Layer Three: Sports
Please indulge me in a brief excursion.
In the 1980s, North America was in the throes of perhaps the most famous
example of a moral panic: the Satanic Panic.
It followed the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book written by a quack
psychiatrist named Lawrence Pazder about his then-patient and eventual wife,
who “remembered” while under hypnosis being abused as a child by her parents
in Satanic rituals. In 1955, when she was five years old, suffering through an
eighty-one-day ritual wherein Satan himself showed up, Michelle was saved by
Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and one of the Archangels—Michael. After this biblical
superhero team rescued her, Michael healed her of all physical wounds
(conveniently erasing any evidence) and made her forget “until the time was
right.” Which was apparently when she got hypnotized by her psychiatrist.
The 1960s and ’70s had already stirred anxiety in America, signified by ’70s
horror films such as The Omen and The Exorcist—a film that caused such an
uproar that the New York Times analyzed the film with psychiatrists and
theologians. Then there were the Manson Family murders.
Charles Manson had foretold that an apocalyptic race war was coming, which
would wipe out all white people—except for the Manson Family. They would
survive, Manson predicted, as prophesied in the Beatles song “Helter Skelter,”
and emerge as white leaders of the inferior Black masses.
To help spark this coming race war, Manson had his followers kill affluent white
people. The most famous victim being Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, who was
murdered along with four of her friends (and her unborn baby) in August, 1969.
Four of Manson’s followers—including his right-hand man, Tex Watson—snuck
inside the actress’ home and, right before the killing started, Tex Watson woke up
one of the victims (Wojciech Frykowski) sleeping on the living room couch, and
whispered in his ear, “I’m the Devil, and I’m here to do the Devil’s business.”
All this meant that when Michelle Remembers hit bookstores in November of
1980, an already frightened public quickly became convinced that Satanists were
among them. Michelle and Pazder soon appeared on television, and Pazder later
held seminars for police departments on cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA),
which, for a while, became a real label. Cops investigated cases of SRA, and
prosecutors who took such cases to trial often used Michelle Remembers as a
guide.
The most well-known case was that of the McMartin Preschool in California. In
1983, a mother named Judy Johnson—later diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia—sent a letter to the district attorney alleging that her child was
abused in Satanic rituals at the McMartin Preschool. The teachers supposedly
“flew in the air” during a “ritual” that involved a “goatman.”
The Los Angeles Police Department sent letters to 200 parents of current and
former children enrolled in the preschool, asking them to “question your child to
see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim.”
Several hundred children were then brought in by their panicked parents to talk
with investigators. They asked extremely leading questions. When the children
denied having witnessed or suffered any abuse, investigators pressed them to tell
the truth—one kid was even called a “scaredy cat” for denying abuse. Years later,
one of those kids recalled, “Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn’t
like, they would ask me again and encourage me to give them the answer they
were looking for. … I remember telling them nothing happened to me. I
remember them almost giggling and laughing, saying, ‘Oh, we know these things
happened to you. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell us? Use these dolls [to
demonstrate] if you’re scared.’ ”
When the case went to court, the prosecution hired Lawrence Pazder as an SRA
consultant. He would prep some of the witnesses on what to say at trial, how to
explain Satanic Ritual Abuse to the jury. The ensuing court case became the
longest one in American history. (It ended with the acquittal of the McMartin
teachers.)
Soon, Americans saw Satanism everywhere! The Devil hid in boardgames, such
as Dungeons and Dragons, which was accused of “devil worship” and
“demonology” by the Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons
Organization—founded by a grieving mother who lost her son to suicide. Or in
songs, after Pastor Jacob Aranza wrote Backward Masking Unmasked, which
claimed that rock songs had secret Satanic messages hidden inside them to
corrupt the nation’s youth, American churchgoers began a crusade against rock
music.
Aranza’s book was widely read in churches, and claimed the subliminal, occult
messages could be detected by playing the songs in reverse. Playing “Revolution
9” by the Beatles backwards supposedly yielded the phrase “turn me on,
deadman.” Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” became “It’s fun to smoke
marijuana.” And “Gonna Raise Hell” by Cheap Trick contained “Satan moves
through our voices.”
These backward messages, Aranza argued, then influenced teenagers’
subconscious.
To highlight how absurd this all got (as if it wasn’t weird enough already), during
the panic’s hight, even the Beach Boys were briefly banned from playing at a 4th
of July celebration (which they had done for three years in a row) by Ronald
Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James G. Watt. He said the Beach Boys
attracted “the wrong element.”
