Talking about his tortuous journey to the truth of Christian orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wrote: “I am that man who, with the utmost daring, discovered what had been discovered before.”
The International Olympic Committee could say the same thing, if less wittily and on a less momentous subject, ‘transgender women’ competing as women.
The IOC has finally discovered the pre-discovered fact that a) men have physical advantages over women, b) such advantages are physiologically innate, and therefore c) male and female athletes compete in separate events and should continue to do so.
The IOC reached these conclusions after a long, and doubtless expensive, scientific study, which makes me sad. All that time and money could have been saved if only the Committee had asked me first.
I could have told them for a fraction of the cost that men are naturally stronger, faster and more aggressive. Hence, even though professional athletes of both sexes go through the same training regimens, the men will win any direct confrontation.
Had I not been available, the Committee could have picked any random man or woman out of a crowd and got exactly the same reply – provided those respondents weren’t habitual Guardian readers.
If the sports administrators had still remained unconvinced, all they would have had to do was compare world records for men and women in the same sports. In the 100m dash, for example, the men’s record stands at 8.58 seconds, whereas, at 10.49, the women’s is almost two seconds slower.
What the Committee had difficulty getting its collective woke head around was that it was all nature, not nurture. Everything else being equal, XY chromosomes will beat XX every time – predictably and ineluctably.
The XY creature, otherwise known as a man, may call himself a woman or anything else he fancies. He may wear skirts without being Scottish, he may grow up to his parents’ chorus of “Who’s the gorgeous girl then?”, but he’ll remain a man in every characteristic relevant to sporting contests – even if some irrelevant characteristics have been lopped off.
That’s why every man taught in his youth that he shouldn’t beat women had to wince watching two burly chaps, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, pick up Olympic gold medals in women’s boxing last year.
I’d ban women’s boxing altogether, but those deaf to the difference between ‘equal’ and ‘the same’ insist that young ladies have a sacred right to bash one another’s brains out, destroying one another’s nasal cartilages, turning one another’s faces into scar tissue and courting breast cancer.
Fine, if they insist. But at least they shouldn’t offer their bodies as men’s punching bags.
If a man can’t resist the urge to punch a woman, he should do so in the privacy of his nuptial home, not in the boxing ring. However, if he does do that at his nuptial home, he may receive a prison sentence, not a gold medal. Yet last year’s Olympics allowed men to beat up women with impunity, which upset me.
Now the IOC finally seems to have seen the light. If rumours are to be believed, its new president, Kirsty Coventry, is going to impose a blanket ban on newfangled women in all sports. Better late than never and all that, but one has to suspect that geography had something to do with that change of heart.
The 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles, when, barring accidents, Donald Trump will still be in the White House.
Say what you will about him, and I’ve said a fair amount, but he has no more time for wokery than I do. That’s why Trump has banned all XY athletes from competing in women’s events. Of course, a US president has no jurisdiction in international sports, but, knowing Trump’s truculent nature, he can make life difficult for the IOC should it continue to allow male violence against women.
Still, the IOC’s mind being more nuanced than Trump’s or mine, the Committee, while banning ‘transgender women’, still refers as ‘controversial’ to the issue of DSD (Differences of Sexual Development). This describes athletes who have male chromosomes but were raised as female. It was through this loophole that Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting climbed into the Olympic ring to abuse women.
My primitive mind operates in straight lines on this issue. An XY girl is a boy, not a tomboy. However that boy was brought up and whatever pronouns he favours, a boy he remains. If he wants to do professional sports, he should man up and compete against men.
While we are on the subject, I’ll climb farther out on a limb and point out that the relevant differences between men and women aren’t only physical but also psychological. And the psychological differences are largely predicated on the physical ones.
Numerous studies have shown an irrefutable link between testosterone and aggression. Thus, female mice injected with the male hormone began acting like males, doing the rodential equivalent of “Wha’ you lookin’ at, mate?” and attacking other mice.
And aggression is essential not only in such obvious sports as boxing, but in just about any confrontational activity, even chess. This is one reason only Judit Polgar has ever been able to compete with top male players (since I can’t afford a costly divorce, I shan’t mention some of the other reasons). This, though thousands of women play chess professionally and, in places like China, receive unlimited state support.
How times have changed since 1977, when Renée Richards (né Richard Raskind), a strong amateur player as a man, made it to the finals of the US Open women’s doubles, thereby proving it was possible to play tennis without balls.
That was a solitary such case at the time, and it caused a furore. Renée (the erudite Richard took that name after his transsex surgery because it means ‘re-born’ in French) had to sue the United States Tennis Federation to force his way into the women’s draw.
I wonder if Messrs Imane Khelif, Lin Yu-ting et al. will do the same to the IOC. If they do, things could turn interesting in 2028, but I trust Donald Trump to put his foot down. I also hope he acts on his threat to sue the BBC for a billion dollars, but this is a separate subject.
P.S. Speaking of tennis crossing sex barriers, world number one, Arina Sabalenka, will play an exhibition match against Nick Kyrgios, currently world number 652 (actually 1,292 on the up-to-date computer), in December.
Miss Sabalenka is making macho noises about planning to “kick Nick’s ass”, and I’m sure this latest instalment in the Battle of the Sexes saga will be lucrative for both players and entertaining for the spectators. But it’ll prove nothing.
For the match won’t be competed on equal terms. Since men have been calculated to be nine per cent faster than women, Kyrgios’s half of the court will be nine per cent larger. And both players will have only one serve, to negate the extra 25 mph Nick can put on his first delivery.
Now Kyrgios was once ranked number eleven in the world, but he hasn’t played much for two years due to injuries. Still, the organisers correctly decided that some adjustments were necessary for the women’s number one to stay in the match for a while.
I wonder if the IOC has heard about this. Tennis, after all, is an Olympic sport too.