It is hard to believe that we have to justify the difference between men and women in sports, and the value of women’s sports, but the Left is determined to allow men pretending to be women (so called “transwomen”) to play in women’s sports at all levels. Men should NEVER play in women's sports under any circumstances. There are separate categories for men’s and women’s sports because of sexual dimorphism that gives men an advantage athletically over women, which stems from our chromosomes.
Chromosomes define gender or sex (because the Left likes to differentiate the two): XX for women and XY for men. There are rare cases where an individual may be born with XXY, XXYY, XYY, a single-X chromosome, etc. For sport competitions, the general rule should be that anyone with a ‘Y’ chromosome competes in the male category. This rule allows everyone, including these rare individuals, to compete fairly and safely. Identity is not and should not be a factor in sports.
For recreational and competitive sports, participation in the boy’s or girl’s league should be based on sex of the child’s original birth certificate. Unbelievably, I have to make this distinction, because some states allow individuals to change their sex on their birth certificate. If an athlete or their parent is caught lying, that athlete should be black listed, no different than performance enhancing drugs or steroid use, and removed from the league. At the top levels of competition (Olympics, World Cup, professional sports, NCAA, etc.) a DNA test might be required because of the Left’s relentless narcism and inflated sense of self-importance pushing “identity” and fiction over biology and facts.
These different chromosomal pairs generate the general physical differences between women (XX) and men (XY): size, shape, genitalia, reproductive organs, bone density, hormones, appearance, voice, etc. On average, men tend to be taller, stronger, have higher muscle mass, less fat, longer legs, longer arms, more testosterone, etc. This biological, chromosomal difference gives men a physical advantage in sports, hence separate sports categories for men and women.
This is personal for me. I played NCAA Division I women’s soccer. I loved playing, competing, and being part of the team. My best memories from college were on the field with my teammates. I want young girls to continue to reap the benefits of sports and competition.
Male biological, athletic advantage
In polite terms, men have a biological advantage in sports. To evaluate this assertion compare World records of men and women in sports that measure raw athleticism (e.g., running, swimming, weightlifting, jumping).
Obviously, 100% of the men’s records beat the women’s record in each event. Statistically significant? Yes. Any exceptions? No. Conclusion, men are athletically superior to women. This is an unfortunate, inconvenient fact; we ladies, like to consider ourselves invincible and equally capable in all categories.
Are there individual women that can run or swim faster, better at basketball, etc.? Yes! These individual ladies tend to be tremendous athletes. But that NEVER happens among the best male and female athletes in each sport, as shown in the table above.
Another example, the US Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) scrimmaged FC Dallas’s under-15 boys academy team in preparation for a game against Russia. The U-15 boys team soundly beat the USWNT 5-2. This scrimmage was in 2017, in-between the USWNT winning back-to-back Women’s World Cup championships in 2015 and 2019. The best women’s soccer team in the world lost to a U-15 boys team in Dallas that was not even the best U-15 boys in the US, a country that has a relatively weak men’s soccer program compared to other countries around the world. As USWNT captain Carli Lloyd pointed out, the boys were “bigger, stronger, faster”, even at their young age.
Safety is another big issue.
Let’s talk physics. These are three major equations in contact sports (soccer, football, basketball, hockey, etc.) that athletes are intimately familiar with their application.
Larger mass, faster speed, and quicker acceleration will lead to more force when a player throws or kicks the ball, tackles an opponent, bumps another player into the boards of a hockey arena, etc. On average, men tend to be taller, have more muscle, and are effectively larger [have more mass] than women. Men also tend to be faster and quicker than women, which increases velocity and acceleration. The larger mass of men, faster speed, and quicker acceleration will results in more force, momentum, and kinetic energy when throwing, kicking, tackling, spiking, wrestling, etc. When it comes to sports, biology and physics synergize and give men a major advantage.
This is easily measured and tracked in baseball. The fastest recorded baseball pitch is 105.8 mph by Aroldis Chapman; in contrast the fastest baseball pitch thrown by a woman (Genevieve Beacom) is 85.9 mph. At the recreational level, an untrained adult male can throw a baseball on average 45-65 mph, and equivalent females typically range 30-45 mph. These are major differences in velocity, kinetic energy of the baseball, etc. at all levels of competition.
Having more force, momentum, and kinetic energy relative to the opponent reduces your likelihood of injury while increasing the potential for your opponent to get injured in a tackle or on the other end of the ball or puck. If a male player identifying as female [so called “transwoman”] is allowed to play in the women’s league, he is likely to injure a female player. Moreover, he is more likely to injure a female player than the other female players on the field, and less likely to get hurt himself. This dichotomy adds another dimension to the unfair advantage.
But what about coed? When playing coed everyone is aware of the male-female differences and plays accordingly. In my experience playing coed soccer, players typically line up so that the one-on-one matchups tend to be of the same gender and when tackling the opposite gender, both players do not go all-in, because neither party wants to hurt the other. This makes for a fun, recreational game, but is not conducive to competitive sports.
Precision sports
Less obviously, gender still comes into play in precision sports (e.g., golf, curling, shooting, archery). I recently tried curling. My instructor was a man dressed as a woman, wearing a Scottish skirt; he wanted to be called Marilyn. I’m grateful he was volunteering to teach this sport he loved and for the opportunity to learn from him. In curling, one player slides the stone gently on the ice and gives it a curl, called throwing a stone, and the other player(s) sweep the stone and try to get it to stop on the target or knock another team’s stone away. Marilyn pointed out that in curling, a sport focused on precision, the ability to throw the stone is entirely individual skill with no gender advantage or discrepancy, but men tend to be slightly better sweepers because they have more mass to push down on the broom to make the ice more slippery to move the stone. Even in sports primarily focused on precision, there are still slight advantages related to gender.
Our society has known for centuries that men have a distinct advantage athletically in sports. This advantage is biological derived from our chromosomes and harnesses physics to create unfair athletic conditions. The only way to maintain integrity of sports and fair competition is to differentiate the biological categories based on chromosomes: anyone with a ‘Y’ chromosome plays in the male category, individuals with only ‘X’ chromosomes play in the female category, regardless of gender identity. This is not only a fairness issue, it is a safety issue for women.
Leftists pushing for men to play in women’s sports based on identity are stripping women of fair competition that has valuable professional development benefits, prize money, health benefits, and lots of fun! Academia stop the pseudoscience, patronizing jargon, and claiming gender is more nuanced to push for “transwomen” to play in female sports. Lefty feminists stop disregarding the spirit of Title IX and claiming this isn’t happening, there are many examples. More on each of these later …