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July 30, 2024 - 12:00pm
For the past decade, “Is sex binary?” has become one of those questions to which one is not supposed to know the correct answer. Like “What is a woman?”, or “Is the Emperor naked?”, it functions as a test: the smarter you are, the more effort you will make to feign confusion.
As countless “enlightening” articles have taught us, it is gauche, unsophisticated, perhaps even a little bit racist to believe there are only two sexes. It’s like thinking only men can do maths, or only women can look after children.
This argument might be amusing to careerist academics, but it is less fun, one imagines, if the consequences of claiming there are no sex boundaries mean getting your head caved in by someone with 2.6 times greater punching power than you. Nonetheless, the International Olympic Committee has decided that two boxers who are biologically male shall be permitted to fight in the women’s categories in Paris.
Both Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Chinese Tapei’s Lin Yu-ting have previously failed biochemical tests for gender eligibility. Both were removed from last year’s Women’s World Boxing Championships for having XY chromosomes. It is not altogether clear whether their claims to be female constitute a deliberate act of deception or relate to differences in sex development (DSD), as neither boxer claims to be transgender. Nonetheless, it is not just unfair but unsafe for female boxers to have to compete against them. This is a moment when one might expect the sex denialists to admit that they’ve gone too far, but such a course of action is highly unlikely.
The inclusion of male people in female sporting categories might have started out as a complex, delicate question. One can feel great sympathy for those with DSD, who may have been raised as female only to be told they are biologically male. In recent years, particularly in the wake of increasingly aggressive trans activism, male inclusion in female sports has started to feel more like plain old entitlement. Unambiguously male competitors such as Lia Thomas, Laurel Hubbard, and Veronica Ivy have dared observers to point out the obvious. They have taken women’s places and prizes with the smug air of those who aren’t even trying to convince anyone that this is fair.
Those of us who expected male sports journalists not to stand for this — on the basis that women’s prisons and refuges might be unimportant when it comes to setting sex-based boundaries, but sport is sacred — have been sorely disappointed. Some have seemed to actively want male inclusion in female sports, a category they might not have seen as particularly authentic in its own right. Perhaps it has felt like payback for women wanting in on sports as a male domain. It’s that familiar anti-feminist argument: “you wanted to be the same as the men? Well, then, we’re only taking you at your word”.
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SubscribeFor sane people, men competing in any women’s sports is a red line.
For believers in the faith, there are no red lines.
Contrary to what this author implies in her closing paragraph the most enthusiastic supporters of transgender athletes and transgender people in female spaces in general are young women. Whereas the loudest voices I hear against men participating in women’s sports are other men.
Men have traditionally held back physically when dealing with women. So much so that most young women don’t seem to understand what men are capable of… or they refuse to admit it.
Yes, women that don’t have to compete against them
This is completely true. It’s also true that it is women in academia who have done the most to push this nonsense. The social justice agenda, the concept of gender, it’s all comes out of feminism. And there is probably an evolutionary psychological disposition that makes women slightly more concerned with fairness- equity over equality. And a slight difference at the population level becomes enormous at the tail end of the distribution. And women academics are absolutely the tail end of the distribution. Childless, cat women, etc..
Is this JD talking?
The writer is speaking of not men in general, but male sports journalists, whom she expected — wrongly, sadly — to care more about fairness because they (ostensibly) are passionate about the integrity of sport.
I, too, have the impression that a disproportionate number of people who support males in female sports are young women, even athletes. In the United States, these are post-Title IX females who seem not to appreciate the value of single-sex sports (having always benefited). Also, being “kind” and “inclusive” — even to the point of idiocy — is more expected of females than males. And, as you say, these women may not understand the reality of competing against men, though that is a level of ignorance difficult to understand. I don’t believe anyone believes males actually become females, and certainly not by simply saying so. There is a limit to human stupidity, right? (Please say yes.)
Yes.
Boone married Ted Bundy.
I kind of doubt it when you see gays marching for Palestine.
Fair point. And I’m gay.
“Post Title IX”, indeed. Thanks to the senility currently occupying the White House.
Sadly true. Still hoping legal challenges and the undoing of Chevron deference will keep Biden and other gender ideologues from gutting Title IX.
This is true so far as young women tend to be more attracted to left leaning progressive politics. But there aren’t many men turning up to protest. I haven’t seen them at sporting events with banners etc? I have heard one Boxer call this out so far, Barry McGuigan. Where are all the other male boxers who know exactly the power behind a male punch as they have landed them and recieved them? The likes of Gary Linekar who is very keen to discuss his politics but doesn’t care a jot for women being punched in the face.
Perhaps up the point that those young women are either beaten to the finish line or beaten to a pulp; after that, they think twice. But the woke religion demands blind allegiance.
Women have already gotten their skulls smashed in by men like wrestler Fallon Fox and have never competed again.
What you say is true, because men understand how much more powerful they are compared to women. Young women, like most young people, can be idiots. They are so caught up in trans ideology they refuse to accept this reality. As a woman, they make me more than a little angry.
One of the reasons why women cannot understand the instinctive disgust (I emphasize instinctive) of men-normies for sexually deviant men is that women do not understand the dangerous aspects of male sexuality.