Being kind to American evangelicals, I can kind of understand their unease with
songs like “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. But seriously, who the fuck listens to
“Kokomo” and thinks it’s the Devil at work?
So, why are we talking about this? Because the discussion of transgender athletes
is often better understood through the lens of an imagined moral panic.
Once again, there are two versions of this story. The first goes like this:
Men are lying about being trans so that they can enter and win female sports
competitions.
The second, more palatable version goes like this:
Trans women compete in sports, but we can’t allow this because its unfair
towards cis women. After all, they have their own segregated leagues because
they’re physically weaker than men (or trans women). Trans athletes unfairly
dominating cis athletes is a pervasive problem which the government must ban.
The main hiccup in this narrative is the dearth of examples. There are some, to be
sure, and we will examine those later, but this is supposedly some sort of
widespread crisis (like Satanic Ritual Abuse). So conservatives needed to get
creative.
At last year’s Olympics, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won the gold medal for
women’s welterweight boxing.
Khelif is not transgender. She is a cis woman. In fact, transitioning is not possible
in Algeria, and the highly conservative country—where having sex with someone
of the same sex could land you in prison—would never send a transgender athlete
to represent them at the Olympics.
But it was alleged that she had a Y chromosome.
She would hardly be the first athlete with such an intersex condition.
In 1900, the men in charge of the Olympics agreed to let women participate in
two sports: golf and tennis. Sports that were not “unladylike.”
When the “modern” Olympics started in 1896, its founder, Baron Pierre de
Coubertin, thought that including women was “impractical, uninteresting,
unaesthetic, and incorrect.”
But the suffragettes who had campaigned passionately for the right of women to
compete weren’t so easily dismissed; they would not settle for only playing golf.
Between 1922 and 1934, women organized their own Olympiad, the Women’s
World Games.
Ironically, the International Olympic Committee didn’t like competition, and
eventually relented.
The first time women ran track in the Olympics, the all-male sportscasters tried
to portray it as a disaster. Despite video evidence showing all contestants making
it to the finish, they claimed five women collapsed.
Kinue Hitomi won second place, becoming the first Japanese woman to earn an
Olympic medal. She was good, throughout her career she broke several world
records. Surely there was no way women were that good at running and discus
throwing.
“The appearance of your body is not really that of a woman,” an interviewer for
Fujin Sekai magazine told her. “Not only are you so suntanned, but… the shape of
your chest and hips really isn’t like normal Japanese women.”
“If you are too fat, then you aren’t really fit to do sports,” Hitomi explained.
“But is it true that doing sports day in and day out, eventually you will be
somewhat masculinised?” the interviewer insisted.
“No,” Hitomi replied.
Eventually a committee was convened to determine whether Kinue Hitomi was a
woman. They examined her and deliberated her sex for two hours. Mainly due to
her hight of 169-centimeters, and because it was inconceivable that any woman
was that good at sports, she was described in an official statement as “It.”
That started the practice of accusing women of being dishonest, cheating men. At
first to discredit women’s sports (and female athletes who were impressive
enough to make men nervous), and later for geopolitical reasons as well.
During the Cold War, many Western journalists accused women from Soviet Bloc
countries—especially those whom they didn’t believe looked womanly enough—of
secretly being men. This was part of the Western meta-narrative that portrayed
the Eastern Europeans as ruthless and fundamentally untrustworthy.
As a result, Europe introduced mandatory genital examinations for female
athletes in the mid ’60s. They were called “nude parades.” Hundreds of athletes
would stand naked in front of a committee that would inspect their bodies. This
was not popular. One gold medalist described it as “the most crude and
degrading experience I have ever known in my life.”
It was agreed that a chromosome test via buccal swab would be used for the 1968
Olympics (although Queen Elizabeth’s daughter was exempt).
Ewa Klobukowska, a Polish sprinter who set three world records and won gold at
the 1964 Olympics (having gone through the nude parades), was
unceremoniously stripped of all her titles, and all her records were annulled,
after it was discovered, to her surprise, that she had XX/XXY mosaicism. It set
off a firestorm in the media: “Is it Eva or Adam” one newspaper drophead read,
not even bothering to get her first name right. “She’s a he,” another proclaimed.
Guess what she did one year after being shamed and banished for being a man.
She got pregnant and gave birth to her son.
In 1985, another athlete, Maria José Martínez-Patiño, “failed” a chromosome
test. Although she had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, meaning that her body
could not respond to testosterone, obviously negating any possible advantage,
she was still smeared as a man when the results were deliberately leaked to the
press by sports officials. Not only was she stripped of her titles as a result, her
fiancé also broke off their engagement. “I lost friends, my fiancé, hope, and
energy,” she later said. “But I knew that I was a woman and that my genetic
difference gave me no unfair physical advantage. I could hardly pretend to be a
man—I have breasts and a vagina. I never cheated.”
