Be a woman, be a swimmer – just stay in your own lane
WHAT would happen if Floyd Mayweather suddenly announced he was transitioning to be a woman and now wanted to compete in women’s boxing?
Or if Usain Bolt did the same with sprinting?
Or Tiger Woods with golf ?
All of them can lay claim to be the all-time greatest exponents of their sport, and all of them were unbeatable in their prime by other men.
At the risk of winning myself the award for the bleeding obvious, I’ll tell you what would happen: They would annihilate every woman they competed against who was born with a female biological body, win every title, smash to smithereens all existing women’s records and, in the process, irrevocably destroy women’s sports altogether.
“But that would never happen!” I hear you cry.
To which I would say, you’re probably right.
So far as I know, Messrs Mayweather, Bolt and Woods have no desire to transition into being women.
But, of course, they could if they wanted to, just as former US Olympic men’s decathlon gold-medal winner Caitlyn Jenner did.
And in that eventuality, they would command our full respect to lead their lives entirely how they so wished, as does everyone who transitions.
It’s not about life choice
Let me be clear: I’m not “transphobic.”
I want nothing but tolerance, fairness and equality for all transgender people.
Nobody would go through such lengthy physical and emotional turmoil if they didn’t genuinely feel they were trapped in the wrong body and sexuality, so members of the trans community have my full support in their struggle both to be accepted and have equal rights to the rest of us.
BUT, and it’s a massive “BUT,” that shouldn’t entitle those born with male biological bodies to create a new unfairness and inequality by competing in sports against women born female.
Yet this is exactly what is now happening, most notably in women’s swimming, where trans athlete Lia Thomas is currently demolishing her rivals and making an absolute mockery of sporting fairness.
Thomas, 22, was a mediocre performer when she competed as a man but is now a record-breaking phea nomenon competing as woman, winning some races by whole lengths of a pool.
Yet this demonstrably scandalous situation is being allowed to continue because most people are simply too scared of the cancel-culture woke warriors to put their heads over the parapet and say: “STOP THIS INSANITY!”
Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all time, was asked about it by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last week, and his first words were very telling.
“I can talk from a standpoint of doping,” he replied. “I don’t think I’ve competed in a clean field in my career. So, I think this leads back to the organizing
committees; there has to be a level playing field. That’s something that we all need because that’s what sports are. I believe we all should feel comfortable with who we are and in our own skin, but I think sports should all be played on an even playing field.” Then you could almost sense Phelps realizing he
was diving into very hot controversial water, as he hesitated before adding: “It’s hard. It’s a really . . . honestly . . . it’s very complicated. This is my sport and I just want everyone to compete on an even playing field.”
It was obvious what Phelps really thinks: The competitive advantage that trans swimmers like Lia Thomas have due to their biology is as unfair as cheating with performance-enhancing drugs.
Nobody’s speaking out
That doesn’t mean she’s a cheat. I don’t blame Thomas for this situation, and she should be able to compete as a swimmer — in my view, either against biological men, as she did before, or in a new category, against other trans women.
But as Phelps rightly said, three times, sports HAVE to be a level playing field and currently, in the sport he loves, it’s not.
We all know this, yet the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) continues to tip-toe around the issue, just announcing that trans athletes can carry on competing in women’s sports and will only have to document testosterone levels required by their relevant discipline.
This, as any scientist will attest, is to ignore the glaring reality that testosterone reduction alone does nothing to tackle the inequality created by vastly superior male body mass and muscle strength from the many years of testosterone before transition.
The aforementioned Caitlyn Jenner, who is perhaps the most qualified person in the world to pass judgment on this debate, accused the NCAA of “kicking the can down the road” and told Fox News: “In Lia Thomas’ case, I don’t care about her testosterone levels now for the last year or two. I care about her testosterone levels for the first 16, 17 years of her life. That’s what we are fighting against here.”
Jenner added that she herself refuses to play in all-women’s golf tournaments because of her unfairly advantageous “body structure, the length of my arms, the size of my feet, the size of my hands.”
She explained: “I have no more testosterone going through my body, and I can still outdrive all the girls by 100 yards. I can reach every par five in two. It’s just not fair. So, I would never play in a tournament with the women.”
There, right there, is the crux of the problem.
Yet for speaking the demonstrable truth, Jenner was instantly attacked by trans lobby groups like UK charity Mermaid for “using her platform of privilege against the trans community.”
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Jenner fully understands the damage this crisis is doing to the battle for trans rights by acting as an unnecessary and hugely divisive distraction from the very real problems facing her community.
“We have a lot of very difficult and challenging issues,” she told Fox. “We have a suicide rate that is nine times greater than the general public.”
Yes, so as she says, demanding the right to trample all over women’s rights makes the lives of trans people more, not less, difficult.
Bottom line: You can respect Lia Thomas’ right to live her life authentically, and her right to swim competitively, but also see that this current state of affairs is outrageously unfair and wrong.
As Caitlyn Jenner said: “Wokeness is killing women’s sport.”
And the cowardly chiefs running sports in America need to stop sitting on the fence, grow some cojones, stand up to the delusional virtue-signaling PC mob — and do something to stop it.