Who Cares If Trans Women Have An Advantage Over Cis Athletes?

Featuring a video of me getting my ass kicked.

When I was young, baseball was my sport of choice. Neither fast nor strong, fielding was the only part of team sports I was good at. When I entered Little League at age 13, I began playing against a classmate of mine, who we’ll call “Jordan.” To put it lightly, puberty did to Jordan what the Super Soldier Formula did to Captain America. While the rest of us were shrimpy pre-teens, Jordan was six feet tall and jacked. He pitched 80 miles an hour (from the 40-foot mound) and ripped line drives off metal bats. After causing a few ER trips, the league had a “safety meeting” with Jordan’s coach and father. Despite his natural gifts, Jordan was well within the rules, so he continued playing. 

Jordan taking the mound on opening day.

It’s fair to say Jordan had a significant biological advantage over the rest of us Little Leaguers. His height, strength, and coordination enabled him to play at a level the vast majority of his competition (me) could never match. It’s just a fact of life, and therefore sports, that some people are gifted with increased muscle mass, low body fat, more flexible joints, higher VO2 max, and other attributes that make them superb athletes. And yet, regardless of these quantifiable advantages, they compete against the ungifted in athletic competition. Watch any game, match, meet, or bout, and you’ll immediately discern the natural athletes from the last-place draft picks.

This is why I find the arguments against trans women playing sports so ridiculous. Earlier this week, the 4^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked West Virginia’s ban on trans girls from participating in female leagues on the grounds it violates Title IX. While I agree with the legal justification, I find the commonsense reasoning for inclusive sports just as convincing. 

It reads like an Onion headline.

First, I should say the medical data on whether or not trans women have an athletic advantage over cis-woman is mixed. This 2022 study from Mount Sinai found transition therapy could erase the natural testosterone advantage trans-woman have over cis-women, while, this New Zealand-based study claims the opposite. However, these two studies from the Children’s Mercy and Lehman College reach shared conclusions that transition therapy erases trans-womens’ strength advantages (measured by push-ups and sit-ups) but does not erase their speed advantage (trans women ran 9% faster in a 1-mile run than cis women). But for argument’s sake, I’ll accept that trans-women have athletic advantages over cis-woman. Seeking to ban trans women from sports, anti-trans activists point to these advantages as “unfairness.”

My response to them is: “Yeah, so what?”

When 13-year-old me was facing 80 mph fastballs was that fair? How about the 17-year-olds who, just last season, were playing against future NHL #1 draft pick Connor Bedard? The aforementioned New Zealand study claims people born male have advantageous hand-eye coordination. Bedard is currently dancing around veteran defensemen, so what “fairness” did his middle-school-aged peers have? Should we start testing for these natural advantages and section sports leagues based on A, B, and C levels of hand-eye coordination? 

I could go on and on, listing athlete after athlete who has superhuman natural advantages, but you get my point. Sports aren’t about fairness. Quite the opposite, actually. They’re about finding ways to overcome adversity. When an athlete or team loses a competition, regardless of whether they played against a trans athlete or a genetically gifted one, that’s an indictment on them. No matter the sport, if your strategy is “hope I’m faster and stronger than my opponent,” then you’re missing the point.

 Some will claim it’s “unsafe” for trans women to compete against cis women, especially in combat sports such as wrestling, boxing, and MMA. Is it also unsafe for women to play against cis women with higher muscle mass? If that’s the case, then we should start sectioning combat sports not just by weight classes, but by VO2 levels and bone density. If trans women pose a threat to their cis peers because they can punch harder, then we should start sectioning boxing by hand speed. After all, that would be the only “fair” thing to do! This, of course, would be ridiculous. Instead, sports section by weight classes, but even that’s not entirely fair. Below is a video of me (in green) in a recent jiu-jitsu competition in which I got bumped up a weight class. My opponent, who was stronger and faster than me, almost broke my arm off with a shoulder lock. Was it “fair” for me to compete against a genetically superior opponent? Not really, but that’s not what matters. We competed, and he used tactics that were accentuated by his genetic gifts. I couldn’t find a way to overcome his advantages, so I lost. 

leveragejiujitsuco

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The Anti-Trans Industry

I’d be amiss to discuss trans sports without mentioning the astroturfed reason this is even an issue. In terms of the problems facing the United States, the supposed fairness of women’s sports isn’t in the top 1000. But, thanks to the insanity of modern conservatism, “who can play in what softball league” is debated as if it’s on par with the healthcare crisis.