By 2024, the Olympics had learned from the past. Imane Khelif, like Martínez-
Patiño and Klobukowska, is a cisgender woman.
But in a desperate need to find examples of trans women competing and winning
in sports, Imane Khelif became a victim of the Right’s Lavender Scare
renaissance.
On August 1, 2024, Khelif fought Italy’s Angela Carini. After receiving a blow
to the nose, Carini bowed out, disappointed. She even cried a little. The
subsequent torrent of hate was mind-blowing, and focused mostly on Khelif’s
appearance: tough and muscular. Carini’s more Cinderella-type look probably
also played a role.
The Wicked Witch of the UK, J.K. Rowling, tweeted a picture of Khelif patting
Carini’s back as they walked off, writing, “Could any picture sum up our new
men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s [sic] knows he’s
protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a
woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambitions he’s just
shattered.” (By the way, shockingly poor grammar for a professional author.)
J.D. Vance tweeted, “This is where Kamala Harris’s ideas about gender lead: to a
grown man pummeling a woman in a boxing match. This is disgusting, and all of
our leaders should condemn it.”
And far-right commentator Charlie Kirk wrote: “Enough of the gender insanity
and the pandering to avoid hurting someone’s precious feelings. The Olympics
just allowed a biological man, Imane Khelif, to pummel Italian Olympian Angela
Carini.”
The attacks soon became extremely misogynistic. “Look at this!” Megyn Kelly
said on her show, displaying a picture of Khelif, “we know this is a man! Eyes still
matter.”
“That’s a dude,” Glenn Beck said on his show. “And if it is a woman: a very ugly
woman.”
And Piers Morgan, along with a picture of Khelif, tweeted, “If this is a biological
female, I’m a biological aardvark.” The only reason I won’t refer to Piers Morgan
as “that smug aardvark on television” from now on—which I’m certainly petty
enough to do—is because I think aardvarks are cute.
It apparently didn’t matter at all that Angela Carini apologized to Khelif for the
drama that she didn’t mean to create, or that just about every female boxer
expressed support for Khelif. The die was cast, as it were.
Some conservatives also told on themselves, failing to hide how they really feel
about women’s sports. Andrew Klavan from the Daily Wire, a far-right media
network, said of the match: “To watch a woman get punched in the face is almost
unbearable.”
Then don’t watch women’s boxing, you dumbass!
His colleague on the same network agreed. “Women shouldn’t box,” Michael
Knowles said bluntly. “It’s wrong. I can’t watch it.”
“Some things are better left to the fellas, like catching blows to the head,”
Knowles continued, “and some things are better left to the women. Like, um,
giving birth, for instance.”
It has been very interesting to witness conservative intellectuals anoint
themselves as the angelic saviors of women athletes, considering they spend
years denigrating women’s sports.
It was not that long ago when people like Stephen Moore—an economist for the
Heritage Foundation and former Trump adviser—wrote disparaging columns
about women in sports. When female tennis players, for example, wanted to be
paid as much as men, Moore thought this was ridiculous: they wanted “equal pay
for inferior work,” he wrote.
When the NCAA announced that a woman would referee in a men’s game, Moore
fumed: “How outrageous is this? This year they allowed a woman ref a [sic]
men’s NCAA game. Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender
equality … The NCAA has been touting this as an example of how progressive
they are. I see it as an obscenity. Is there no area in life where men can take
vacation [sic] from women? What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties?
Women in combat? (Oh, yeah, they’ve done that already.)”
Moore insisted that this wasn’t merely a petty complaint of his, but rather a part
of the “bigger and more serious social problem in America,” which was “the
feminization of basketball generally.”
“Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers,
no women beer venders, no women anything.” But, Moore added, “There is, of
course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only
if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about
basketball is entirely irrelevant.” In case you’re unfamiliar with her, Bonnie
Bernstein is an accomplished sportscaster and journalist. She does know
basketball.
Moore added that she “should wear a halter top. This is a no-brainer CBS.”
When he received criticism for his chauvinistic columns, Moore fired back by
saying he didn’t even like women’s sports airing on TV. “For all I care the women
can use chimpanzees to ref their games,” he harrumphed, “I hate women’s
basketball.”
But now it’s precisely those people—the same chauvinists that overturned Roe v.
Wade—that have anointed themselves as the saviors of women’s sports.
