The seventh article of the Declaration reads: “Reaffirming women’s rights to the same opportunities as men to participate actively in sports and physical education.”
Inherent Physical Differences
It will come as a surprise to few that women’s sports do not exist because men tremble at the thought of our competing in their events and taking home everything from the Stanley Cup to the WBC Heavyweight Championship Belt.
Single-sex sports exist because women’s bodies evolved largely to accommodate childbearing, causing the two sexes to have differences in size, bone density, muscle mass, body fat, explosive strength, lung capacity, and hemoglobin levels. (Hemoglobin is a protein in red blood cells that helps transport oxygen.) Women’s wider hips, with which we evolved because we are the sex that bears children, pose a disadvantage in running gait. Men can run faster, jump longer, throw further, and lift greater amounts of weight than women.
So great is the male athletic advantage that the alternative to having separate sporting events is for women simply not to participate in most competitive sports. An opportunity to compete against men is, for female athletes, hardly an opportunity at all, never mind an equal one.
What makes this debate particularly tiresome is that virtually everyone has known all along that men have an athletic advantage over women. We know that they know this because the only argument we commonly hear for the inclusion of men in women’s sports is that a self-selected group of men somehow “are women.”
According to the medical and science director of the International Olympic Committee, Richard Budgett, it is not only true that men, including weightlifter Laurel Hubbard (a New Zealand man who was awarded a gold medal that should rightfully have gone to Feagaiga Stowers, a Samoan woman, in the 2019 Pacific Games and was granted a place in the women’s category of the 2020 Olympics despite his male sex), “are women,” but “everyone agrees” that it is so. This is, of course, nonsense. Only women are women. Laurel Hubbard is an adult human male who, like all other men, has a body organized around the production of small gametes. His only claim to womanhood is based on the nonsense concept of “gender identity.”
Serena Williams, generally considered the greatest female tennis player of all time, said, in 2013, of the possibility of playing against a man (after this was proposed by male player Andy Murray), “Actually it’s funny, because Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ For me, men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game.”
Williams was speaking from experience. In 1998, she and her sister, Venus, did play 203rd-ranked men’s tennis player Kaarsten Braasch. Braasch beat both women.
Men with Special “Identities” and/or Lowered Testosterone
By the standards of the movement that seeks to replace sex with a circularly defined notion of “gender,” men become women when they simply declare it. When it comes to sports, however, men are sometimes expected to lower their testosterone levels if they wish to compete in events that were designed for women.
To compete in the women’s category of the Olympics, for example, a man must ensure that his testosterone level is below 10 nanomoles per liter. This is about six to eight times higher than average levels for women, which range from 0.12 to 1.79 nanomoles per liter, and of course, it doesn’t alter the many physical advantages that men gain in puberty and retain for a lifetime. The idea with a man with lower-than-average testosterone is a woman is ridiculous, and studies confirm that that such men retain an athletic advantage over women.
For some particularly well-presented information on the male athletic advantage, see the website Boys vs. Women, which compares male high school athletes with Olympic-level women.
Fairness, Privacy, and Safety
Now that we have shown exactly why separate athletic categories are necessary, it is worth noting that, even if an embarrassingly bad male athlete wished to compete in a women’s event that he would be bound to lose, it would still be wrong for him to take a spot that was intended for a woman. Having two categories, one for the best men and one for a mix of the best women and some poor or mediocre men, would not grant equal opportunities for men and women because men would have a larger total number of opportunities.
In contact sports, too, having separate male and female categories is necessary for women’s physical safety.
Furthermore, as affirmed in Article 5 of the Declaration, women have the right to assemble and to participate in single-sex events simply for their own enjoyment, as well as the right to the privacy and safety of single-sex locker rooms before and after sporting events.
Contact Your State Legislators
Ultimately, there is no reason to eliminate women’s single-sex sports that is not based on misogyny, which should make Article 7 particularly easy to promote. I urge U.S. signatories to look for legislation in their states that would protect women’s sports from male incursion. These bills require that athletes compete in categories corresponding to their own sex, in keeping with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Please ask your state senator and representative to co-sponsor this legislation, and if they have already done so, please thank them and ask them how you can submit oral or written testimony in support. Many of us have benefited from women’s sports or have relatives who have done so, and many of us also have daughters or granddaughters whom we hope will have the same opportunities. Any such experience makes an excellent basis for testimony.
The Amazing Beth Stelzer
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Beth Stelzer, WHRC signatory and founder of Save Women’s Sports, for her tireless work in this area. There is no person in the United States who has done more in the past two years to promote the cause of women’s and girls’ sports. Beth has testified at countless hearings and given hope to girls who want a fair chance to compete. Beth, you are an inspiration to us all.
To read the Declaration in full and become a signatory click here.
Also, check out our previous posts in our Declaration series here:
Women’s Rights Are Based On Their Sex – Article 1
Motherhood is an Exclusively Female Status – Article 2
Physical/Reproductive Integrity – Article 3
Freedom of Opinion And Expression – Article 4
Assembly and Association – Article 5
Political Participation – Article 6
*Please note that the Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA (WHRC-USA) is now officially known as Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI-USA)
