Imane Khelif, the genetic male expected to win a gold medal tonight after beating a woman in the welterweight final at the Olympics, has dramatically focused attention yet again onto sex differences in sport. She has been allowed to compete as a woman even though they failed an International Boxing Association gender test last year, preventing them from competing as a woman in the Boxing World Championships.
If we still needed it, the success of Khelif is the clearest demonstration yet of gender differences in sport. The evidence for this, of course, has been mounting each year, focused in particular on the unfairness of transgender athletes winning in women’s sporting competitions (although Khelif is not a trans athlete, having been wrongly identified as female at birth due to having a rare condition known as DSD, which stands for disorders in sex development).
Take the case of swimmer Lia Thomas who, by winning the 500-yard freestyle competition, became the first transgender person to win a highly prestigious U.S. College Athletic title. Competing as a man a year or two earlier, however, he had ranked 554th in the U.S. Not a bad uplift on account of transitioning.
While the athletes and their supporters obviously approve of such a dizzying climb, conservative social commentators are aghast. Here’s Allison Pearson in the Telegraph: “Mediocre males can suddenly win prizes that would have been way out of reach had they stayed in their biological sex category.” People like Lia Thomas are “shameless cheats”. Second-placed Ms. Weyant should have won.
As far as I can see, however, no-one is pondering the opposite question. Why is it considered fair that a woman could come first and win accolades in a national sporting competition, when she couldn’t even beat some “mediocre” competitor ranked 554th amongst men?
This is a general question. Why is it fair that Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah can win the 100 metres gold medal at the last Olympics, when her time – 10.61 seconds – would not have enabled her to progress through any of the heats, let alone the semi-finals, had she competed against men? How is it fair to the men eliminated, that runners slower than them should continue to international glory simply because they happen to be women?
If you’re a man and ran the 2003 London Marathon in 2 hours 15 minutes, no-one will have noticed you. A woman, however, running the same time created a world record and got international fame, as well as honours from Her Majesty the Queen. We all remember Paula Radcliffe. The men who ran as fast or faster than her are forgotten.
Why is this fair? More importantly, why is this even allowed? In all other areas of our lives, we are compelled – on pain of punishment – not to treat men and women differently. And the aspirational metric for showing whether or not we are doing so is equal numbers of men and women in coveted positions.
The Fawcett Society’s Sex and Power Index catalogues “the progress towards equal representation for women in top jobs across the U.K.” In 2022, women made up only 8% of the CEOs of FTSE 100 companies, it complains. Overall, less than one third of the 5,000 top jobs in the U.K. are taken by women, meaning that there are 1,000 missing women. It’s all because of sexism, the experts say, and society needs to change.
Why the contrast with sports, where we are only able to achieve equality by not treating men and women equally? In England (with parallel legislation elsewhere) it’s all because of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Section 44 says that in “any sport, game or other activity of a competitive nature” the strictures against sex discrimination do not apply, so men can be discriminated against – let’s be clear, that’s what it amounts to – by allowing less able women to win awards that they couldn’t have achieved if they had competed against men.
Why did the 1975 Act allow this? Because men and women are different. The Sex Discrimination Act recognises that the “physical strength, stamina or physique of the average woman puts her at a disadvantage to the average man”. Sec 195(3) of the Equality Act 2010 incorporates the same language and sentiments.
It was bloody obvious in the case of the poor female boxers that have had to compete against Imane Khelif. It’s always clear when genetic males compete in women’s sports.
It’s important to note that all the evidence concerning transgender people competing in women’s sports has revealed that the perceived unfairness isn’t just because of “physical strength, stamina or physique”. Most important of all is testosterone – as made clear by World Athletics, which under previous rules allowed transgender women to be admitted to women’s sports once they had reduced their blood testosterone level for a period of 12 months.
But testosterone in men not only leads to huge differences in physical strength; it also accounts for psychological differences too. Testosterone drives status-enhancing behaviours in males. It makes men more tolerant of risk-taking. It is a “fuel for dominance”, as one social psychologist put it.
It goes without saying that these differences in testosterone levels between men and women are likely to lead to large sexual differences in the race for sporting dominance. But the same is true of competition in other areas. Testosterone equally favours men and disadvantages women in the race to become a CEO of a FTSE-100 company, say, or Prime Minister, as it does in the race to win in an athletics competition.