But the threat has been largely invented. Besides the Olympics, a perfect example
of this is the “movie” Lady Ballers. It was produced by the aforementioned far-
right media company, the Daily Wire, and is allegedly an attempted comedy. The
plot involves a group of lazy men pretending to be transgender, in order to
dominate and win female sports competitions.
The right-wing filmmakers insist that this is a real and pervasive problem in
society. But the movie’s behind-the-scenes story is where this gets interesting.
The filmmakers admitted in an interview that the project was originally intended
to be a documentary. But they ran into trouble. “As it turns out,” one of them
said, “most ladies’ leagues don’t let in actual men.” If the male actors wanted to
genuinely compete in women’s leagues they would have to undergo some sort of
gender-affirming care, like hormone replacement therapy. Most of the men hired
for the project were unwilling to “go the full distance in terms of what it would
require … to play in some ladies’ leagues.”
Reality prevented this from being a documentary. So they made it a scripted
“comedy” movie instead.
This either proves the folks at the Daily Wire are dishonest outrage peddlers or,
perhaps more terrifying, are too dimwitted to realize that their inability to make
this a documentary disproves their entire narrative.
The Right has so insulated themselves in their bubble that the information they
share amongst themselves often has no relationship to reality. Consider the claim
that according to the United Nations, nearly 900 medals have been “stolen” by
trans athletes from cis athletes (the word “won” seems more appropriate than
“stolen” but whatever). This claim has been widely disseminated among TERF
communities on the Internet. (And it was analyzed brilliantly by Last Week
Tonight.)
First, the UN never reported this. It was a report submitted to the UN by an
independent rapporteur who freely admitted her views “do not necessarily
represent those of the UN.”
Second, the source used by that rapporteur was a website called SheWon. An
explicitly transphobic website. It describes itself as “dedicated to archiving the
achievements of female athletes who were displaced by males in women’s
sporting events and other types of competitions expressly for women.”
Anyone is encouraged to add to the database. No matter how insignificant.
Entries range from Irish dance competitions to poker. And over a hundred
entries on the list are for disc golf. Every entry submitted counts for three
medals; the logic being that second place should have won first place, third place
should have won second, and fourth place should have won third.
Also worth noting is that some of the athletes (or hobbyists) on this list don’t
mind competing with, and sometimes losing to, trans people.
Now, even if anti-trans zealots were to agree that the examples I’ve mentioned so
far are akin to conservatives playing rock songs in reverse looking for hidden
Satanic messages, they’ll still insist that the problem is real. Trans women have
beaten cis women, they’ll say. I’ll ask for an example. And the first one they’ll give
is the trans swimmer Lia Thomas.
In 2022, Thomas won the NCAA championship in the women’s 500 freestyle (the
record is still held by Katie Ledecky, a cis woman). It was Thomas’ best race of
the season, and the only race of the competition she won. She came in eighth in
the 100-yard freestyle, and she tied for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle with
Riley Gaines.
Subsequently, Gaines nailed herself to a transphobic cross: The sad, tragic tale of
a little girl who loved swimming, ended with her victory (for fifth place) being
stolen away by a man! It could have been penned by Sophocles.
After sparking a right-wing media firestorm, casting herself as the central star,
Gaines used the attention to springboard her media career (get it?). She has a
podcast on the Fox network, her own transphobic advocacy center, and makes
good money at right-wing speaking engagements. In her role as Republican
mouthpiece, she has even shared the stage with Donald Trump at the
Conservative Political Action Conference. I think it’s safe to say, without any
hyperbole, that Riley Gaines is genuinely the most famous fifth-place finisher in
world history.
Better, kinder, and less insecure athletes were not that threatened by Lia
Thomas. Brooke Forde, four-time NCAA champion and silver medalist in the
women’s 4 x 200 metre freestyle relay at the Olympics, told a sports podcast:
I
have
great
respect
for
Lia.
Social
change
is
always
a
slow
and
difficult
process,
and
we
rarely
get
it
correct
right
away.
Being
among
the
first
to
lead
such
a
social
change
requires
an
enormous
amount
of
courage
and
I
admire
Lia
for
her
leadership
that
will
undoubtedly
benefit
many
trans
athletes
in
the
future.
In
2020
I,
along
with
most
swimmers,
experienced
what
it
was
like
to
have
my
chance
to
achieve
my
swimming
goals
taken
away
after
years
of
hard
work.
I
would
not
wish
this
experience
on
anyone,
especially
Lia
who
had
followed
the
rules
required
of
her.
