As biological male Lia Thomas continues to dominate women’s swimming, the New York Times’s “science reporter” has jumped into the debate around transgender athletes. As is typical in legacy media, she missed every relevant point about biological differences and advantages.
Azeen Ghorayshi writes that sports organizations have “leaned on medical tests — whether anatomical, chromosomal or hormonal — to determine eligibility in women’s categories, while requiring no analogous tests for men.” On Twitter, Ghorayshi shared the piece while noting that all the complaints against female athletes have had one thing in common — “They were winning.”
Ghorayshi’s piece goes on to cover the typical “straight news” structure of a piece on transgender athletes, claiming that “some people” think it is unfair that men compete against women while other people are worried about “inclusivity.” At one point, the piece cites the director of the “Adult Gender Identity Clinic” in London as saying that biological men may even have a disadvantage in some women’s sports — which sports that would be, exactly, isn’t immediately clear.
In almost every single sport and event, men have a biological advantage over women. We have seen that in freestyle swimming, courtesy of Thomas. We have also seen it directly in track, mixed martial arts, and weightlifting. In soccer and tennis, we have real-life examples of lower-ranked men’s teams and players, even high school teams, beating the best women in the world. In basketball, the NBA and WNBA manifestly exist on two completely different planes of athletic ability and competition.
NEW from me: Lia Thomas is just the latest elite athlete in the last century who has been subject to anatomical, chromosomal or hormonal scrutiny to compete in women’s events.
One thing they all have in common? They were winning.https://t.co/7FkP04NiXB
— Azeen Ghorayshi (@azeen) February 16, 2022
Those advantages explain what is so silly about Ghorayshi’s assertions. Yes, there is no analogous testing for men’s sports. That’s because women, if they can compete in men’s sports, would still not come to them with the sort of overwhelming biological advantage that men bring to women’s sports. Men are tested for steroids and performance-enhancing drugs, including hormones, but sports officials aren’t prioritizing testing their chromosomes because the advantage only works one way.
As Ghorayshi notes, the one thing the controversial male swimmers have in common is that they are winning in competitions with women. The historical concerns she cites, of female athletes being tested to determine if they were men, existed precisely because sports officials recognized the immensely unfair advantage men have when competing against women.
Indeed, that plays out in her examples: Tennis player Renee Richards was indeed a man. Track runner Caster Semenya of South Africa had a genetic disorder but was genetically male and competing against women.
No one would care if Thomas were competing against men. That’s because Thomas is a man. We already know he would not have a biological advantage because he was competing as a man as recently as 2019.
We know that men, in the events in which Thomas participates, routinely beat the women’s all-time record without even winning. This is not a question of double standards or sore losers. It is a question of basic science, and the New York Times’s science reporter flunks it.
