Tag: sports

Accommodating Trans Athletes Without Rejecting the Reality of Human Biology

If the world’s sporting bodies were forced to choose between (a) the traditional differentiation of sports competitions along male-female lines, and (b) a system of unfettered gender self-identification, the choice would not be difficult: The idea that half the planet should focus on being a good loser while male bodies dominate the medal podium is preposterous and sexist.

From puberty onwards, male physiological advantages express themselves as increased muscle mass, higher lung capacity and blood flow, and increased bone strength. As recent studies have shown, these advantages generally don’t go away simply because an athlete has changed their pronouns and hormone chemistry. At the highest levels, the difference between male and female world records typically hovers around 10 percent. The men’s world record in the 100m dash, for instance, is 9.58 seconds. The record among women, by contrast, is 10.49 seconds—a time that is routinely bested by teenaged male athletes at high-school track meets. And so while the number of transgender women competing may still be small, their likelihood of out-competing biological females is high. And in sports that involve physical contact, such as rugby and boxing, ignoring the biological differences between men and women isn’t just unfair, but also dangerous.

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Heat to use COVID-19-sniffing dogs to screen fans at games

The Miami Heat are bringing back some fans, with help from some dogs.

The Heat will use coronavirus-sniffing dogs at AmericanAirlines Arena to screen fans who want to attend their games. They’ve been working on the plan for months, and the highly trained dogs have been in place for some games this season where the team has allowed a handful of guests — mostly friends and family of players and staff.

Starting this week, a limited number of ticket holders will be in the seats as well, provided they get past the dogs first.

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PRESIDENT BIDEN MOVES TO END FEMALE-ONLY SPORTS AND SERVICES ON HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE

One of the first acts of Joe Biden’s presidency was to gut sex anti-discrimination laws and eliminate critical protections for women in the federal government. On Wednesday afternoon, only hours after being sworn into office, Biden signed an executive order that “builds on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) and ensures that the federal government interprets Title VII of the the [sic] Civil Rights Act of 1964 as prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” according to the Biden transition team website. 

The order also ensures “that federal anti-discrimination statutes that cover sex discrimination prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.” Federal civil rights offices will also be required to enforce this interpretation in any matter that comes before them, likely including siding against women’s rights in court cases.

With this action, Biden is bypassing the legislative process to implement the most controversial provisions of the Equality Act—changing the definition of sex in federal anti-discrimination regulations so that female people are no longer a discrete class with protected status under the law. As we predicted, the new administration is relying on the Bostock decision to do so.

This executive order directs federal agencies to do two things. First, federal agencies are now required to interpret “sex” as also including “sexual orientation and gender identity” in their own internal regulations and workplace policies.  Second, agencies are directed to perform a comprehensive assessment of all regulations under their purview, and create a plan with 100 days to “revise, suspend, or rescind such agency actions, or promulgate [propose] new agency actions”  that will impose this interpretation onto all American employers, institutions, and individuals, with no exceptions. 

The Supreme Court was clear at the time of the Bostock decision that the ruling was only meant to be applied to hiring and firing discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, in advancing their novel reasoning that “transgender status” meant that a male employee should be allowed to identify into the otherwise lawful sex-based rules for female employees. While we strongly support protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation, the Biden administration has grossly expanded the application of the decision with far-reaching implications for women’s rights in nearly every aspect of public life, including Title IX.

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Trans women retain athletic edge after a year of hormone therapy, study finds

A new study suggests transgender women maintain an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers even after a year on hormone therapy.

The results, published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, could mean the current one-year waiting period for Olympic athletes who are transitioning is inadequate.

“For the Olympic level, the elite level, I’d say probably two years is more realistic than one year,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Timothy Roberts, a pediatrician and the director of the adolescent medicine training program at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. “At one year, the trans women on average still have an advantage over the cis women,” he said, referring to cisgender, or nontransgender, women.

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