Sharon Davies MBE is one of Britain’s sporting giants. Ms Davies was once one of the youngest competitive swimmers in the British team and picked up a gold medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and a silver medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She’s since gone on to a stellar career as a model, television presenter and an ambassador for British sport.
As well as these achievements, Ms Davies has also been a part of the movement to bring more fairness to sport and to remove the spectre of drug enhancement from sporting competitions. Her involvement in this field is unsurprising as she more than likely was pipped at the post for a gold medal at the Moscow Olympics by an athlete who was drug enhanced. I heard Ms Davies on a BBC Radio 5 programme recently speaking about how she would complete against Communist bloc athletes, knowing that her opponents from this bloc would more than likely be using performance enhancing drugs. This meant that even before the competition started Ms Davies, and other drug free athletes, would face an immediate and almost completely insurmountable disadvantage. It must have been incredibly disheartening for athletes like Ms Davies to know that they were going to be denied a top spot, despite gruelling training and preparation, because their opponents cheated, but there was little that she or others in Britain could do about it.
It is this background of wanting sport to be fair and honest that has caused Ms Davies wade into the ongoing furore about transgender athletes. This has of course developed into a storm of publicity with on one side, sensible free thinking athletes and on the other side the screaming cry-bullies of the trans activist movement. Although various trans activists and their mouthpieces such as Pink News are whining about the comments made by Ms Davies and screaming ‘transphobia’, these activists are failing to see that Ms Davies is seeing this issue primarily as a matter of fairness and she is not in any way anti the choices that people make to be trans. Those who insist, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, that ‘trans women are women’ and are bullying Ms Davies and those like her, don’t want to look at this scientific evidence, because it disturbs and destroys their own world view that gender is a ‘choice’. It isn’t. Our gender is fixed from conception in our DNA and no matter what surgery or drugs a person undergoes or consumes, nothing can change our DNA to truly convert a man into a woman. The reaction to Ms Davies very mild and sensible comments on the issue of transsexuals in sport by trans activists and others who virtue signal on this issue, has been so extreme that it has shown the trans activist movement to be what it is, which is a cult.
The cult of Trans puts great store in testosterone levels at time of competition with regards trans athletes but as others have said, a low testosterone level does not compensate for the effects of a large amount of testosterone on the body in early life. This causes greater muscle and bone mass and therefore will give any trans athlete a distinct advantage over a natal female athlete. All those years of being exposed to greater levels of testosterone than a natal female would be does cause bodily changes that cannot be reversed by either gender transition surgery or hormone therapy.
Unless we are talking about sports that do not require physical ability, for example Chess, there is a lot that is unfair about allowing male to female trans athletes to compete in female only competitions. There is the inbuilt and unchangeable issue of muscle and bone mass which gives Male to Female transsexuals a distinctly unfair advantage. As I said this is not an advantage that can be handicapped in anyway and the presence of MTF transsexuals will ultimately kill off women’s sport entirely. How will we ever trust a women’s sporting record again if trans women are included in mainstream competitive sports? The answer is we will not be able to do so. It is more than likely that the physical advantages that MTF’s have will mean that future records for women will be based on standards that natal women, because of their lesser muscle mass and bone density, will never be able to achieve. It will relegate women athletes to second class athletic citizens who will always be denied a podium place because they will always be beaten by created rather than natal women.
Sporting bodies try to arrange their competitions so that all competitors are evenly matched, this is because it is not only fairer to those taking part, but also provides standards at different sports and for differing levels of ability. We would not, for example, consider it even remotely fair to put the runner Usain Bolt in a competition with Baroness Grey-Thompson the wheelchair racer. Despite Baroness Grey-Thompson’s undoubted and justifiably celebrated ability on the track, she could never win against Mr Bolt, who is an athlete who is not disabled and is a world beating runner. Such a competition would be monstrously unfair because Mr Bolt would win every time and in every race over every distance. This is similar unfairness to that encountered by natal female athletes when MTF trans athletes are in the same competition. The effects of being male prior to transition cannot be undone and would place natal female athletes in a similar position to that of Baroness Grey-Thompson in the hypothetical competition outlined above.
It should be noted at this point that there is no such physical advantage for those who transition from female to male in male sporting categories. Because of the fact that FTM athletes have not grown up with higher levels of testosterone they do not develop the same muscle and bone structures as natal men do. The pelvis of an FTM does not change and neither does much else of the bone or muscle structure. FTM’s may have the appearance of men but genetically and physically they are not. However in this case t here isn’t any glaring inherent disadvantage in an FTM competing with men, all that will happen is that they will be third class athletes who will never achieve the same levels in physical sport as natal men would. With the case of FTM’s, the only disadvantage comes to the individual competitor which is the complete opposite of when MTF’s compete against natal women.
I hope Ms Davies stands firm on her position of competitive fairness as I understand that this is a position that other athletes are coming around to as well. Ms Davies well knows what it is like to have to compete against athletes who are enhanced in some way. That is not something that I would wish for any natal female athlete to have to face in the future. Ms Davies is correct and has done zero that is wrong in expressing her view.
My own view is that I’d dearly like the trans cult to die, to be discredited and shown to be dangerous, just as other medical cults, such as that of ‘leucotomies for all’, have been. The cult of trans is not just dangerous to individuals and to our children, but also dangerous to the societal bodies that administer things like sport, because of bullying by trans cultists. The trans cultists want all things their own way and they do not care that their demands will harm others or destroy women’s sport or endanger women using spaces that are gender segregated in order to protect women.
But, the future looks as if it will contain some tiny minority of people who do consider themselves trans and some of those will have an interest in or an aptitude for sport. I think the only truly fair way of allowing trans people to participate in sport whilst simultaneously protecting natal women from unfair competition, is to have separate competitions for trans people. We do not for obvious reasons, allow able bodied athletes to compete against athletes with a disability and similar reasons should be put forward for excluding MTF trans athletes from competing against natal women. We have to have fair competition in sport and confining those who are trans or intersex from mainstream competition is really the only way to ensure such fairness. Sharon Davies is correct, this is not an issue of ‘transphobia’, this is an issue of sporting fairness.
