After years of having very specific rules regulating testosterone levels and in what way biological males would be able to compete in women’s athletic events at the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has determined that there should be no barriers at all to men competing in women’s events. Its new ruling overturns the previous 2015 guidance, and should mean that all women everywhere, whether athletes or spectators, boycott the Olympics entirely, in every category, in every form, across the world.
The previous rules for the participation of men in women’s sports were already unfair, with male athletes having to show that their testosterone levels were below 10 nmol/liter of blood for 12 months or more. Women’s standard amount of testosterone is .09 nmol/liter of blood. Even with the application of testosterone during a British medical study, women were only able to increase to 4.3 nmol/liter. The normal, healthy range for men is 9.2 to 31.8 nmol/liter.
The new rules are couched in ideas of anti-discrimination, but they are only about not discriminating against gender-nonconforming biological males who identify as transgender and use female pronouns, and in so doing, they directly discriminate against women.
The rules say that sports organizations’ eligibility criteria should “not systematically exclude athletes from competition based on their gender identity, physical appearance, and/ or sex variations.”
Overturning the entirety of human history and understanding about biology, the IOC states that “No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged, or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.”
IOC Denies Reality
The IOC does not appear to believe that men have any kind of competitive advantage over women. This leads to the question: Why have any biological sex-based categories of competition at all?
The IOC says, “Everyone, regardless of their gender identity, expression and/or sex variations should be able to participate in sport safely and without prejudice,” but this has one notable, glaring exception: women. Women who identify as women will be competing on an unfair playing field as men who wear their hair long, perhaps don dresses when not on the field, and maybe like a little lipstick here and there, will be eligible to compete against women.
IOC medical director Richard Budgett said, “You don’t need to use testosterone [to decide who can compete] at all.” “We really want to make sure that athletes are not pressured or coerced into making a harmful decision about their bodies,” said IOC head of human rights Magali Martowicz.
Yet that belies the reality that women playing sports against men can indeed harm them physically. A transgender male who competed in women’s rugby led to the withdrawal of referees from that sport who feared that women would be killed in competition after watching the player fold women on the field “like a deckchair.”
These rules are not binding, but they do mean that every country can essentially decide whether they will send women to women’s Olympic sports events. “What we are offering to all the international federations is our expertise and a dialogue, rather than jumping to a conclusion,” said Keveh Mehrabi, IOC director of the athletes’ department.
The End of Women’s Sports at the Highest Levels
This essentially spells the end of women’s sports at the highest levels of global competition. The IOC said testing athletes’ testosterone levels to verify that they are able to compete against women, who have far less testosterone than any male person, is “invasive” and “disrespectful.” They did not issue a statement on how invasive or disrespectful it is to force women to compete against bigger, stronger, men, or to allow men to take women’s places in athletic competition. The IOC basically doesn’t care about that.
This was evident during this past summer’s delayed 2020 Olympics held in Tokyo, where Laurel Hubbard, a male who identifies as transgender and uses female pronouns, was allowed to compete for New Zealand in women’s weightlifting. While Hubbard did not medal, and in fact performed very poorly, Hubbard did take the place of female competitors who would otherwise have had the opportunity to compete on behalf of New Zealand.
Hubbard went on to win a Sportswoman of the Year award from a New Zealand university. The Sportsman of the Year award was also given to a man, and no women placed in any award categories.
Women need to get out of sports, or form their own sporting events that are only open to biological women, whether those women identify as transgender, or non-binary, or anything else. Women are being discriminated against by a global sports body that is more concerned with the proclivities and kinks of gender-nonconforming men than women’s ability to compete in international athletics.
