Those female cyclists who lost to biological male "Rachel" McKinnon's at the women' master’s world championships didn't mind at all. That little girl (see photo below) in Australia Rules Football who got pulverized by 220-pound battering ram Hannah Mouncey (photographed in a 60 Minutes story), a boy named Callum at birth, surely enjoyed the pain. In Connecticut girls high school track meets, the real females were thrilled to compete for the honor of third place while boys Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood decided first and second places. So, as Outsports' writer Cyd Zeigler points out, there is no unfairness in the evolving and wacky world of transgender sports.
We can't even really be sure the four men mentioned above actually were born male. Gender denier Zeigler says it's merely a presumption. He can spin the meaning of words with Clintonian ease:
"To a lot of people, a transgender woman participating in women’s sports automatically upends all concept of 'fairness.' They see someone who was presumed male at birth — and who very well may have previously played in boys’ or men’s divisions in sports — suddenly putting on a women’s uniform and competing against women."
To rebuff those who say men are always more athletic, stronger and faster than women, Zeigler tries to lead his readers down a series of rabbit trails. He raises inane and irrelevant points and questions to direct the subject of fairness away from the battle of the sexes. It's just another deny, distort, deconstruct day in the life of a gender bender with an internet soapbox.
He says sports rule-makers get to set the rules. He didn't say the LGBT juggernaut has already strong-armed the International Olympic Committee and the NCAA into making unfair allowances for males to compete in women's athletics.
Zeigler tries vainly to make the case that a child's birth town and family "can have a huge impact on her ability to win a state championship or attract a big college scholarship." Between the lines, read: forget about Callum "Hannah" Mouncey's biceps!
Stooping to ridiculous lows, Zeigler says athletes in poor communities have to compete against rich kids, and that's not fair. Note to Zeigler: LeBron James was born poor in Akron, Ohio, he's dominating the NBA and the rich kids from his youth are not.
Just as ludicrous is Zeigler's point that pint-sized high jumpers competing against opponents a foot taller are at an unfair disadvantage. Baseball players and football players from the Sun Belt have an unfair weather advantage over kids in the Snow Belt.
A kid with a great coach can beat a kid coached by the shop teacher (an insult to shop teachers everywhere). Also, it's unfair that Olympic athletes from poor African nations have to compete against the NBA elite. Even though Zeigler is not competitive a swimmer, he says being male gives him no advantage over Olympic champion Katie Ledecky in swimming races.
How did we get from male advantages in women's sports to the warning track in left field? All because Zeigler can't come up with a real argument to disprove the fact that Hannah, Rachel, Terry, Andraya and other guys have an unfair advantage over the women they literally own in their chosen sports.
"We seem as a society content with ignoring the inherent advantages some kids have over others in sports," Zeigler writes in a feeble attempt to convince the masses that fairness is most determined by factors other than gender.
Here's another entertaining line by the Outsports writer: "Many of the same people today attacking trans women in sports as 'unfair' are the same people high-fiving one another every time the U.S. gets another 40-point win against Nigeria in men’s basketball." Suffice it to say those routs do not occur in coed sports.
Zeigler concludes the issue of fairness is merely subjective. "The point is that we pick and choose the bases upon which we determine 'fairness.' The rules of sports – the foundation of fairness – are often inherently unfair to the people who don’t write the rules." He endorses a "growing chorus to divide sports differently."
McKinnon is the first transgender to win a women's world cycling title. With sports now blurring the lines of gender at an excelerated pace, it's likely he won't be the last man to win a world title in a women's sport.
