Major sports competitions do not test participants in male events to see if they are “really” men. So why do they do it with women?
I mean, I know why they say they test women. There’s a silly panic that men are disguising themselves as women to win medals. Back in the day this was a dastardly “Communist” plan by the Soviet Union and the East Germans.
In fact, as I just discovered from this book review in The Nation, allegations about men passing as women in sports goes back even farther and has ties to Nazi Germany.
This started way before transphobia became the cause du jour and is rooted in the idea that men are so much more physically able than women that any random guy can beat world-class women athletes. You know, all those guys who are sure they could score a point or two off Serena Williams.
Funny that the women they seem to disqualify in these events are people assigned female at birth and raised as girls. Apparently some women have uncommon chromosome patterns or higher testosterone levels and some self-appointed authorities have decided they can’t possibly be women.
It’s a control mechanism, just like anti-abortion and anti-contraception laws. Or like asking women who have been raped what they were wearing and what they did to provoke the rape.
It’s a rule presented as an effort to “protect” women from men that instead victimizes women. Continue reading “So Who Gets to Be a Woman?”…