Imagine if sport had not been excluded from the Sex Discrimination Act. There would be commissions of enquiry set up into lack of female representation at the highest level in sport. Is it due to sexism? Stereotyping? The patriarchy? Government ministers would urge our Olympic teams to include at least one woman in each discipline – and no-one would be allowed to object that this meant better men were overlooked. And the Fawcett Society would be furiously publishing screeds about the absence of women winning boxing matches, 100m races and tennis matches at the Paris Olympics. It would look forward to the day when this unconscionable ‘discrimination’ would be eliminated and men and women would be able compete on equal terms in every sport, with 50% of the winners being female.
No one would be able to say – or they’d be ostracised if they dared – that perhaps, just perhaps, the lack of women competing at the top level in sport was that they were simply unable to compete with men on equal terms.
So thank goodness that we are allowed to recognise sex differences in sport. It spares us an enormous amount of grief.
But must that grief continue in so many other areas of our lives? Why can’t we be allowed to say it: there are fewer women CEOs or senior politicians or leading clergy or chess grandmasters because men and women are different. Not because of discrimination. Not because of sexism. Not because of the patriarchy. Simply because women are not physically up to it. We don’t say it because we can’t. But, secretly, many of us know it’s true.
Going back to the original legal wording, one possibility occurs to me. Both the 1975 and 2010 Acts have the same wording – the exemption that allows sex discrimination is for any “sport, game or other activity of a competitive nature”.
But “other activities of a competitive nature” surely include the race to become a CEO of a FTSE 100 company or a Prime Minister, or, indeed, any other high status positions. Could there not be a carve-out for those areas, too?
The trans debate has brought this into sharp focus. It really is hopeless for women to try to compete on equal terms in any sport against biological men. The cases of Imane Khelif, Lia Thomas, Austin Killips and all the others mean that no-one can hide from that now. But the outcry over how unfair this is may have opened up the possibility that this could also be as self-evident in other areas of life too. Like becoming a CEO or Prime Minister. There, I’ve said it now. But I have a good job so, of course, I’d never dare attach my name to this article.
Stop Press: Imane Khelif did indeed win a gold medal.
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“If I played Andy Murray I would lose 6-0 6-0”——-Serena Williams
B-b-but..Johnson, Sunak and Starmer have all shown us how great they are at being PM!
So goes the author’s argument…..
Compared to Truss?
I think there’s a world of difference between being good at becoming PM and being a good PM.
The ‘patriarchy’ is a foolish notion. If you imagine that its a mans world, controlled entirely by men, then you have not understood anything about how the world works.
As for men competing against women in a combat sport, The IOC should hang their heads in shame. I know they won’t, as shame is somewhat out of style, but nevertheless that’s what they should do.
On previous posts I drew a line from the feminist movement which professes that men and women are equal to transgenderism which professes that “man” and “woman” are social constructs and not biological ones.
And I got badly hammered for it by many people.
Transgenderism is extreme feminism. It is rooted in a denial of reality of the nature of men and women.
Interestingly like with other ideologies and religions, the bitterest enemies are often the factions within the same ideology.
The trans people have their most vicious (and effective) opponents in the feminists.
I am not sure if this fine female specimen is a heavyweight or not so perhaps she would not have done that great against Ali ———“Never mind what you see, this gal is gonna fall in 3”
Totally agree and what we did through the 20th century was hype the worst elements of masculinity and feminity. So we became overly aggressive and overly emotional, this explains why Nato leaders seem to thinking poking the Russian bear hard when it possesses nukes is sensible. The idiocy of the idea men and women are the same is the same stupidity that underlines all other leftist ideologies, denial of reality.
Men as a group can do all physical tasks better than women as a group, but so what!!! As a group men are useless, as women are alone, we’d become extinct without women who have sacrificed strength as they encumbered with the problem of carrying offspring.
Women are more efficient at sowing than men that’s not disparaging that’s a fact as they are generally more dexterous having nimble fingers.
Oh dear the lone leftist net zero mass immigration gender crap person is out today to thumbs down all us far right fascists that don’t want to sit in their little castle on top of the moral high ground beside them
Great article. Thought provoking.
It IS thought provoking!