I
believe
that
treating
people
with
respect
and
dignity
is
more
important
than
any
trophy
or
record
will
ever
be,
which
is
why
I
will
not
have a problem racing against Lia at NCAAs this year.
Another cis Olympian swimmer, Erica Sullivan, silver medalist for the 1,500-
meter race, wrote in Newsweek:
All
swimmers
embody
a
diverse
set
of
identities
and
characteristics.
What
makes
us
each
unique
also
contributes
to
our
success
in
the
pool.
Yet
no
one
questions
the
validity
of
how
cisgender
athletes’
unique
traits
and
skills,
or
who
they
are,
contribute
to
their
success.
However,
University
of
Pennsylvania
swimmer
Lia
Thomas
has
been
unfairly
targeted
for
just
that—for
being
who
she is, a transgender woman.
Like
anyone
else
in
this
sport,
Lia
has
trained
diligently
to
get
to
where
she
is
and
has
followed
all
of
the
rules
and
guidelines
put
before
her.
Like
anyone
else
in
this
sport,
Lia
doesn’t
win
every
time.
And
when
she
does,
she
deserves,
like
anyone
else
in
this
sport,
to
be
celebrated
for
her
hard-won
success,
not
labeled a cheater simply because of her identity.
…Many
of
those
who
oppose
transgender
athletes
like
Lia
being
able
to
participate
in
sports
claim
to
be
“protecting
women’s
sports.”
As
a
woman
in
sports,
I
can
tell
you
that
I
know
what
the
real
threats
to
women’s
sports
are:
sexual
abuse
and
harassment,
unequal
pay
and
resources
and
a
lack
of
women
in
leadership.
Transgender
girls
and
women
are
nowhere
on
this
list.
Women’s
sports
are
stronger
when
all
women—including
trans
women—are
protected
from discrimination, and free to be their true selves.
…At
the
NCAA
championships,
I’ll
be
cheering
on
Lia
and
all
of
the
amazing
swimmers
that
make
this
sport
great
by
being
authentically
and
proudly
themselves.
There are other trans athletes, but most conservatives wouldn’t be able to name
them from the top of their heads. And the athletes that do occasionally win a
competition, or improve some college-level record, don’t consistently dominate
the sport. In fact, contrary to the moral-panic narrative, there isn’t a single sport
where trans women, despite the alleged advantage they have, regularly beat cis
athletes.
Also worth noting is how, once again, just like with the bathroom bans, TERFs
completely forget that trans men exist.
Following a ban on transgender athletes in Texas high schools, a trans man
taking testosterone—a natural steroid—was forced to compete, against his
wishes, in the girls’ competition.
He asked numerous times to compete in the boys’ league, but the University
Interscholastic League—the body that regulates Texas high-school sports—had
adamantly banned trans athletes to protect the integrity of girls’ sports.
When he left high school, his record was undefeated, with 35 wins. (A record not
only achieved through testosterone, mind you, he’s also an impressive athlete.) In
college, he could finally compete with other men.
So now, ignoring the moral panic, let me answer the question directly: Do trans
athletes deserve to compete with their cis counterparts? The short answer is Yes.
I’ll explain in two parts:
First, let’s talk about physical advantages and concerns about fairness.
And second, let’s talk about a forgotten reason for why women’s sports exists to
begin with.
It is absolutely correct that the strongest men are stronger than the strongest
women. But conservatives exaggerate by claiming almost any man could beat
virtually any woman.
When Trump was standing on stage next to 5th-place winner Riley Gaines, he
grabbed her waist and held her beside him, telling the crowd: “Just to show how
ridiculous it is, look at me. I’m much bigger and stronger than her. There’s no
way she could beat me in swimming.”
This is also central to the plot of Lady Ballers, where a gaggle of middle-aged,
out-of-shape men win a basketball competition against a team of professional
female athletes.
Their arguments always imply that most men could beat virtually all female
athletes. They can’t. At last year’s Olympics in Paris, for instance, Sidney
McLaughlin-Levrone set the women’s world record for 400 meter hurdles—she
would rank seventh in the men’s competition; beating 32 men. Similarly, Saya
Sakakibara from Australia won gold for the BMX racing event—she also would
have finished seventh in the men’s race; beating 17 world-class male athletes.
In swimming, Sarah Sjöström won the women’s 50-meter freestyle—she would
rank 47 of the 73 male athletes. And 64 women were faster than the slowest man
(the next woman was slower by 0.2 seconds). At the 800-meter freestyle, the top
five women were faster than the two slowest men (and the last-placed woman
was faster than the last-placed man).
