Girl Power!
February 21 | Posted by mrossol | American Thought, Losing Freedom, Politically correctWhere are the women?????????
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Are athletes who are born male but identify as female cheating girls? Tennis legend Martina Navratilova says they are. “To put the argument at its most basic,” she wrote this weekend in an op-ed for the Sunday Times of London, “a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires.”
Her conclusion is blunt: “It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”
This isn’t the first time Ms. Navratilova has sounded off on the issue. “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women,” she tweeted in December. “There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.” After intense blowback, Ms. Navratilova said she would have nothing more to say until she’d studied the issue more closely.
“Well, I’ve now done that and, if anything, my views have strengthened,” she wrote in the Sunday Times.
Ms. Navratilova’s argument comes at a moment when institutions from high schools to state legislatures are wrestling with the real-world implications of equal access for transgender people. When the issue first arose, the most heated arguments were over single-sex locker rooms, rest rooms and college dorms. But the front lines have now shifted to sports—and girls’ sports in particular.
This is no coincidence. As Abigail Shrier notes in City Journal, “few biological boys are likely to lose top spots in sports competition or the college scholarships that follow because of transgender boys who outperform them.” But in girls’ sports, American moms and dads are increasingly watching their daughters in high school and college competing against biological boys.
In June, two transgender high-schoolers in Connecticut made national headlines when they dominated the girls’ state track competition for the second year in a row. Such victories underscore Ms. Navratilova’s argument that if biological men are allowed to compete in women’s sports, girls will not be the winners.
This in turn has led to a curious development: Some of the most pointed criticism of allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports isn’t coming from the culture warriors on the right, much as they might be in sympathy. A good part is coming from those like Ms. Navratilova, a longtime champion of gay rights who came out in 1981 and whose Twitter feed is filled with leftist sentiment on everything from Donald Trump and climate change to guns.
Andrew Sullivan noted this surreal alliance in a recent essay for New York magazine headlined “The Nature of Sex.” Mr. Sullivan’s particular focus was the proposed Equality Act—which would add “gender identity” to the classes protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act—but his main point about the implications of ignoring biological reality dovetails with Ms. Navratilova’s argument about sports.
Once biological reality is pushed aside, Mr. Sullivan writes, it becomes hard to define exactly what a woman really is. “The core of the traditional gay claim,” he writes, “is that there is indeed a very big difference between male and female, that the difference matters, and without it, homosexuality would make no sense at all.” Not only that, if male and female are simply social constructs, the definitions that then prevail “must rely on stereotypical ideas of what gender expression means,” such as wearing dresses or nail polish. So he salutes the courage of gay women such as Ms. Navratilova who are attacked for speaking up.
Today women’s powerlifting has become transgender sports activists’ leading villain. In January, USA Powerlifting announced a prohibition on transgender women, on the sensible ground that theirs is a strength sport and allowing biological males to compete wouldn’t be fair.
But common sense is no match for an ideology on the march. No sooner had USA Powerlifting announced its policy than it received a letter from Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar saying that the sport was violating the Minnesota Human Rights Act. She said she was asking the state’s attorney general to investigate.
Meanwhile, Ms. Navratilova’s op-ed is already generating headlines, mostly of the “Martina Navratilova criticized for comments” variety. Of course, she anticipated the furor and name-calling, writing of the “tyranny” of transgender activists who rather than engage in argument simply denounce as “transphobes” anyone who dares disagree. Though she promises it won’t deter her, she worries that “others may be cowed into silence or submission.”
In the end, if the sports world can’t distinguish between girls and boys, the whole reason for women’s sports disappears. Bully for Ms. Navratilova for her willingness to insist on the distinction.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
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By William McGurn
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