Young women are synonymous with idiocy. They study hard and stupidly repeat everything their teachers have instilled in them. Their brains start working only with the birth of a child
.
PS. Sorry, for my dislikers: Studying is a woman’s favorite pastime. © Soviet physicist Lev Landau (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1962)
Women don’t understand male violence!? Since approximately 5 thousand women are murdered every year in the USA, while millions are assaulted and raped most women know male violence only too well. Some young women have not yet realized or experienced this reality, instead they listen to the trans drag MRA cult admonishing them to be kind .
There’s a big split between young women and older women.
Speaking as an older woman, I have to agree. There are some younger women who want a smack around the head to knock some sense into them. Happy to oblige.
That is what has become known as the Democrats’ college graduate (female) hive-mind.
Vance is starting to circle it for the first time. The coming election is only winnable as a war against the sexes where male voters can refer to woke (gender-based) cultural Maoism to counter Kamala’s appeal to abortion rights.
I just hope the women who fight them don’t have to get too badly hurt for everyone to wake up to this insanity.
They shouldn’t fight them. If they do, they are complicit. This is has to stop so that all women and girls can participate in sport – at all levels – in safety, and, unfortunately, it’s today’s sportswomen that have that responsibility thrust upon them.
You are absolutely right; they are complicit. Any woman who agrees to compete against a man in her sport is, as I once put it, volunteering for DEI. I think that undermining these men’s efforts would be a quicker solution than, for example, court challenges or appeals to the consciences of sports administrators.
For more on this, if anyone is interested, see https://erikhildinger.substack.com/p/volunteering-for-dei
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the victims. These athletes have trained all their lives for this. It’s easier said than done to simply walk away at the Olympics.
No, the same is said of girls being driven out of athletics in the USA – “they should refuse to race”. They tried this and a whole load of girls’ teams were suspended. They then lose not just their prizes but also the scholarships that are the only way to pay for HE for many USian children, possibly a motivation for the dozens of boys claiming to be girls this year. If the women boxers walk away they will forfeit their medals after years of training. The complicit managers and administrators need to do what is needed and withdraw the cheating men. They know they willl have to change the rules eventually, let it be now.
I suspect that betting hurt is what it will take for the morons who sanction this sort of thing to wake up.
I hope she gives him a toweling and sends him home with his “tail” tucked between his legs 😉
Seriously though, it’s a sad day.
That’s hardly the point. If she does, it will only boost the arguments of the crazies and put more women and girls at risk, at all sporting levels.
Agreed. The best outcome, unfortunately, would be if the male boxer knocks out the female boxer with the first blow in the first round and fractures her skull, rendering her an invalid after being carried off on a stretcher for the world to see. And if the male boxer responds by raising his fist in victory, every man in the audience should enter the ring and pummel the bloke into oblivion.
There is a male boxer or mixed martial arts competitor in the U.S., a Navy veteran, who fractured the the skull and smashed the orbital bones of his female opponent in a matter of minutes. Another woman competing against him had a concussion. I’m not sure if he was pulled from fighting against women, but I think he was.
Fallon Fox. He’s still out there.
He bragged outrageously all over SM about it, saying how great it was to smash a TERF.
Same as having a perfectly morally legitimate reason to smash a NAZI. If they did not take joy in it at any level, there would be something wrong with them.
Such an outcome would have the opposite effect to the one I presume you desire.
It would only advance the participation of XY athletes in XX sports.
The author expects men to defend women’s sports. Why don’t female journalists say something? Male journalists know that they will be immediately sacked for questioning men in women’s sport. Female journalists would at least have a fighting chance. There are exceptions such as Martina Navratilova and Sharron Davies. However, what is most depressing about the destruction of women’s sport is how few women are prepared to stand up for the sports that brought them fame and glory.
The author never uses pronouns when talking about trans people.
How about Milli Hill, Meghan Murphy, Julie Bindel, Sal Grover, Betsy Warrior, Kara Dansky, Sarah Barker, Lisa Selin Davis, Genevieve Gluck, al by the hundreds?
Don’t forget Martina Navratilova, Riley Gaines and Sharron Davies. Sportswomen all who definitely know what they’re talking about.
As a pain-averse man I have to say I’d much prefer to face a woman in the ring, but some of these female boxers would still knock the living daylights out of me! We’re I a fit, trained boxer, however, it would simply be unfair on any woman.
I boxed competitively for 10 years and now referee and judge amateur. Once familiar with the ring, most off-the-street young men would beat a trained female boxer.
What is difficult to judge is that some men have a ” Rock Jaw”, they can take very hard blows. What needs to be studied as to what enables some men to take very hard blows- one density/ bone strength , strength of neck muscles, etc. Then with this information study bone density/strength , muscle strength of women. This is basic anatomy and physiology. Without this information women will end up with brain damage when fighting men.
Men are stronger, faster, and have more endurance than women do, on average. It isn’t a fair fight.
There are plenty of young women on YouTube claiming that their sex is just as fast and strong as men. It’s an article of faith among 20 something feminists.