In last year’s Boston Marathon, first-place winner Hellen Obiri would’ve come in
37th in the mixed-gender ranking, meaning she was faster than 14,541 men.
In the 100-metre-dash, the world record set by Usain Bolt is not even a full
second faster than the women’s record held by Florence Griffith-Joyner (9.58 vs
10.49 seconds).
(Note for the nerds: I only compared identical competitions, excluding events
with separate standards for men and women.)
Furthermore, a lot of these top athletes, both men and women, are freaks of
nature. Take Michael Phelps, for instance, one of the greatest swimmers of all
time. Besides being 6 feet 4 inches tall with a long torso and short legs—affording
him greater power and less drag in the water—he also has massive hands and feet
(his outstretched arms are 6 feet 7 inches, which is taller than he is) and double
jointed elbows and flexible ankles, effectively turning his arms into oars and legs
into flippers. Furthermore, when the body is physically exerted it creates lactic
acid as a byproduct, causing muscle fatigue. Phelps’ body produces significantly
lower levels of lactic acid, which gives him far greater endurance than his
competition.
Here’s another example: I often watch professional cycling (my mom is the
super-fan), and currently the best rider is Tadej Pogačar. Unfortunately he’s so
good that many races he competes in are no longer interesting to watch.
Thankfully, in some of the bigger races like the Tour de France, one team is
sometimes able to defeat him by working together, but winning from Pogačar is a
team effort.
The reason for his dominance was partly explained by physiologist Íñigo San
Millán who, aside from studying cellular metabolism, also coaches various
professional athletes as a sports medicine advisor. He told Cyclist magazine that
“there are three things” that explain Pogačar’s edge:
The
main
one
is
genetics—he
has
[enormous]
recovery
capacity.
The
second
is
his
mentality.
Three
weeks
in
a
Grand
Tour
can
be
psychologically
hard
for
anybody but Tadej is very calm. He doesn’t feel the pressure, the stress.
The
third
thing
is
that
we’ve
been
training
a
lot
to
improve
his
lactate
clearance
capacity
and
increase
mitochondrial
function,
which
of
course
is
partly
genetic.
And
what
that
means
is
that
day
by
day
he
is
not
as
tired
as
the
others.
Multiple
times
through
these
last
years,
after
a
stage
I
would
ask
him,
“How
was
it
today,
Tadej?”
and
he
would
say,
“Pretty
easy.”
And
you’d
talk
to
other
riders: how was it? “Oof, it was a hard stage today.”
The
other
rider
already
has
a
“dent”
from
that
stage,
which
affects
his
recovery
for
the
next
day.
Tadej
doesn’t
have
a
dent.
It’s
genetics,
of
course,
but
you
can
improve
this
ability
with
training
because
everything
can
be
improved
with training.
His second point, about psychology, is also more consequential than you may
realize. In 2024, Pogačar’s team hired a brain coach to perform cognitive,
neurological, emotional, and psychological tests, and training based on those
tests. When they compared Pogačar’s mental performance with other top-level
athletes in their database—soccer players, other cyclists, dart players, Formula 1
racers, etc.—he proved uniquely driven and stress-resistant. The main researcher
called him “an exceptional wonder of genetics.”
It’s also worth mentioning that not all gifted athletes are born perfect. Take
Lionel Messi, widely considered the best soccer player in the world. He was born
with a rare pituitary disorder that rendered him smaller than other kids. Though
he loved football and was quite skilled, he would likely never play professionally
due to his small stature. But, when he was 13 years old, FC Barcelona offered him
a quickly scribbled-down contract on the back of a napkin. They took a chance on
him, and paid for expensive hormone therapy, which Messi had to inject in his
leg throughout his puberty to ensure he grew as tall as everyone else. Is that a
natural advantage?
Then there are other, more circumstantial factors as well. Statistically speaking,
most world-class athletes have an older sibling; in the US, most come from
medium sized towns with between 50,000 and 100,000 residents; and most
come from middle-class to upper-class backgrounds. The month you were born
even matters. In the United States, people born in July are least likely to become
athletes. The reason is that they’re the youngest, and therefore the smallest kids
in the school year, making them enjoy sports less compared to their bigger peers.
It’s called the Relative Age Effect and it’s a real thing. The Union of European
Football Associations (UEFA) once did a study and found that 75 percent of
players in their Under-17 competition were born between January and April.
Then we should consider the effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy. Sure,
those who undergo a “male” puberty tend to be taller with broader shoulders and
greater muscle mass. But, not only do testosterone (T) levels vary, their effects in
puberty do, too, based on genetics. Furthermore, testosterone is a natural steroid.
