Politic?

Born a Man, Always a Man, Masquerade Aside

"I see my win in this broader political moment where trans rights have made great strides and people are waking up."
"We are not going to go backwards."
“My semi-final rides were difficult and I certainly didn’t ‘dominate'. [Competitor] Linsey Hamilton rode hard, and I think that it’s a little insulting to suggest that I ‘dominated’ her when I had to give it my all to beat her."
"People seem to think that there’s no issue of ‘unfair advantage’ when I lose, but it only seems to be an issue when I win. I don’t think that’s fair or reasonable."
"There’s nothing too exceptional about my [power to weight]. There are many world-class track sprinters with higher values."
Rachel McKinnon, assistant professor of philosophy, College of Charleston, Victoria, British Columbia

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McKinnon racing 2018 masters track world championships. Photo courtesy Dr. Rachel McKinnon

"It is not about making everybody biologically equal, and I think that is a common misconception when we start talking about transgender athletes."
"People want transgender [females] to be physiologically identical to [born] females, and if they’re not, it’s unfair. That is not possible."
"Can you turn a man’s body into a woman’s body? The short answer is 'no'. I think we need to move past that idea completely."
Dr. Eric Vilain, professor of human genetics, UCLA

Dr. Rachel McKinnon won the masters world title in the sprint this past weekend in Los Angeles. Courtesy Dr. Rachel McKinnon

The rule that made Dr. McKinnon, a transgender 'woman' eligible to compete in the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championship for the women's 35-44 age bracket last week in Los Angeles was that athletes' testosterone levels are required to be within a given range and since Dr. McKinnon uses drug therapy to achieve that range, she qualified. At one time the compete requirements were considerably stiffer; to compete in their legally recognized gender, transgender women had to have had extensive physical transitioning; surgery and hormone therapy.

2015 saw a loosening of the rules, removing the requirement for surgery, leaving in the testing of testosterone levels. Dr. McKinnon defends her female role as a competitor that she had substantive advantage over other female runners by citing research suggesting testosterone levels are not correlated with elite athletic performance; one study in particular showing one-sixth of elite male athletes had testosterone levels below the average for females. However, male physiognomy is just that; male and therein lies the obvious advantage.

Jen Wagner-Assali made a public complaint, feeling her bronze medal win illustrated a competitive edge on the part of the winner: "It's definitely NOT fair", she tweeted, replying to a British woman who asserted that the "world is gripped by a febrile madness" that a transgender woman appeared as first-place winner on the podium for a world-class female track competition. Her objections lead her detractors defending transgender rights, to characterize her as a "far-right provocateur", typical of those who bow to the demands of LGBTQ-2 activism, smearing those who find fault with those demands.

Peer and public pressure ensured that Ms. Wagner-Assali would apologize, realizing she had "unintentionally fanned the flames on a controversial situation, and that I regret I made the comments out of a feeling of frustration, but they weren't productive or positive". Somewhat abashed, no doubt that the second-place silver medalist Carolien van Herrikhuyzen characterized the race as "honest", deploring Wagner-Assali's 'problem'.

A proposed change to federal anti-discrimination legislation in the U.S. would define a person's gender as an unchangeable, binary, biological reality defined at birth by the simple expedient of recognizing genitalia conferred by nature as gender identification. The response to the Trump administration's intention with respect to that legislation is to state the obvious: it would translate as no legal recognition of transgender or intersex choices as legitimate.

Whereas in contrast Britain has also proposed changes to its Gender Recognition Act in eliminating an objective test, leaving the legal determination of gender solely in the hands and mind of the individual claiming to be other than what they are from birth forward; no medical or other evidence required. The logical conclusion to which is that under universal medicare, prisoners or military personnel would have their sex-alternative therapy and surgery paid for out of public funds, as a medical condition requiring rectification.

In the United States IOC policy has been adopted by the national cycling authority, requiring elite level sport competition to test only for testosterone levels. Dr. McKinnon has a comeback for those dissatisfied with the reality that men declaring themselves women are enabled to compete in elite sport competitions with actual women. Biologically, males and females are completely differentiated physically; greater physical strength an acknowledged male reality.

She laments the parallel she identifies between her struggle for acceptance as a transgender woman to the long historical struggle of black athletes who were excluded from some sport arenas reflecting a general consensus that Blacks are endowed with superior physical prowess, making it unfair with their advantage to compete against others. That prejudicial view, despite having some element of truth within, reflected the racial tensions between the white majority and black minority, severely disadvantaging Blacks.

Justice for Blacks was painfully long in coming. According to Dr. McKinnon the same human rights trajectory is now evidenced in the battle the transgender community faces to achieve their human rights entitlements.