Even though it’s anonymous…
Well, quite. As I’ve argued time and again, men and women are physiologically different which creates behavioural differences, which should be accepted and respected. The feminisation of society, which will naturally attempt to become more risk averse, is key to understanding the destructive societal shifts that we are witnessing. The article shines a spotlight on the rank hypocrisy that exists in our society and ponders why that is so. The answer is simple: modern feminism (being distinct from original feminism) is a narcissistic, far-left, ideology that demands that men and women are equal in all aspects and, therefore, must witness equal outcomes… until that equality highlights a difference that is not advantageous to women, and, at that point, society is bullied once again to recognise there just may be a difference here and there after all. As I’ve always maintained, the cake eating brigade are responsible for much of the social destruction. The sooner we get back to respecting each others differences, and start thinking of others rather than the victim in the mirror, the sooner society will repair. It won’t happen anytime soon.
Original feminism is equally bs, vicious and nasty. Imagine campaigning for the vote through terrorist means, then ww1 comes about where upon you start handing out white feathers to men not at the front line whilst being excused for being there because you are a women! Small point half of men couldn’t vote in 1910 due to the householder rule. Suffragette history is the smelliest bs ever inflicted in the classroom. Btw we’ve now all get a vote on precisely nothing thanks to the extension of the franchise away from households who produce to having everyone voting whether they produce it consume taxes.
“Btw we’ve now all get a vote on precisely nothing…”
Yep…
Re “The feminisation of society, which will naturally attempt to become more risk averse…”
Was the diabolical response to ‘Covid’, against a so-called ‘killer virus’ that doesn’t kill most people, led by women?
We’re supposed to ignore the irrefutable facts and evidence right before our eyes that it was the vast majority of male leaders and other authority figures who put us all through years of misery and human rights abuses during the Scamdemic. It’s the inconvenient truth that contradicts the misogynists’ warped world view that females are to blame for all the ills in society. Men were just hapless manipulated puppets, therefore absolved of all responsibility, apparently.
Maybe I’ve just not had sufficient caffeine and haven’t read this article right but is the author seriously saying women aren’t deserving of their sporting achievements and resulting success all because their times/heights/points, whatever it is in that event, are not as good when competing against other females as when compared to the equivalent in the men’s categories?
Then the author goes on to make a straw man fallacy by talking about how women allegedly aren’t as good as men in other areas, such as being Prime Minister?
Is that what they’re seriously saying?
No, I don’t think that’s what the author is saying.
”Why is it fair that Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah can win the 100 metres gold medal at the last Olympics, when her time – 10.61 seconds – would not have enabled her to progress through any of the heats, let alone the semi-finals, had she competed against men? How is it fair to the men eliminated, that runners slower than them should continue to international glory simply because they happen to be women?
If you’re a man and ran the 2003 London Marathon in 2 hours 15 minutes, no-one will have noticed you. A woman, however, running the same time created a world record and got international fame, as well as honours from Her Majesty the Queen. We all remember Paula Radcliffe. The men who ran as fast or faster than her are forgotten.
Why is this fair? More importantly, why is this even allowed?”
You sure about that? A woman can beat a load of other women, fair and square, but because her time is less than men that didn’t get to qualify in the men’s race she’s somehow deemed unworthy of her success and it’s just all so *unfair*?? That’s what I’m getting from the article.
Oh, and men make better CEOs apparently, though regarding the job of Prime Minister, that’s seriously debatable! lol
I doubt the author is wanting to abolish female categories in sport. He is just making a point for effect.
I think the author is arguing that men are better, on average, at becoming CEOs – that’s not the same thing as being better.
I’ve taken his general argument to be that we should stop focusing on arbitrary categories and accept that everyone is an individual.
Interestingly, that is the liberal idea. But transgenderism has taken it to the extreme now.
If you look at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, that was the theme – everyone is an individual, they can be what they like and we should embrace every one’s individuality.
I’ve always considered myself liberal, in the classical sense, but I don’t know what to make of that because it’s deeply unsettling.
I think the problems arise when there is a denial of objective physical reality.
I think I can tolerate any idea but the denial of objective reality I struggle with.
Everyone is an individual but that doesn’t mean that objective reality doesn’t exist. People can think whatever they like as long as they don’t expect everyone else to go along with it. I’m not sure I want anyone to “embrace” my individuality – I try to treat people as I find them, and hope people do the same for me – life seems to work better when that happens.
I agree. BUT, if you follow the logic of the fundamental idea that we each chose to be who we are and accept others as they are without coercion, you reach a fundamental problem.