Trans women taking estrogen might not shrink in hight, but they lose muscle
performance. That should make them eligible to compete. Especially since some
cis women naturally produce high amounts of testosterone—enough to be in the
typically male range—and some of them have been told to take medication to
lower their natural advantage. I don’t agree with that, for the record, but if it’s the
standard for cis athletes with high T levels, which won’t make them shrink in size
either, it should be good enough for trans athletes.
This happened to South African sprinter Mokgadi Caster Semenya, an Olympic
gold medalist, who had high T levels and was therefore banned from competing
unless she took medication to lower her natural advantage.
Similarly, one of the best Indian sprinters, Dutee Chand, almost lost her career
when testing showed her body also naturally produced atypically high levels of
testosterone.
Approximately 1 percent of the world’s population is transgender. The odds of
any trans person having the requisite genetic gifts, while also born into the right
circumstances, is infinitesimally small. This partly explains why women’s sports
are not likely to become dominated by trans women. And if trans women are still
dominant in a sport while taking estrogen, it is not due to some “man-strenght”
hokum, but rather because they’re an impressive athlete.
Of course all of this is still talking about purely physical sports. But there are
many athletic competitions wherein women and men are more equal than you
might think.
Take baseball, for example. In the 1930s, a minor league team in Tennessee, the
Chattanooga Lookouts, had trouble selling seats during the Great Depression.
The team’s owner, Joe Engel, hired a 17-year-old girl, Jackie Mitchell, as a
pitcher.
Growing up, Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell’s neighbor was Charles
Vance—better known by his nickname “Dazzy,” which is how he’s remembered in
the Baseball Hall of Fame. Vance taught her how to throw a unique sinking
curveball, called a “drop ball.”
During spring training, Major League Baseball clubs would play exhibition games
(which don’t count towards a team’s ranking) against minor leagues, so that
small-town residents could see some baseball superstars in action as they played
an easy warm-up round.
In 1931, the Chattanooga Lookouts were set to play against the famed New York
Yankees. Among them Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, widely considered to be two of
the best baseball players of all time. They were both part of a group of such
talented hitters that they were dubbed “Murderer’s Row.”
Covering the upcoming event, the New York Daily News wrote disparagingly of
the second-ever female pitcher:
The
Yankees
will
meet
a
club
[in
Chattanooga]
that
has
a
girl
pitcher
named
Jackie
Mitchell,
who
has
a
swell
change
of
pace
and
swings
a
mean
lipstick.
I
suppose
that
in
the
next
town
the
Yankees
enter
they
will
find
a
squad
that
has
a
female
impersonator
in
left
field,
a
sword
swallower
at
short,
and
a
trained
seal behind the plate. Times in the South are not only tough but silly.
After a weak opening by the Lookouts’ regular pitcher, Jackie was summoned
from the bullpen to face the legendary Babe Ruth. There is a famous rule in
baseball: Three strikes and you’re out. Her first pitch was a “ball”—meaning it
didn’t pass through the strike zone—but her next two were strikes. Ruth
indignantly asked the umpire to inspect the ball: it was indeed a strike.
Her next pitch curved just along the inside of the strike zone and Ruth once again
swung and missed: Three strikes!
Ruth argued so heatedly with the umpire his team had to hold him back.
Throwing down his bat in anger, he retreated to the dugout.
Next Mitchell faced “the Iron Horse,” Lou Gehrig. Three pitches, three strikes.
And just like that, a 17-year-old girl humbled two baseball legends.
Afterwards, Ruth told a local paper:
I
don’t
know
what’s
going
to
happen
if
they
begin
to
let
women
in
baseball.
Of
course
they
will
never
make
good
[players].
Why?
Because
they
are
too
delicate.
It would kill them to play ball every day.
Within days, baseball commissioner Landis intervened and voided Mitchell’s
contract with the Lookouts, claiming the game was “too strenuous” for women.
So, to sum up: Male and female professional athletes are more competitive than
is often assumed; the most dominant professional athletes already have
significant, possibly “unfair” physical advantages; and hormone therapy ensures
that trans female athletes, even if they’re physically gifted enough to compete, are
brought closer in line with cis female athletes.
Now, there is another reason why women-only sports exists: statistics. Let’s say I
host two bowling competitions, one with 50 players, the other with 500 players.
Statistically speaking, because the 500 players have more competition, they will
set higher records. If I only had three trophies for the top three players across
both competitions, all three would likely go to players from the 500 group.
This is the reason that women-only competitions exist even where women have
no physical disadvantage, like chess, poker, and e-sports.
