Yes, Lia Thomas SHOULD be permitted to swim in women’s events at the Olympics (according to a recent NYT opinion section article)

Spoiler alert: The author’s arguments are based on factual falsehoods and weak reasoning. Males should NOT be permitted in women’s sports because ... they are WOMEN'S sports and males are not females.

A recent NYT opinion section article by Michael Waters was titled: At the Paris Olympics, Sex Testing Will Be in Full Force. How Did We Get Here? The title suggests the article’s purpose is to review the history of sex testing at the Olympics. The article does do some of that, in particular by telling the interesting tale of Mark Weston, who was born female and competed athletically as female until, in 1936 at age 31 (already past his prime years of athletic participation), he began to live as a male and underwent some form of medical procedures (presumably including castration) to make it easier for him to live as a male.

According to Waters, what makes the Weston case relevant to discussions of sex testing at the Olympics is that, apparently, it was when some Olympics officials first learned about Weston that they decided there was a need to establish specific criteria regarding what would qualify someone to participate in women’s events at the Olympics.

The real focus of the article, however, is on what Waters claims is the illogical and unfair nature of the current sex testing regimen at the Olympics. And it is here that the article basically goes completely off the rails. Waters is remarkably ignorant of the biology of sex differences, and plays fast and loose with his attempts at logical arguments, in most places utilizing rhetorical devices in the place of actual reference to evidence and argument development. I’ll quote from the article below, with quotations in italics, and then with my comments in standard font.

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Mr. Weston did not want to return to sports, much less women’s sports, but the officials worried that gender transitions like his would poke holes in existing male and female categories. Since then, international sports bodies have continued to deny or restrict opportunities for trans and intersex athletes to compete at the highest level, in some cases barring them from competition completely — all for failing to meet a subjective definition of “female.”

Note the phrasing here: “deny or restrict opportunities for trans and intersex athletes” — which makes it sound as if participation restrictions are limited to members of these two populations. But of course – that’s nonsense. ALL males are “denied” the “opportunity” to participate in female sports. That is what it means to have two participation categories. Mr. Weston COULD HAVE participated in male sports after his transition. Lia Thomas HAD participated in men’s swimming before declaring himself a woman, and could have continued to participate in men’s swimming. The only restriction that was placed on his participation is that he cannot participate in WOMEN’S swimming at the international level and therefore is not eligible to participate in women’s swimming at the Olympics – for the obvious reason that he was born male and went through male puberty and people who were born male and have gone through male puberty can only participate in the male category.

Note also the way that Waters refers to the definition of “female” that is used to limit who can participate in women’s sports as “subjective”. Nice little rhetorical flourish there – with the connotation that the definition has no objective basis in biological reality. Which of course, simply is not true. In swimming, for example, one’s self-defined gender is of no consequence. All that matters is biology. An individual self-identifying as a man but who was born female and who went through puberty as a female and who has not taken male hormones can still compete in women’s swimming. On the other hand, someone like Lia Thomas who was born male and went through male puberty cannot, even though Thomas self-identifies as a woman. Self-identification has nothing to do with the male athletic advantage; all that matters is biology.

Advocates of sex-testing policies cloak themselves in the guise of fairness; they exist, proponents claim, to exclude anyone with a perceived biological advantage in women’s sports.

More rhetoric in place of evidence-supported argument. “Cloak themselves in the guise of fairness.” It’s not a “guise” at all. Again – the whole point of having women’s sports is to be fair to women! Anything else would be unfair, and would ultimately destroy women’s sports. And men don’t just have a “perceived” biological advantage in sports. It is an undeniable real biologically-based advantage, and anyone who denies that (and Waters only acknowledges it in this article rather grudgingly) is delusional.

That group [those excluded from women’s sports competitions] ranges from trans women, who are banned from most major sports even after undergoing a medical transition, to many cisgender and intersex women who have not undergone any medical transition but who have testosterone levels considered higher than normal for women. Yet little evidence supports the idea that these women have physical advantages, in strength or otherwise, over other women.

Here, Waters is just making shit up. Males who have passed through male puberty DO maintain a biological advantage over females even after undergoing medical transition to live as women. The evidence is clear, and the NYT fact checker should not have let such an ignorant claim be included in the article. And rather than reference actual data regarding hormone levels, Waters simply dismisses the importance of those differences with a wave of his rhetorical hand by use of the phrasing “considered higher than normal”. H’mm. OK. So let’s see what the normal range of testosterone levels actually is for males and females. “Male adolescents may vary from 208.08 to 496.58 ng/dl and 16.72 to 31.55 ng/dl for female teenagers. Males adults may vary from 265–923 ng/dl and for 15–70 ng/dl female adults.” There is NO OVERLAP. The individuals (like Caster Semenya) who have been excluded from participation in women’s sports at the Olympics based on testosterone levels have had testosterone levels within the normal MALE range. Semenya, for example, is genetically XY and has internal testes; she is intersex (not transgender), and therefore has benefitted athletically in her development from those male features of her biology.

These sex testing policies also fail to acknowledge natural variations in human bodies. There’s no single way to cleave people into binary categories, but that hasn’t stopped sports officials from trying.