What do you teach children in school?
If I believe in objective reality, that a man is a man, a woman is a woman and gender is not a social construct but an objective physical reality and someone else believes the opposite, that gender is a social construct and physical reality can and should be adapted to each person’s conceptualised gender, then what do we do?
Do we both get to teach kids each of those ideas and let them decide?
I don’t want my children being taught that madness. I’m happy for people to hold that view but don’t force it on me.
But the trans ideologue can claim that by not allowing him to teach his views, I am forcing my views on others.
I find myself fighting to keep harmful ideas away from kids and I recognise that that’s where my liberalism ends.
Good point. I suppose you could teach them that some people believe that “gender” is a thing and others don’t, but depending on the age, it’s going to confuse them. It’s a good argument for complete freedom of choice in schooling – get the state out of education, or give people vouchers if they opt out of state education. I don’t think it would be that hard to find schools that taught objective physical reality.
Couldn’t agree more.
In the meantime, in our current world where the state imposes its extreme.ideology in schools, one is forced into taking an illiberal position of fighting to shut down certain ideas.
True, though kids are always going to be exposed to all sorts of ideas that you think are harmful and all you can do is your best in order to give them what you think is the best start in life – which they may well ignore later. Speaking as a parent of grown up kids, it’s like bloody torture sometimes.
Why don’t parents fight back against state interference with their children?
What are schools about exactly?
Should they be just for teaching the basics – reading, writing and arithmetic? And other useful things such as home economics.
Very concerning to think about indoctrinated teachers indoctrinating students.
“…objective reality, that a man is a man, a woman is a woman”.
Exactly.
What happened to this objective reality?
And who is behind destroying it and why?
Re men being better at becoming CEOs…
Like Larry Fink, CEO of Black Rock?
How’s that working out for everyone?
He’s probably quite good at what his job ought to be about – making money – but seems to think he should be saving/re-shaping the world at the same time. Him and lots of others. Seems to be what people want/expect now.
And why do they have weight categories in boxing?
Can you please stop using ‘they’ to describe this person. ‘They’ is a plural pronoun and by using it you are buying into the language mangling that the alphabet people have invented to scramble our brains with nonsense about ‘non-binary’. Call the boxer ‘he’ if you want, though ‘she’ in this case is OK as presumably with her particular DSD condition she has the outward appearance of being female. It is her Y chromosome that gives her the unfair advantage in sport and we would not be bothered about her genetic make up if she wasn’t in an olympic boxing ring. Call her ‘it’ even, if you must, but please let’s preserve our English grammar and stop it with the singular ‘they’!!
Now leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight;
And every one to rest themselves betake,
Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.
Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
Canterbury Tales:
And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up…
Wycliffe Bible, “Eche on[e] in þer [their] craft ys wijs”.
In part, I suppose, it’s a number issue as much as a gender one: in the second person we have completely dropped singular versions of pronouns.
This argument has already been tacitly accepted by the governing class.
It has been argued that if there were more females in the top of the banking profession, the risky behaviour which has led to various banking scandals (for instance the collapse of Barings Bank) would be less likely to happen.
Women tend to be more risk averse than men.
More concerning is the type of individual who gets to the top, regardless of sex.
Patriarchy- rubbish! How often do you see stuff about women’s health on websites etc, but never see Men’s health.
Erm, there’s an actual magazine called Men’s Health.
But honestly, the only patriarchy I’m aware of in society is that coming from Islam, which naturally has very real and negative effects on Muslim women. But because of “cultural differences” and good old double standards, the feminists don’t seem overly keen on going there. Hence, it’s yet more proof of how their culture is incompatible with ours.
Fair enough, but I think there is a bias there.
Leading clergy?? How is this linked to risk taking in any way shape or form?!
Anyway, surely the argument is best summed up as a belief in meritocracy. And the best person for a job might be a man, might be a woman. It’s who is available at the time based on your best evidence.
The same argument applies to any other arbitrary categorisation of human individuals – for example, by race. Identity politics just leads to bad stuff. I’m a white man. What does that mean? To me, absolutely nothing. I am me. What could it possibly mean, beyond the obvious – I need to be a bit more careful under strong sunshine, it’s easier to pee standing up and I can produce sperm?