Just eleven percent of female chess players compete at the World Chess
Federation-level. And somewhat ironically given the intellectual allure of chess,
many male chess players seem to think that’s because women are simply inferior.
Back in 2015, vice president of the World Chess Federation, or FIDE (an acronym
from the French Fédération Internationale des Échecs), grandmaster Nigel
Short, said, “Men are hardwired to be better chess players than women.” Adding,
“you have to gracefully accept that.”
For us, the scientifically minded, we don’t have to accept that at all. The gender
gap in chess has been heavily studied, and researchers can’t find any biological
bases for it. On the other hand, there are plenty of factors that do help explain it.
To start with, it’s much easier to make a living playing chess as a man. Chess
federations are much more likely to sponsor male players because they’re ranked
higher; and they’re ranked higher because there are more of them; so chess
federations are more likely to sponsor them; because they’re ranked higher, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Furthermore, women are still often saddled with a disproportionate amount of
home labor—cooking, cleaning, child rearing, etc.—which makes investing in a
time-consuming hobby or skill, such as playing chess, more difficult to manage
with a family. Also, competing in such a male-dominated field, awash with a lot
of condescending chauvinism, as female chess players will attest, is not
encouraging or fun.
You’d almost needed to have found an appreciation for the game in your
childhood to still want to play. But, according to a study titled “Checking Gender
Bias: Parents and Mentors Perceive Less Potential in Girls,” published in the
Journal of Experimental Psychology, girls are not encouraged to pursue chess.
Most parents and coaches peg the highest potential performance of girl players
lower than that of boy players.
“It is striking that even the parents and coaches who have a vested interest in
girls’ success hold biases against them and may also have some blind spots about
the barriers to girls’ success,” the study’s lead author pointed out.
These findings track with gender bias in other “intellectual” areas. One 2017
study from Science magazine found that 6-year-old girls in the US were less likely
to describe themselves or other girls as “really, really smart” compared to boys.
When they were given the option to play one of two games, one for “smart” kids
and the other for children “who try really, really hard,” most girls picked the
latter, not believing themselves smart enough.
“Many children assimilate the idea that brilliance is a male quality at a young
age,” the study concludes.
But we still need conclusive proof that this gender gap is social in nature, not
biological.
In 2018, a study from the Journal of Comparative Economics looked at women’s
math proficiency in West and East Germany.
East Germany, “as alike other socialist countries, made employment a universal
right, but also a duty, for women as well as men, and adopted a host of
accompanying measures ensuring the compatibility between fertility and
employment,” the study points out. These egalitarian programs resulted in a
much smaller gender gap in mathematics, which “is accompanied by different
attitudes toward mathematics. In particular, girls in the East feel less anxious
and more confident about their aptitude in math than their counterparts from
West Germany. They are also more competitive, especially at intermediate levels
of performance. Importantly, this higher performance of girls in math does not
come at the price of a lower performance of girls reading (their traditional
advantage).”
Furthermore, when “we generalize our results to all European countries by
contrasting former socialist ‘Eastern’ countries to capitalist ‘Western’ countries;
we uncover a similar picture: the gender gap in math is much smaller, and even
sometimes inexistent, in Eastern countries.”
So, cultural and societal factors limit women’s interest in playing chess; the
minority of female chess players are therefore statistically less likely to emerge as
grandmasters, let alone the world champion; thus justifying women’s chess. Et
voilà!
This basis for women’s sports provides even greater reason for trans inclusion.
But incredibly, trans women have even been banned from competing in women’s
chess. Unlike with swimming competitions, there is no fig leaf, however flimsy, to
hide the motive: it can only be flatly characterized as unmoored transphobia. In
part, you have Riley Gaines to thank for this. She lobbied FIDE for the ban.
I want to end with this: Scientist, athlete, and trans woman Joana Harper wrote
an incredibly nuanced and detailed book called Sporting Gender: The History,
Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes. It’s phenomenal.
In the epilogue she shares a personal story. I won’t quote it fully as you should
read it yourself, but it ends with her father, a high school basketball coach, trying
to persuade a kid named Brian to join the basketball team as they were having
supper.
“Brian had demurred at first, and later, when pressed by dad, confessed that he
didn’t think the sport was right for him. ‘Mr. Harper,’ Brian explained, ‘It
wouldn’t be fair for me to play basketball, since I’m taller than everyone else.’ I
can still remember the look of incredulity on my father’s face as he turned to the
rest of his family gathered around the table and asked, rhetorically, ‘What the
hell does fair have to do with anything?’”