Girls Deserve Fair Sport

 
Key points

• Sports are played with bodies, not identities
• Female and male bodies are different & female sport should be reserved for females
• Community and junior sport is where our olympic athletes get their start – fairness is important at all levels!
• Transgender women have male bodies and should should play sport according to their sex not gender identity

Sport and ‘gender’ 

Transgender identifying people have the right to participate in sport, just like every other member of our society. But sport is played with our bodies, and male and female bodies are different. That’s why female-only sport is vital.

• Australian women and girls are losing prize money in competitions, and positions in teams, to biological males. 
• Sporting bodies are legally allowed to offer single-sex sport
• Sporting guidelines discourage single-sex sport

In Australia, most community and professional bodies follow guidelines developed by the Australian Human Rights Commission in conjunction with Sports Australia. These guidelines prioritise ‘inclusion’ over safety and fairness for women and girls. While sporting organisations are able to continue to provide single-sex competitions under the Sex Discrimination Act, most community sports and a large number of professional sporting bodies are relying on the guidelines to make their decisions – meaning growing numbers of males playing in female sport.

NSW currently has the strongest legal protections in Australia for female sport – but if sex self-ID is introduced these protections will disappear.

What can you do?

The Evidence is Overwhelming

The evidence is overwhelming: male and female bodies have different abilities in sport

Males’ greater average physical size, greater muscle mass and greater bone length and density gives them significant advantages over women in all sports requiring strength and speed, which is most of them.

Equally trained males have 57% more grip strength, 65% more leg strength, 90% more total upper body strength and 162% more punch power than females. (Source: Zach Elliot from the Paradox Institute.)

Just last month (September 2023) the American College of Sports Medicine published an expert consensus statement on ‘The Biological Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance.’

Among the findings were:

• “Biological sex is a determinant of athletic performance: adult males are faster, stronger, more powerful than females because of fundamental sex differences in anatomy and physiology dictated by sex chromosomes.”
• “Before puberty, sex differences in athletic performance are minimal. Significant differences emerge at puberty (-12 years) due to anabolic effects of testosterone in males. Testosterone levels rise 20-30-fold in males during puberty and are 15 times higher in males than females by age 18.” 
• “The sex difference in athletic performance where endurance or muscular power is required is roughly 10-30% depending on the event.”  

A study in 2017 by Duke University’s Centre for Sports Law and Policy compared the performance of elite females and male athletes, as well as boys and adult females, and found that large numbers of boys outperformed the best women’s result in a range of Olympic sports.

• For example, in 2017 Olympic, World, and U.S. Champion Tori Bowie’s 100 metres lifetime best of 10.78 was beaten 15,000 times by men and boys. 
• The study authors said: “there is an average 10-12% performance gap between elite males and elite females.  The gap is smaller between elite females and non-elite males, but it’s still insurmountable and that’s ultimately what matters.”

You can read many more examples of boys outperforming elite female athletes at https://boysvswomen.com/

Other studies have found that even when males reduce their testosterone levels they still out-perform women. 

“Longitudinal studies examining the effects of testosterone suppression on muscle mass and strength in transgender women consistently show very modest changes, where the loss of lean body mass, muscle area and strength typically amounts to approximately 5% after 12 months of treatment. Thus, the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed. Sports organizations should consider this evidence when reassessing current policies regarding participation of transgender women in the female category of sport.”

Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage

Why this matters

• It doesn’t matter if these males win competitions or come dead last
• Every time a male competes in female sport, a woman or girl misses out

Women and girls are losing out. They are losing the right to play single-sex sport in safety and comfort, and they are losing places on podiums and in teams to men.

They are being forced to share change rooms with biological males without their consent, eroding their boundaries and presenting a safeguarding risk.

We know that girls’ participation in sport declines in the teen years due to physical changes, concerns over their appearance, and peer pressure. Girls will be even more likely to stop playing sport if there are boys on the field, in the pool and in their change rooms.

There is already anecdotal evidence in Australia that girls are starting to self-select out of sports where boys are allowed to play against them. This is not only for reasons of physical welfare and fairness but also for cultural or religious reasons in some cases. In fact, ethno-religious minority women and groups are being largely excluded from consultation about the presence of males identifying as women in women’s spaces and women’s sports.

For professional sportswomen, the emphasis on inclusivity can mean losing a place in a team, a race or an event to a man, with a subsequent loss of income. This is simply not fair.

Some sporting codes are seeing sense!

Some sports bodies such as athletics, swimming and world rugby have begun to acknowledge this issue and have taken steps to ensure their professional women’s sports are for females.

The world governing body of cycling, UCI, has recently announced that males who transition after puberty cannot compete in female event.

Women losing out

There are many examples in Australia and internationally of males competing unfairly in women’s sport. These are the tip of the iceberg.

• Trans-identified male Riley Dennis reportedly injured a female player while competing in a woman’s soccer league in Sydney in May 2023.
• Hannah Mouncey, a male, has taken a woman’s sport in the Australian Women’s Handball team as well as in a VLFW Aussie Rules team.
• Trans-identified male Danielle McGahey will play for Canada in the Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup in 202 after more than a decade competing as a man.
• In May 2022, former Western Australian male surfing champion Ryan Egan competed in the women’s longboard titles under the name Sasha Jane Lowerson and won. In response to protests, Surfing WA issued a statement on 4 July, reaffirming Surfing Australia’s policy allowing trans people to compete in any event without restriction. 
• In 2022 Lia Thomas, a trans-identified male swimmer, won the NCAA National Division 1 national championship in the women’s 500 yard freestyle.
• American skateboarder Taylor Silverman has competed against different trans-identifying males three times, and come second to them twice, resulting in thousands of dollars of lost prizemoney.
• Trans-identified male Laurel Hubbard took the place of a woman in the New Zealand weightlifting Olympics team in the Tokyo 2020 games.
• Rachel McKinnon, now called Veronica Ivy, is a male cyclist who won the UCI Women’s Masters Track World Championship in 2018. 
• A 16-year-old boy ranked 172^nd in the 5km race high school athletics in the USA is now ranked 4th after competing as a girl.

Most Australians know this is unfair