This is why forever banging on about the whole gender thing is tedious AF, as far as I’m concerned. It’s been rehashed and dissected more times than is strictly necessary and achieves precisely nothing. In fact, I took nothing away from this article at all. It just sounds to me like the author ( I’ll hazard a guess that they’re a man
) is trying to “stir the pot”. Why does the focus always have to be on differences that have always been self-evident since forever?
Men are also evidently better than women at being paedophiles, rapists, terrorists and murderers ( especially serial killers ), but let’s focus on the positive and behold how evidently superior they are at being Prime Ministers instead.
Well yes and no. Lefties bang on about under-representation of their chosen “victim groups” all the time. We either ignore those arguments or try to defeat them with logic. Neither approach seems to work, sadly.
It can’t be ignored because the feminist movement, once perhaps about ensuring better treatment of women in society, has long been a political movement aimed at women obtaining privileges over men.
That’s in essence the gist of the article.
You are right that men, because of testosterone, are much much more likely to be rapists, murderers, etc. And that is perfectly well reflected in the prison population which is mostly male.
You don’t hear men banging on about how unfair that is and there should be just as women in prisons as men, do you?
I know you don’t like to hear this, but cureent day feminism os about women trying to gain special treatment over men.
”I know you don’t like to hear this..” How would you know that? Where have I ever said I’m a feminist? And your argument doesn’t explain how it’s feminists who are shafting other women due to their support of these men parodying women ‘trans’ folk. It’s feminists who are fully onboard with men identifying as women gaining access to female’s private spaces, winning Miss World, and god knows what else, we know the drill by now.
I should really correct that by emphasising *some* feminists, given there’s some who are actively opposing all this nonsense, demonstrating how feminism appears to operate on a spectrum nowadays, effectively ensuring the whole thing is meaningless.
What you conveniently fail to acknowledge is the fact that it’s actually the Woketards ( who come in both genders, btw ) who are front and centre at doing a demolition job on society, which would include men’s rights and women’s rights. I think you give the feminists too much credit. Is Mark Adams, director of the IOC, a feminist? As per the article, it isn’t feminists who made sure biological men could compete in the women’s categories at the Olympics, past and present, it’s the Woke ideology that has ensured this can happen. Same goes for all the other areas in society that this is happening, whereby *everybody’s* rights and natural differences are being abused, dismantled and exploited.
Some years ago whilst at University my son wrote a short piece about exam preparation by men and woman. He argued that men were much more prepared to take a risk and focus all their efforts on some key areas and ignore others whereas women were much more inclined to study and revise everything just to be sure. He was, as you can imagine, duly vilified for his efforts although one female academic privately told him he was quite correct but she would never dare say so in public.
Men do seem to be gamblers, is it nature or nurture? who knows;
”If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss; ”
”He was the kind of man that would gamble on luck
Look you in the eye and never back up”
If you take a risk you can win big or you can lose big. Why are men such big risk takers? is it down to hormones and biology or social conditioning? Either way, the willingness to take a gamble and a risk seems a key factor in male activity.
“She has been allowed to compete as a woman…”
The point is, it’s not a woman, so why call it “she?”
Exactly. You’re just capitulating to the Woketards, playing into the hands of the biologically male ( as per a sex text, which has proven Y chromosomes present ) imposters. Language is important. Personally I’d use ”he”, or ”they”, depending on the sentence, e.g, ”He is a man”, ”They are men”. Using ”she” just screams acceptance of this nonsense and weakens one’s opposition to what’s happening. ”She is a man” just sounds dumb.
To take this a step further do we want women as front line soldiers as warfare does not follow any rules, not even IOC rules?
What a joke the Olympics and major sporting events have become. (I’ve never recovered my enthusiasm since Lance Armstrong admitted to cheating with drugs in the TdF.) We should boycott them all and go back to supporting our local sporting clubs and events, encouraging boys to be boys and girls to be girls valuing competition and hard work.
Wrong focus.
The problem is woke International Olympic Committee.
They proved that with the ‘last supper’ scene which has been wrongly described as a ‘parody’.
Woke up Woke up Woke up sheeples to the real problems.
You are equating testosterone levels with IQ and ability levels. I know plenty of smart aggressive dominating women. Your argument is a gross oversimplification that men are naturally better at everything because of a hormone level forgetting all of the other attributes required to rise to a CEO level.
My grandmother could never understand Women’s Lib as far as she was concerned women ruled anyway quietly in the background but none the less ruled!