World Rugby has finally made the official decision to ban biological men from competing in women’s rugby. Now, national rugby unions and even players themselves are upset that women won’t be competing in a full-contact sport against full-grown biological men.
World Rugby, the global governing body for the sport, drafted a document that was released in July laying out the biological realities of women competing in sports against men who have gone through puberty. According to the document, biological men are “stronger by 25%-50%, are 30% more powerful, 40% heavier, and about 15% faster” than their female counterparts.
The key takeaway? A female player tackled by a biological man would have a 20%-30% increased risk of injury.
While World Rugby allows itself to be governed by science and safety, others allow absurd notions of “inclusion” and “equality” to signal their opposition. The New York Times reported that the ban is “baffling” to players, or at least those who aren’t publicly supporting it out of fear of backlash. After all, being in favor of a ban “in a time of heightened political polarization generally goes against the inclusivity espoused by international sports, including at the Olympics.”
Meanwhile, NBC News warned in its headline that “World Rugby’s transgender ban a ‘dangerous precedent,’ critics say.” That’s right. It’s not dangerous to allow biological men to play a contact sport with female athletes. What’s dangerous is trying to protect female athletes from high-speed collisions with men in a woman’s sport.
There is no binary debate between safety and inclusion here. No one is arguing that transgender athletes should be banned from sports entirely. But men’s and women’s sports weren’t born from some societal standard (many youth sports leagues are co-ed). It exists because men and women are biologically different. In most sports, the biological gap is simply unfair. In rugby, it is physically dangerous.
World Rugby made the correct move to protect both its athletes and the integrity of its own sport. Critics of this ban can’t reconcile their gender politics-driven opposition with separate men’s and women’s leagues or bans on performance-enhancing drugs. Female athletes deserve better than being harmed in the name of inclusion.
