by WorldTribune Staff, October 28, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
More than 600 female athletes have in recent years lost over 890 medals across 29 sports to biological males competing as women, according to a new report from the United Nations.
“Women and girls already have many odds stacked against them that impede their equal and effective participation in sports,” Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said in the report.
“In addition, their ability to play sport in conditions of safety, dignity and fairness has been further eroded by the intrusion of males who identify as female in female-only sports and related spaces.”
The most visible man to dominate in women’s sports was University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who in 2022 became the first biological male athlete to win an NCAA national championship.
Canadian Veronica Ivy became cycling’s first trans champion when he won gold at the UCI Women’s Masters Track Cycling World Championships.
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was the biological male to compete in the Olympics as a woman when he debuted at Tokyo 2020.
In this year’s Paris Olympics, two boxers who failed gender eligibility tests administered by the International Boxing Association (IBA) dominated in the women’s tournament.
“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the UN report said.
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The report argues that male athletes had specific attributes — including higher strength and testosterone levels — that are advantageous in certain sports and can result in the “loss of fair opportunity” for female competitors.
“Some sports federations mandate testosterone suppression for athletes in order to qualify for female categories in elite sports. However, pharmaceutical testosterone suppression for genetically male athletes — irrespective of how they identify — will not eliminate the set of comparative performance advantages they have already acquired,” Alsalem wrote.
Earlier this month, female soccer players at a New Hampshire high school boycotted a game because of safety concerns over a male player on the opposing team.
Several members of the Hillsboro-Deering High School Girls Soccer team refused to play against the Kearsarge Regional High School team, whose star athlete is a male named Maelle Jacques. At least five girls on the varsity squad bowed out after learning of the male’s participation, Hillsboro-Deering parent Betsy Harrington told the NHJournal. Hillsboro-Deering had to call in JV players to compensate for the missing players.
“This isn’t about transgenderism,” Heather Thyng, the mother of a Hillsboro-Deering player, told the outlet. “This is about biology for us and the increased physical risk when playing a full contact sport against the opposing sex.”
Harry Potter author JK Rowling noted in a post to X: “We’re not supposed to feel empathy for those women and girls. The only people we should coddle are the mediocre men who decided they’d enjoy medals without the hassle of competing in the correct category.”