Actually, there is a single way, related to the kinds of gametes that an individual’s body has developed with the parts to produce, and sex is not a spectrum. There are two, and only two, sexes of human beings: males and females.

Though the I.O.C. has projected a goal of greater inclusion (notably in this statement, released in 2021, asserting its commitment to “fairness, inclusion and nondiscrimination” in Olympic sport), few of the federations have listened. Some, like World Athletics, whose president, Sebastian Coe, recently reinforced his group’s commitment to the restrictive policies, have all but banned trans and intersex women from the women’s competitions. Often these women are allowed to compete only with men — not a realistic or desirable possibility.

Waters again engages in the kind of rhetorical flourish in place of logical argument that drives me crazy when I read these kinds of essays. He talks about the protection of women’s sports as a category using negative terms: “restrictive policies”, “banned trans and intersex women from women’s competitions”. Well of course. Without meaning to sound like a broken record – establishing “restrictive” criteria is the whole point of having a women’s category to begin with. It’s what we do with weight criteria in some sports, and with age criteria in any age-grouping competitions. In the “12-and-under” competitions in swimming, there is the “restrictive policy” that individuals who were older than 12 on a particular date are “banned” from participating in that competition. A 14-year-old who self-identifies as 12 is still not permitted to compete, but of course, may compete in the “14-and-under” competitions. And for women’s sports, there is the “restrictive policy” that participation is limited to those who are female. If there were no “restrictive” policies, if males were not “banned” from women’s sports, there would be no women’s sports.

Note as well the way that Waters dismisses the idea of transwomen competing in an “open” category rather than in the women’s category. Waters simply states, as if by doing so he has made a reasoned argument, that for a transwoman like Lia Thomas to compete against men is “not a realistic or desirable possibility”. But why not? Certainly it is understandable that Thomas would RATHER swim against women; Thomas was a mediocre college swimmer when competing against other males but a champion when swimming against females. So OK — requiring Thomas to participate in a category involving swimming against males may not be Thomas’s “desired possibility”, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fair and realistic one.

But the current system — in which trans and intersex women are simply turned away, with no path for inclusion — isn’t working.

Again — Trans and intersex women are not “simply turned away, with no path for inclusion”. They “simply” are not permitted to compete in some women’s sports at some levels. Even in those sports, they CAN participate, just not in the women’s competitions!

Certain sports, like figure skating and some skiing competitions, probably don’t need to be divided by sex.

Figure skating is an interesting and rather special case. Women’s figure skating is far more popular than men’s, and there are major elements of figure skating that should not be affected by the kind of athleticism advantages that males hold over females – so even if the best males are better than the best females at some of the most challenging skating moves, there are some aspects of the sport where females probably hold an advantage, and it would certainly be possible to create a scoring system that would make the two sexes equally likely to win an Olympic medal in a competition with no division by sex. But even if that were the case, my strong guess is that most viewers would prefer to watch the two sexes compete separately. Basically, what Waters is suggesting here is that in the case of a sport where the women’s category is more popular (and financially lucrative) than the men’s, we should now let men compete against women and thereby benefit from the fact that the women’s competitions are more popular. Nice! Makes you wonder if Waters is a fan of women’s sports at all.

These divides may make more sense in other sports.

What an extraordinary statement: “MAY make more sense in other sports”. Really? Waters is only willing to go so far as to acknowledge that having separate male and female categories “may” make sense in other sports? This statement makes me wonder if Waters has ever actually watched high level sports. How about, for instance, men’s and women’s tennis? Women’s tennis is popular, and the best women are incredibly good. But the men are WAY better. No reasonable person can deny that. Serena Williams, for example, at the time when she was the best in the world, was quoted as speculating that if she had to play against the men, she would probably be ranked about 500th.

How about basketball? Now that the WNBA is growing rapidly in popularity, what does Waters think would happen if women did not have their own competitions? The size, and speed, and strength of NBA players is so much greater than that of WNBA players that it is simply stupid to even consider what the outcome would be if women did not have their own league – that is, if the WNBA did not “ban” males from playing on WNBA teams. For Waters to refer to the sex “divide” in most sports as something that “may” make sense suggests that he either knows nothing about sports or really dislikes women. There can be no other explanations.

Waters concludes his article with a call for an end to what he describes as the cruelty of limiting women’s sports to biological females.

Ultimately, all athletes should have a realistic path to participation in their lived gender category. The days of cruelly stripping athletes of their right to play need to end.

OK – so he thinks the only criterion that should be applied when deciding who can participate in women’s sports is the individual’s “lived gender category”. What does that even mean? Sounds nice and simple, but obviously it isn’t. Would “dress wearing” be mandatory to prove that one’s “lived” category is living as a woman? It’s a stupid idea that comes down to nothing more than arguing that anyone who says they are a woman (at the moment when the competition takes place) would qualify to participate. So if the 100th-best-in-the-world male tennis player claimed to now be a woman, according to Waters, he should not have his “right” to participate in women’s tennis “cruelly” stripped from him. Of course, in that case, he would win every match he played. He would win the U.S. Open. He would win Wimbledon. He would win everything.

AGAIN — no one is having their right to play a sport stripped from them. But not everyone has the right to play in the women’s category. In fact, about half the population is “banned” from women’s sports — which is exactly the point of having two categories – isn’t it?