hilton refers to as “one hell of a drug.”

“It has delivered us athletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps,” the professor continued, before dropping a tongue-in-cheek remark that underscored its desirability among athletes looking for a competitive edge. “As the original anabolic steroid, used widely in the 1980s in state-led doping programs, it has almost certainly delivered us a fair few elite females too.”

The proponents of transgender females in women’s sports, however, argue that biological males are able to pare down their testosterone levels through a number of medical treatments, including the injection of estrogen, the female hormone, and the surgical removal of the testes, the endocrinal gland responsible for testosterone secretion. In 2003, the International Olympic Committee said these medical steps were sufficient enough to permit transgender women to compete alongside biological females in competition. In order for a transwoman to qualify to compete among biological females, the IOC required: testes removal at least two years before competing; legal status as female; hormones in line with female profiles.

These measures were deemed adequate – despite little study into the question – to ensure fair competition. However, a strange thing happened between 2003 and 2015, when the IOC rather radically changed the rules in the middle of the game, so to speak. That strange thing seems to have been the further radicalization of the progressive movement. Today, the IOC no longer demands that the biological males submit to castration in order to compete with the ladies. All that is required is that they keep their testosterone levels below a certain level. But does keeping testosterone in check make a difference? Yes, it does, but not nearly enough to level the playing field between transwomen and females.

According to one study, published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, “transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events.”

Dr. Hilton summed up the situation, which should give anyone pause who cares about the safety of females competing against transwomen: “even five years past transition and their testes long gone, [transwomen] retain more muscle mass and remain much stronger than reference females.”

Nevertheless, civil liberty groups, like the ACLU – without citing a single professional medical study – have come out in full support of transwomen competing head-to-head against females.

A Call for Balance

This month, and not a moment too soon, a group of world class athletes and sports organizations announced the formation of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group created to “protect girls’ and women’s sports and accommodate transgender athletes.” Some of the high-profile names among the group include Olympic gold medalist swimmer Donna de Varona, International Tennis Hall of Famer Martina Navratilova, Olympic gold medalist swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, and Lyn St. James, former Indycar and LeMans racecar driver.

The Working Group proposes that “the Biden Administration and Congress to reject ‘either/or’ positions and instead to adopt an ethical, science-based approach to the protection of girls’ and women’s sport.”

Martina Navratilova, a winner of 18 Grand Slam singles titles, emphasized that she supported transwomen rights but that the physical advantages for transgender women competitors who had experienced male puberty were “pretty obvious.”

In an interview with the BBC, Navratilova expressed opposition to “an all-inclusive situation where trans men and women, just based on their self identification [with the opposite sex], would be able to compete with no mitigation, no rules outside of that whatsoever. And that clearly would not be a level playing field.”

Although that would seem to be a logical approach for everyone, not least of all for the females who must compete against biological males, the initiative is already being attacked on the grounds that it limits “fairness and opportunity” for transgenders in sports.

According to Sharon McGowan, chief strategy officer of Lambda Legal, which works for LGBTQ civil rights, “The kinds of proposals that unfortunately [Navratilova] and others have been promoting would really sweep way too far in terms of limiting the opportunity of transgender children being able to participate in a way that ensures fairness and opportunity,” as quoted by Reuters.

Unfortunately, it looks as though the only way Biden’s executive order will receive the fair amount of scientific scrutiny is when more females begin to suffer serious injury while competing against transwomen. But even then nothing guarantees that the woke crowd will awaken from its stupor.

Admitting to its faults is not a strong suit of the radical progressives, even when lives are on the line, and this stubbornness could deal the world of women’s sports a truly fatal blow.

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