The Cruelty of Denying Physical Sex Differences
The Cruelty of Denying Physical Sex Differences
It is not benevolent to expect what someone can't do
A few years ago, when I was just starting to peak, I came across a comment online that has stuck with me to this day. I was looking at a comment thread where people were arguing about whether or not it was okay to allow trans women (aka men) to participate in women’s sports. A certain commenter made the bold assertion that if a woman had the exact same training and nutrition as male American football players, she would look just like them and could be competitive with them.
Oh, to have the confidence…
I want to start by saying I don’t think this sentiment always comes from a place of cruelty or even stupidity. When I was a kid, I certainly received the “girl power” message that women could do anything—physically—that men could do. I looked at the world around me and realized this was nonsense. Men were bigger and stronger. But I think a lot of girls in my generation did buy into this messaging.
Sometimes, the resistance to acknowledging physical sex differences comes from not wanting to insult women, from almost being embarrassed that women are the smaller and weaker sex. It’s as if daring to recognize this reality is itself an insult. But that is only true if you equate physical strength and size with greater human value. I have no such hangups. Sure, the fastest men are faster than the fastest women. And also none of them are physically capable of growing and birthing babies. We are different.
When this turns into cruelty instead of just ignorance is when people allow their unexamined assumptions about males and females to guide their thinking about sports. It turns into cruelty when they argue that trans-identified men should be allowed into women’s sports because of “inclusion,” sparing no thought to the way that this excludes women from their own sports. It turns into cruelty on steroids when women and girls are told to simply “train” or “try” harder after a boy or man comes along and steals their places or medals.
To admonish women that they just need to work harder is to assume that they simply haven’t figured out that they should do that. It is the height of insult and, though the term “gaslighting” is overused, it is a fitting term to use here.
Sure, women’s sports performance has improved as greater resources are being allotted to the women’s category (while men’s performance continues to go up as well). But there are plenty of sports now where women have had ample time, resources, and opportunity to optimize their performances and the outcomes, naturally, remain different from men. Thousands of high school boys every year run faster than the fastest women on the planet. Venus and Serena Willians were both easily beaten by the 203rd-ranked male at the 1998 Australian Open. Male and female sport climbing competitions always happen at the same time, and the sex differences are incredibly obvious.
To even have to point this reality out is painful, because all it should take is one look at the men and women around us in the world or, if you need more convincing, one cursory glance at sports records. Tell a woman who has devoted herself to her sport that she just needs to try a little harder, increase her training a little more, change up her diet, and she, too, could look and perform like a male football player. I dare you.
This doesn’t mean that women’s sports aren’t worthwhile. I enjoy seeing how male and female bodies compete and having two versions of each competition to watch. Men can’t swim as fast as dolphins and they aren’t as strong as bears, but it’s still meaningful for them to compete against one another. The same holds true for women.
Our bodies are different. Women’s bodies are optimized for childbirth, which affects everything from the angle of our hips to our fat distribution. Men’s bodies don’t have to make these compromises. They could be optimized for strength and speed. I still think it is amazing that women’s performances do come so close to men’s in so many different disciplines. I still think it’s amazing what we can do despite having a whole extra organ in our bodies and bearing the reproductive load of the species.
Women deserve to show what they can do physically in competitions against other women. The best, most talented, and most dedicated women in their sports deserve to shine rather than be eclipsed by mediocre men. To deny them this chance, especially based on nothing but ideological assumptions or an idealistic view of how the world should be, is sadistic.
This cruelty is most obvious in the realm of sports because of how blatantly unfair and often downright dangerous—such as in the case of contact sports—it is. But it extends into other areas of life as well. When we deny, as the great Nina Paley says, that sex is real, immutable, binary, and ASYMMETRICAL, then we forget why we have other sex-segregated spaces in society.
Suddenly, women have no basis for female-only washrooms and changing rooms or even rape shelters and prisons. Keeping these spaces segregated by sex is framed as mean, exclusive, and transphobic. As in sports, women who have reservations about this state of affairs are told that only their biases and prudishness are informing their decisions, rather than real and important concerns.
Gaslighting comes into play here again as women are asked to forget everything we know about sex differences, crime statistics, and keeping ourselves safe. And the sad part is, I recognize that women are doing this to each other. It may be on behalf of very sadistic men, but many women support these men.
As frustrating as that is and as many female enemies that might make me, I won’t stop explaining how denying sex differences hurts us all. We are not the same as men, and there is nothing wrong with that. If we valued ourselves for what we are, then we could easily stop pretending.
I have yet to see a debate on this subject where the pro trans side didn't rely in one of two points: "we tolerate differences in women's bodies when they compete against other women, so the competition can absorb the differences between women's and mens bodies", and "the unfairness of biologically advantaged males competing against women is tolerable in service of the higher goal of inclusivity" Of the two, the first is a naked lie that no one truly believes and the latter, while galactically misogynistic, unfair and weak logically is, at least well intentioned. (I should say, by well intentioned by some ... lots of women fall over themselves to win the kindness olympics at the expense of other women.) But here is what I just cannot understand. Someone please help me with this. How can a trans identified male (TIM) athlete maintain any self respect at all with the inclusivity over fairness argument? First, he is conditioned to believe that he is so fragile that people have to be kind to him. I cannot imagine that he doesn't know that this kindness isn't voluntary but enforced. And then, he is told that his inclusion, though not fair to the other female competitors, is necessary so he can feel good about himself, when, if one single sliver of logic or conscience existed in his brain, it should actually make him feel worse because he is a cheat. And the absolute kicker is that everyone knows it! And he has just got to know that everyone else knows it - how can he not? I am embarrassed for these pathetic men every time they cross the finish line first because their very existence in female completion is as a result of being the object of pity. I am not capable of imagining the level of delusion that is required of TIMS that enables them to believe that they deserve their place on the podium at these competitions.
This is so true. Men certainly acknowledge size/weight differences among each other with their "heavy weight" to "feather weight" boxing categories. The focus is on the skill in that sport. But now some of the contact sports allow men, like Fallon Fox, who says how he enjoys breaking a woman's skull. (Boxing is not safe and might have led to Magdelene Berns' brain tumor.)
I remember being told in grade school that we were taught so slowly (which is why school was so boring) was because the boys could not keep up mentally. Then of course in a few years they were running everything, but I still believe that mentally they are very different, as well as emotionally, ethically, etc. The fact that females have more of a connection between the sides of our brains is one explanation, but there is more. I can guess within a minute or less when starting to read something if a woman wrote it. There tends to be more depth, compassion, sense, thoughtfulness. One of the reasons that men have tried to keep women out of so much of what they control, is because they can't compete. And then there is the fact that most males have sexually harassed most females, even when it's supposedly just a joke, and many assault. Very few girls and women escape being assaulted by males, often within their own families. Of course women then devote their lives to males to help them be less dangerous, which never works because it often makes them worse, and male violence is across species. Yet again, it's women and girls who need the support, which includes our own spaces for everything, where no male is accepted as female, ever.