Friday, February 04, 2022

Protecting Fairness in Girls Sports

FoxNews reports:
Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said Sunday her bill making its way through South Dakota’s legislature aimed at protecting fairness in women's sports will be the "strongest bill in the nation" of its kind.

"This is about fairness," Noem said on "Fox News Sunday." "This is about making sure that our girls have a chance to be successful and to compete, to win scholarships, potentially go on to play professional sports beyond that. We want them to have the opportunity to do that.

She seems like that rare sensible politician who is standing up to the transgender madness.

At the same time, I don't agree with her reasoning. Winning scholarships and prepping for pro sports are lousy reasons for girls sports. I would favor abolishing girls sports, if those were the best reasons for them.

Girls develop differently from boys, and benefit from being separated from boys in some activities. Conservatives accept that there are these natural differences, and do not require contrived excuses for making traditional distinctions.

Those differences are recognized in literature going back millennia. They are confirmed by modern science. A boy does not become a girl by taking some hormone pills, or by becoming a fair athletic competitor.

Here are the new USA Swimming rules:

The elite athlete policy will be implemented by a decision-making panel comprised of three independent medical experts and eligibility criteria will consist of:

Evidence that the prior physical development of the athlete as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors.

Evidence that the concentration of testosterone in the athlete’s serum has been less than 5 nmol/L (as measured by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) continuously for a period of at least thirty-six (36) months before the date of application.

This is an unworkable compromise.

By using the term "cisgender female competitors", it shows that they know who the females are.

No comments: