We Compete With Bodies, Not Identities

Sport is fundamentally incompatible with gender ideology

A Universal Constraint

All athletes — past and present — have been bound, hindered, challenged, and frustrated by physical limitations. They serve as the source of the struggle.

The material reality of our physical bodies is the one universal constraint that we (former athlete over here) all share; it’s that which we all fight against and through and within — but never without.

And it’s our physical limitations against which we compete. They are the most basic element of any physical competition — the very source of the struggle.

The goal of sport is to test the limits of what human beings can accomplish — to see just how far we can push ourselves — within the confines of our bodies. This truth applies at any skill level. Not everyone who pursues competitive sports has what it takes to become elite competitors. Just ask the tiny, promising gymnast who woke up one day with gangly legs and unwieldy limbs, which forced her to pivot to dance. Or the countless young men whose dreams of playing in the NFL were dashed when puberty failed to transform them into modern-day gladiators. They can still strive to do their best and perhaps make an all-conference line-up or lead their high school team to state finals, but we will never watch them compete at the Olympics or the Super Bowl. And that’s okay. Our individual limits are real, and few among us have been gifted bodies that allow us to challenge not only what we are capable of as individuals but what we can do as human beings.

Countless factors – some outside our control and some within it – converge to determine who excels and who fades into obscurity. We can control our discipline, tenacity, dedication, and willingness to practice, coachability, and willingness to work as a team. We cannot control many other, primarily physical factors like our height, age, natural abilities (and disabilities), and -- of course -- our sex.

The concept of physical constraints is especially salient in the realm of women’s sports. Almost all female athletes train and compete with the knowledge that they will never be the best in the world. Elite female runners, for example, still dedicate their lives to their sport, knowing that, by virtue of their sex and its accompanying physical limitations, they will never hold the title of the world’s fastest human. That distinction always has and always will go to a man. It doesn’t matter if she resents that fact; it simply is. And rather than protesting to change the definition or subvert that constraint, she strives to be the best that her material reality will allow: the world’s fastest woman.

It is with physical limitations in mind that we subdivide into competitive eligibility categories.

Observable, Measurable, and Validated

Depending on the sport, we assign athletes different competitive categories and parameters to athletes for different reasons. Sometimes it’s a matter of fairness, like with sports requiring speed and strength that no woman could ever win. Sometimes, in addition to fairness, we categorize in the interest of safety, like with combat sports. Not only does the 120lb wrestler have little chance of winning when pitted against an equally skilled man weighing 350 lbs, he could easily be injured or even killed on the mat.

Whether material realities “validate” an athlete’s wishes or beliefs about themselves has never been relevant.

Ever.

In competitive sports, typical eligibility parameters include: 

• Age

• Sex

• Skill level

• Disability-status

• Weight (selected sports)

And all of those characteristics are observable, measurable, and verifiable to third parties.

In other words, they are real.

Whether those material realities “validate” an athlete’s wishes or beliefs about themselves has never been relevant. 

Ever. 

No one gets to say, “But my body feels different than that which is material and observable, so I demand a more advantageous competitive category reassignment!” 

Boxers and weight-lifters, for example, who don’t make weight, are assigned to a higher competitive weight class in the interest of safety — and very rarely are they happy about it.

When Little Leaguers turn eight, they must move from Tee Ball to the Minor League division, whether they feel ready or not. And that’s because, while not every 8-year-old is bigger, stronger, and faster than every 6-year-old, it is generally true that 8-year-olds have a physical advantage over their younger counterparts.

Both of those examples highlight what trans activists are demanding that sports neglect: observable, measurable, verifiable reality. They insist that sport suspend its reliance on the objective, obliterate the bases of fair competition, and afford them advantageous accommodations in service of their subjective feelings.

That’s not how sports work — for anyone.

Treating our human bodies’ innate physical limitations and boundaries as frivolous constructs that can be ignored, negotiated, or bent in service of one’s will breaks the paradigm of physical competition.

