The UK wants to discriminate against trans women athletes

A new proposal from the UK council of sport, which consists of organizers from its 6 major sporting organizations, have proposed a series of reforms meant to limit the participation of trans women athletes in sports at all levels.

The proposal consists of three separate approaches to trans inclusion: one in which trans women are openly allowed to compete as women as they currently are in most sports, a second which proposes to create two female divisions, one for those assigned female at birth, and an “open division” in which trans women can compete, and a third in which trans women are forced to compete with cis men.

The third position would in fact be an outright ban. In five years of research, I’ve never once come across an example of an out and already transitioned trans woman, competing in a serious athletic event or making a high level team, in men’s sports. It just doesn’t exist, and likely isn’t possible given how devastating HRT is to trans women’s athletic ability.

Anti-trans lobbyists like to pretend that trans women retain some inherent or magical “advantage” at sports thanks to their alleged “male biology,” however, only a small handful of sketchy studies have produced limited results on the matter. That doesn’t stop the diehards from making this an international issue.

I think the matter is rather simple. Trans women have been allowed to compete against women in some form in various sports for the last 50 years and yet there has never once been an elite trans athlete to dominate a women’s sport. Laurel Hubbard became the first trans woman ever to compete in the Olympics just a few months ago and she finished in last place, in weightlifting.

This issue, like every other anti-trans obsession, is just another campaign to label trans women as men. Literally every single argument used by transphobes seeks this endgoal, and athletics is just the same.

The disappointing part is seeing official sporting organizations buying into it. We already know that sports is a deeply chauvinistic sector of society, where men get nearly all of the resources and attention. The attitude that men are better than women at sports underlies this inequality, and the current trans debate reinforces that dynamic.

Rather than question their assumption of male superiority by looking at real world sporting results for trans women, these administrators lazily sat back and thought “penis strong, vagina weak” and created policy to match, just as they’ve done for the last 150 years.

I’m simply begging people to question the assumptions here. If trans women have some sort of advantage, how come we’ve literally never seen it at the highest levels of women’s sports in any sport? Statistically that doesn’t seem possible if, as transphobes claim, trans women are merely men in disguise.

Get a grip everyone. Relax and think for a minute. The answer is staring you in the face (and no I don’t mean the out of context pictures of trans athletes that always get spread all over the internet).