Canada Comes Out Strongly Against the Human Rights of Female Athletes

Because what else would you expect?

Male powerlifter Anne Andres, who holds multiple women’s records (left). Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (right).

Earlier this week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, presented a report on violence against women and girls in sports to the General Assembly. The extensive report covered a range of issues faced by women and girls in sports, including physical violence, fairness and safety, economic violence, online violence, coercive control, sexual assault, and psychological violence.

Reem Alsalem

In multiple instances, Alsalem pointed out that some of these incidences of violence are a direct result of allowing males to compete in the female category. In fact, the report is a damning indictment of this continued practice.

In the section on physical violence, she wrote:

Female athletes are also more vulnerable to sustaining serious physical injuries when female-only sports spaces are opened to males, as documented in disciplines such as in volleyball, basketball and soccer. Instances have been reported where adult males have been included in teams of underage girls. Injuries have included knocked-out teeth, concussions resulting in neural impairment, broken legs and skull fractures. According to scientific studies, males have certain performance advantages in sports. One study asserts that, even in non-elite sport, “the least powerful man produced more power than the most powerful woman” and states that, where men and women have roughly the same levels of fitness, males’ average punching power has been measured as 162 per cent greater than females.

In the section on exclusion:

The inclusion of males in the female sport category and related spaces may also lead to self-exclusion, in particular due to fears of physical injuries, or due to specific religious beliefs that prohibit females from accessing mixed-sex spaces.

In the section on opportunity for fair and safe competition:

Policies implemented by international federations and national governing bodies, along with national legislation in some countries, allow males who identify as women to compete in female sports categories. In other cases, this practice is not explicitly prohibited and is thus tolerated in practice. The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.

Male athletes have specific attributes considered advantageous in certain sports, such as strength and testosterone levels that are higher than those of the average range for females, even before puberty, thereby resulting in the loss of fair opportunity. Some sports federations mandate testosterone suppression for athletes in order to qualify for female categories in elite sports. However, pharmaceutical testosterone suppression for genetically male athletes – irrespective of how they identify – will not eliminate the set of comparative performance advantages they have already acquired. This approach may not only harm the health of the athlete concerned, but it also fails to achieve its stated objective. Therefore, the testosterone levels deemed acceptable by any sporting body are, at best, not evidence-based, arbitrary and asymmetrically favour males. Females are usually tested randomly to ensure that they are not using performance-enhancing drugs, while males are often not monitored to ensure that they are taking testosterone suppression drugs. To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport.

And in the section on psychological violence:

The knowledge of female athletes that they may be competing against males included in female sports, including males that identify as females or males with specific XY differences in sex development, causes extreme psychological distress due to the physical disadvantage, the loss of opportunity for fair competition and of educational and economic opportunities and the violation of their privacy in locker rooms and other intimate spaces.

Because of all these harms, Alsalem argues the need for sex testing in sports:

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, female boxers had to compete against two boxers whose sex as females was seriously contested, but the International Olympic Committee refused to carry out a sex screening. Current technology enables a reliable sex screening procedure through a simple cheek swab that ensures non-invasiveness, confidentiality and dignity. In a small number of cases, such screenings can indicate a need for follow-up tests as part of standard medical care with associated duty of care and support. The need for follow-up tests is primarily relevant for athletes who may have been registered as female at birth but who are males that have differences of male sexual development involving functioning testes, male puberty or testosterone in the male range and, therefore, male advantage, and who may be unaware of their condition

Finally, she nails down how this all amounts to discrimination based on sex.

Multiple studies offer evidence that athletes born male have proven performance advantages in sport throughout their lives, although this is most apparent after puberty. Historically, the sex difference in performance is larger than that explained by physiological and anatomical differences between males and females, in particular among lower-ranked athletes. These physiological advantages are not undone by testosterone suppression. Undermining the eligibility criteria for single-sex sports results in unfair, unlawful and extreme forms of discrimination against female athletes on the basis of sex [emphasis mine].

Honestly, there really isn’t much more that needs to be said on this topic. It is difficult to see how anyone could justify the inclusion of male athletes in female sports and see it as anything but the blatant human rights violation that it is.

Except if you’re Canada.

This week, Alsalem also published the input she received during the call for input on the report. The call for input contained a background section which also mentioned the issue of men in women’s sports:

In some jurisdictions, sports traditionally reserved for female athletes, are now open to male athletes based on their gender identity and who identify as women and girls. This has had significant human rights implications for all women and girls, including their right to equality and non-discrimination. It also raised questions regarding fairness, in sports as well as the full participation in education, culture, and sports as well as society as a whole.

My friend Maureen pointed out Canada’s egregious submission, which took particular issue with the background in the call (you can find the entire submission on the calls for input page).

The report begins by babbling on and on about “gender-based violence,” “gender equality,” and “gender diverse people/youth.” The authors were hell-bent on not using the terms “female” or “sex” in their call to input for a report on violence against women and girls… who are members of the female sex.

The authors also couldn’t help but leave a catty “General Note” at the end to call out how problematic Alsalem’s language choice had been and to reify Canada’s strong stance against the human rights of female athletes:

The background in this call for input uses the language of “male athletes”. This is inconsistent with Canada’s position on gender identity and on trans women and girls in sports.

The Government of Canada’s (GOC’s) position on trans individuals is that trans women are women and trans men are men. There is legislation in place that provides Canadians with explicit protection from discrimination, hate speech, and hate crimes on the basis of gender identity or expression in the Canadian Human Rights Act. The GOC has also committed to preventing and addressing discrimination and stigma based on sexual orientation, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression.

Discussions on violence against women and girls in sports should be inclusive of trans women and girl athletes, who experience violence and discrimination, including on the basis of their gender identity and expression.

Transgender athletes should have equal opportunity to participate and excel in sport at every level. The Government of Canada recognizes the challenges and potential impacts associated with the inclusion of trans people in sport. It acknowledges the barriers faced by transgender athletes, as well as the concerns about the potential impacts of fully including transgender women in female high-performance sport categories on the rights and opportunities for cisgender female athletes.

What this note is saying is that women’s sex-based rights do not matter. Only rights based on “gender identity” and “gender expression” matter. This is not me being ungenerous and overly critical—it is quite plainly what anyone is saying when they support the inclusion of men in women’s sports. The authors could not even bring themselves to admit that sex is a protected characteristic at all. In fact, notice the strange inclusion of “sex characteristics” rather than sex itself in a further attempt to deconstruct the category.

The last few lines that give lip service to “cisgender female athletes” are no consolation. This is still the language of gender ideology. This is still the signaling of an ideological tenet that denies the reality of sex.

And, by the way, isn’t this note itself transphobic for reading the words “male athletes” as “trans women and girls”? The call for input itself doesn’t mention “trans” people at all. That’s because it isn’t “trans” that is the issue. We all know that absolutely nobody cares when a woman who says she is a man continues competing in women’s sports as long as she is not taking testosterone, as that would be doping.

The issue is males—men and boys. And yes, “trans women and girls” are males, but the problem is their sex, not their “gender identity” or “gender expression.” It was the Canadian statement and only the Canadian statement that made it about the issue of transgenderism at all.

This is how it always goes. If you try to talk about anything solely related to women and girls, radical trans activists and woke progressives simply cannot allow it, and so they must attack the very reality of sex itself. Once you go there, you undermine it as a basis for human rights and you end up violating those rights, just as Canada has been doing.