For years, we have separated sports by gender. We have had male sports, and we have had female sports. We do this to make sports fair, because it is an undisputed fact that, most of the time, men have biological advantages to help them. We keep the genders separated to make it fair for women. 

This is now being threatened. Biological males or transgender females are going into men’s sports, and they are dominating. Competitors like Lia Thomas or Mary Gregory, each in their own sport, have been destroying the competition, and it is very clear they have a big advantage. There is also plenty more at the high school level, mostly in track. 

Many people believe that hormone replacement therapy or testosterone suppression make a big difference on how biological males compete once they take these hormones. This is not true at all. According to Pubmed, the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength, after 12 months of testosterone suppression, is only 5%. Just a measly 5%. This is virtually nothing.

Not to mention, even if you are doing this testosterone suppression for years and years, there are some factors that give males an advantage that can never be changed no matter what they do. Factors like height, fast twitch muscle fibers (which are built for short powerful bursts of energy that men have more of), VO2 max (the max amount of oxygen your body can take in and use when exercising, which is higher in men), lung capacity, bone density, red blood cell count, connective tissue strength (which provides structure and strength to the bodies and protect soft tissue, and better in men), and ligament strength. All of these are not reversible, no matter what you do to your body, which gives men the advantage. 

This has already been shown with athletes like Thomas.  She transitioned in May of 2019 and before this she competed as a male swimmer by the name  of William Thomas. Now, in the women’s division, she won first place in the 500 yard with a time of 4 minutes and 37.32 seconds. 2nd place was Emma Weyant, who is an Olympic silver medalist. To put this into perspective, if you go to Top Times Report NCAA, you can search for the men’s time for the 500 yard. Thomas wouldn’t even be in the top 500 for the men’s division. 

A few swimmers have spoken out against Thomas, but they have done so anonymously as the entire team has been advised not to talk to the media, according to DailyMail. Their source says, “While they say they care about all of us, our interests are in direct conflict with the interests of Lia in regards to fair competition and getting to compete. While we support Lia as a person to make decisions for her own life, you cannot make that decision and then come and impede on other people and their rights”.

They also continue on to say, “I don’t know what the solution is, but I know this is not it. Because people talk about how the trans community might’ve been marginalized before and this is supposed to be helping, but you can’t help the trans community by marginalizing [biological] women”.

This is a real issue. Just because you feel a certain way does not mean that you can impede on the rights of others. We as a society need to stop coddling people and lay down some ground rules. National scholarships are being ripped away from biological women in these sports, and it will destroy women’s sports if we don’t do something.