In other words, the ethos of competitive sport — the meritocracy, the objectivity, and the inherent physical limitations — is fundamentally incompatible with the subjective beliefs central to gender ideology.

On Eligibility (aka “Bans”)

Returning to the discussion of competitive categories, we must address the claim that trans athletes are being “banned” or “excluded” from sports, as we so often read in the headlines these days.

It’s simply untrue.

Irish journalist and author Helen Joyce said of trans ideology during her recent conversation with British Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins, “What we are talking about here is an intensely linguistic movement.”

Words matter because they influence how we make meaning of the world around us, and like many words redefined to support trans ideology, the use of “banned” in this context is incorrect.

A person cannot be banned from a competitive category for which they were never eligible.

People who wish they were a different sex are welcome to compete within the same objective, material, categorical constraints as everyone else — biological sex being just one. 

And this is a critical point.

The word “banned” has a particular connotation and invokes a feeling of being set apart or singled out, often unfairly. It gives the sense of an opportunity or entitlement being stolen — which is why was chosen for this purpose.

Look at the words Merriam-Webster lists as synonyms for ban: “crush,” “obstruct,” and “exclude” give you a good sense of the underlying connotation.

Such words are meant to invoke sympathy for those being “crushed”. Except trans-identifying men are not being crushed any more than a grown man would be crushed when denied participation in Little League. Youth baseball wasn’t meant for him. He was categorically excluded during the League’s creation to provide a safe and fair competitive environment for children who do not yet possess the physical advantages of fully grown men.

“Ineligible” is the correct description for a trans-identifying man who wants to be included in women’s sports — which is very different from “banned.” It makes clear that, in contrast to being singled out or excluded, an individual simply does not meet the essential inclusion criteria.  

In other words, nothing has been taken because nothing was possessed, nor does an entitlement to possession exist.

Like the example of the adult man and Little League, men have never been eligible to play women’s sports. In fact, men are the one group ineligible to play women’s sports. The category explicitly excludes men in order to grant women opportunities for physical competition they wouldn’t otherwise have due to their comparative physical disadvantages.

Further, it’s important to note that trans-identifying men are free to play in any category for which they are materially eligible (i.e., the men’s, co-ed, or open categories) and that refusing to play in the categories for which they do meet inclusion criteria does not amount to a “ban” from the sport. They can still participate and partake in being the best athlete they can be given their physical constraints – just like everyone else.

We must stop mischaracterizing boundaries as “bans” and clarify that upholding eligibility requirements is not an arbitrary, “hateful” attack on trans people.

Every athlete is subject to the material constraints of their physical bodies, and there is no article of women’s clothing, hair style, body-modifying surgery, or “feeling” that justifies allowing trans-identifying men to sidestep them.

Bodies vs. Identities

If athletes can (advantageously) negotiate their competitive category assignment based on their feelings, why can’t they barter for what place they finish? What other sporting rules will soon be subject to the capriciousness of an athlete’s reported emotions and subjective beliefs? And when two athletes’ feelings conflict, whose feelings will prevail? It’s almost as if no one thought this through before giving away women’s opportunities, spaces, records, and titles to accommodate a vocal minority of men.

The fact (for people who are still interested in them) remains that women were granted their own competitive category based on the inherent differences in their physiological capabilities.

The ideological arguments for protecting women’s sports are essential. We must never stop defending the principles of fairness, dignity, opportunity, and safety for women in sports. But, they exist adjacent to the fact that when we allow any athlete’s subjective feelings to trump that which is observable, measurable, and validated, it stops being a sport.

We compete with our bodies, not our self-reported identities.

And allowing trans-identifying men to compete in women’s categories fundamentally changes sport from an objectively evaluated physical competition to a philosophical conflict between fact and feeling.

In other words, it stops being a sport when athletes — including trans-identifying men — are allowed to opt out of the physical constraints that define it.

And that holds, irrespective of one’s views on gender ideology.