Amy Hamm: UBC law school panel frets over trans exclusion from female sport |
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Amy Hamm: UBC law school panel frets over trans exclusion from female sport
Panellists dismissed male advantage in sports
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The University of British Columbia’s Allard School of Law, and its Centre for Feminist Legal Studies, hosted an event earlier this month titled “More than a game: the fight for gender equality and inclusion in sports.” The event’s description argued that “significant inequality, abuse, and exclusion continue to shape the global and local sporting landscape.”
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The biggest concern of the panelists was, unfortunately, ensuring that biological males who identify as women be allowed to compete in female sport categories. (Not on their list of expressed concerns: women being punched in the face by biological men in Olympic women’s boxing. Odd.)
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Panelists included Harrison Browne, transman and former National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) player; Ridan Cunningham, transman and lawyer with Egale Canada; Michele Krech, professor of feminist legal theory; and Ann Peel, lawyer, sports arbitrator and former athlete.
The event began with Peel and Krech arguing against sex testing in sports. Peel suggested that sex testing (via cheek swabs or hair samples) is an outdated and frightening ordeal for female athletes, performed by “men in white coats.” She described undergoing this type of sex testing in the 1980s, when she competed in race walking. “It was an exercise in humiliation. You had to prove you were lesser than, that you were vulnerable… and it has always been political,” said Peel. She did not explain how or why having two X chromosomes — as females do— is proof of being a “lesser” human being. (It’s not, of course.)
Krech, meanwhile, insisted that activists should fight to end sex testing by sports federations via legal arguments about informed consent (consent cannot be obtained, she said, if athletes know they could be disqualified for refusing), or by attempting to use Canada’s Genetic Non-Discrimination Act as a legal loophole to prohibit sex testing. Krech also advocated for Canada to issue a blanket ban on sex testing by sporting bodies, and to refuse to host any international sporting groups that perform it.
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Despite this event being hosted by one of Canada’s (supposedly) most prestigious universities, the speakers — who woefully lamented the spreading of “misinformation” — all made the false claim that trans persons are being “banned” from sports, including in Alberta (no one is banned; rather, athletes are sometimes being told to compete on the team corresponding to their sex). Each of the speakers obscured or ignored the plain, scientifically known truth: that males, no matter how they identify or what their testosterone level is, have a sporting advantage over females.
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Gender ideologues, Cunningham included, cherry pick rare and low-quality studies in an attempt to dismisse or deny this reality. The preponderance of evidence shows that males have a sporting advantage. From the American College of Pediatricians: “Anatomical differences exist between the sexes, and, from infancy on, these differences impact the body’s response to acute exercise, training, and ultimately athletic performance beginning in infancy and continuing through adulthood. Testosterone’s impact on the brain, skeletal structure/muscle mass, and muscle fiber type and muscle memory, as well as cardiorespiratory system (heart size, stroke volume and lung capacity) are architectural. In other words, these features are permanent and not modifiable, and therefore they do not change with estradiol supplementation or testosterone suppression.”
The panelists undermined their own arguments by asserting that “only” small numbers of transwomen/girls are attempting to play female sports (and that any concern about the issue is overblown and motivated by bigotry). If it’s not unfair for transwomen to play against women, then why do the numbers matter? Those who advocate for an “inclusive” female category (the panelists) should proudly state that they see zero issue if every single athlete on a given women’s team was a transwoman. It’s either a problem to have trans-identified males in the women’s category, or it isn’t. Pick an argument.
Identities do not play sports — bodies do.
Instead of facing this truth, Browne now argues that all trans persons belong in the female sports category: both the transmen taking testosterone and the transwomen who attempt to lower their natural levels of the hormone. (Browne used transwoman swimmer Lia Thomas as an example of someone who belongs in women’s sports.) Women, rather than having the dedicated sports category we deserve, should apparently be forced to accommodate anyone with a special identity whose feelings could be hurt if they had to face reality — and the men’s team. I have yet to hear an activist explain why transmen should play on women’s teams, as this argument undermines their assertion that transmen are literal men, and is an unintentional admission that females have a sporting disadvantage.
Another astounding assertion from the panel: Egale’s Cunningham said that females who voice a desire to “protect” their sex-based sports categories are making an argument that is “deeply infantilizing” of women as a class of persons.
“There’s something deeply infantilizing about the way they’re approaching adult women. The idea that you can’t, as, like, a 40-year-old woman who wants to play soccer, decide whether or not a transwoman can participate on your team for yourself, and decide whether or not you want to play with that person —t he government needs to step in instead and ‘protect you,’ right?” said Cunningham.
It is perplexing that Cunningham, a lawyer focused on LGBTQ human rights and discrimination, can so utterly lack the ability to see women’s humanity, here. When women demand to have our sex-based rights upheld, we are not infantilizing ourselves, deeply or otherwise. Women — and not just the LGBTQ ones — deserve equality, too. We deserve a sports category that is segregated by sex.
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