Individual fitness always depends on diet and exercise, but the average man will be strong, faster, and have greater endurance than the average woman. As stated – not a fair fight at all ….
“Man beats woman” used to be the stuff of crimes to be punished, not events to be celebrated.
It’s the “tank top” Olympics.
At least they still will be fighting men in their weight class, for now. That’s until these “men” successfully argue that weight discrimination should be ended.
There are no buffers at the end of this line. Just a cliff.
I still like the ‘“you wanted to be the same as the men? Well, then, we’re only taking you at your word” ‘ approach. What’s a few broken noses?
This is a great paragraph. Among other things, it captures the spirit of political correctness:
The author, Ms. Smith, probably didn’t write the headline–or at least didn’t decide to put ‘male’ in quotes… These boxers are male; in point of fact they are *men.* I don’t think UnHerd should soft-peddle this by distancing itself with quotation marks / scare quotes.
I want to know if Britney Griner, the 6’9″ “woman” in the US b-ball team, has a Y chrom. I have heard that that is the case.
Bravo for the clarity and power of this piece. That anyone accepts such craziness and indulges such denial — let alone sport governing bodies — makes me wonder if even the serious injury of a female boxer will restore sanity.
It’s familiar because it is quite a good argument. The weakness of some forms of feminism is to insist on both equality of opportunity and female privilege.
What a ridiculous article. Its almost Islamist in its demand that all should without reflection agree with the proposition put forward. Some might respond that boxing is actually not a sport appropriate for a civilised society, for both males and females.
All planned by WEF & Bill Gates & their puppets like Starmer et Al.
Is sex binary? Does the emperor have clothes on? What is a woman? What is a man?
There will have be a whole bunch of deaths before the people whose minds are so open their brains fall out get around to changing their deeply stupid, anti-scientific beliefs.
It’s violence and it shouldn’t be allowed. Fortunately parents are moving girls from school sports. We need to withdraw from these evente, create our own bodies and regulations. Don’t walk through the fist, walk around it.
Look I am on your side as are so many men in wanting a dividing line on sport and prisons and so on. But enough of this ridiculous blaming men (and I mean men as in actual men, straight or gay) for this incursion. Blame non-men activists themselves (normal, reasonable, trans people accepted) and extreme legacy rad fem tactics and the post modernism ushered in for this mess…
It’s sad to think that where we were once in support of the liberation of sexual minorities, unfairly discriminated against owing to their nature…
…now their militancy in declaring cultural hegemony for these new conceptions of sexed being means that we are at war with them for our own rights. Women are in the frontline for the moment but soon it may be gay men as well lesbian women.
And finally, if this strain of transhumanism joins a wider current we may find ourselves struggling to uphold any form of natural reproduction of the species.
Can any Unherd readers inform me as to female trans men competing as males in post puberty male sport?
If not, then this fact surely calls into question the idea of equal capacity to compete.
Recent experience avoided. Daughter was scheduled to fight a Dutch opponent and opponent pulled out at short notice. Nothing new with that but given the opponent was 28 and no history on all the MMA websites rather strange. No video footage available. Later looked up the opponent and it was a man. Another TERF killer on social medium. On the posters he did looked dog rough and bulked up for the weight.
While I totally agree with the writer, it’s not all doom and gloom as far as women being allowed to compete in any sports.
Once sports women were allowed to compete in the same events that men enjoyed, but not against men, they began to demonstrate, often because of improvements in coaching, diet, event preparation, funding, and in the case of East Germany and no doubt other nations, massive doses of drugs, that their performance improved at a far faster rate.
I don’t know but I suspect in events where both sexes do compete against each other, horse racing and equestrian events, some sailing, motorcycle racing, darts, the physical and psychological differences become less important. Then there’s mixed doubles in tennis and badmington and in some team sports.
One aspect the writer doesn’t mention is the increasing difficulty of getting young women and girls involved in sports, so they need more encouragement, not less.
On the other hand it’s encouraging that in 2003, Paula Radcliffe ran the London marathon in 2:15:25, beating all but 15 men in a field of 35,000. It took men the best part of 50 years to go from 2:45 to 2:15. It took women just 20 years.
Then there’s women beating male athletes while breastfeeding: Why women beating men in ultra-endurance events is a regular occurrence. Fuelled by beer and tacos, endurance athlete Camille Herron stormed to victory at the USA Track and Field 100-mile Championships in Nevada. Her triumph was significant for several reasons. Firstly, Herron broke her own women’s world record, crossing the line in 12 hours, 41 minutes and 11 seconds. Secondly, the American smashed the 50-mile world record in the 40 to 44-year-old age category with a time of 6:08:24.
https://www.givemesport.com/87978976-beating-male-athletes-while-breastfeeding-why-do-women-win-ultra-endurance-events/
‘Regular physical activity promotes both mental and physical health in people of all ages. Yet, today, more than 80% of adolescents and 27% of adults do not meet World Health Organisation’s recommended levels of physical activity. This affects not only individuals over their life course, but also places a financial burden on health services and society as a whole.’
And as for the Olympics:
Women competed in Olympics swimming events for the first time in 1912, but none of them was from the USA, which did not allow its female athletes to compete in events without wearing long skirts.