Tom Daley Says Trans Identified Males Should Not Be Banned From Female Sports
The Independent newspaper has published an interview with Tom Daley, Olympic gold-medallist, in which he explains why he was ‘furious’ at FINA’s decision to change its transgender policy.
The summer of 2022 will go down in history as the beginning of the end for the argument that trans-identifed males should be allowed to compete in female sporting categories, and not before time.
Rugby Union has seen policies change at a national level, bringing the likes of the RFU and the WRFU into line with the world governing body. However, the landmark change came with the decision of FINA, swimming’s international rule-maker, to bar all male-born athletes from female events (unless they have completed their ‘transition’ before the age of 12).
Despite what trans activists might want the world to believe, the science in this area is very settled, as can be seen from the studies that underpin the guidance issued by the UK’s Sports Council in 2021.
There are two main elements to this scientific consensus. The first is that adult men who have been through male puberty are, on average, stronger and faster than females. They have narrower hips, bigger feet, bigger hands, longer limbs and greater lung capacity, to name just the main physical differences, all of which lead to superior performance in most sports. A simple comparison of male and female world records in swimming, athletics, rowing and cycling, for example, proves the point elegantly. Male records are, on average, a whopping 10% better than female ones.
The second element is that all of those physical adavantages are retained to a very significant degree irrespective of the level of testosterone reduction any particular athlete might undergo or the length of time any such regime is maintained. In short, there is no process that can reduce the male advantage of androgenisation in any significant way such as to make the participation of natal males in female sports categories remotely either safe or fair.
In order to combat this, the ‘pro-inclusion’ lobby resorts to several tactics and one will hear several varieties of the argument. For example, that the science ‘isn’t really settled’ or ‘more research is required’. These are often heard together, along with complaints that the science itself hasn’t been ‘inclusive’ or has failed to properly take into account the impact of other transition-related factors (such as trauma). There is, thus, a concerted effort to ‘find’ the science that will support ‘inclusion’, even to the extent of putting together studies that have the express object of proving that inclusion is fair and safe!
A complementary approach is to misrepresent the recent rule changes in favour of protecting the integrity of female sport as actually preventing trans individuals from competing in sport AT ALL. Most notably, in the wake of the RFU/WRFU decisions, several articles were published focussing on the impact on trans rugby players. Invariably, these have tried to garner sympathy for the players concerned by falsely claiming that the rule changes prevent them from engaging with ‘the sport they love’. The reality is, of course, that all of these players could continue to play, just not in female teams. The overriding impression one gets from these stories is the sheer narcissism of the men (and it’s always men) involved. They are so self-absorbed that everything has to be geared to the validation of their erroneous belief that they are actually women, irrespective of the impact upon the sex-class they are so desperate to be a part of. What is it, one wonders, that drives middle-aged fully intact men to want to play rugby with a bunch of twenty-something year-old women (young enough to be their daughters) as opposed to joining one of the huge number of rugby clubs where men of all ages, shapes, sizes and fitness levels play ‘the game they love’?
The most recent major journalistic foray into this area is the interview of Tom Daley that was published in the Independent on 16th October. To describe the article as mostly a piece of sycophantic fluff would be to oversell it. It is much, much worse than that. The very first paragraph has Daley being quoted as saying that the worst thing about diving is being wet and cold all the time, hardly the image of the robust Olympian one might expect. Within three paragraphs Daley is being promoted as “Britain’s best-loved Olympian”, a claim that is so far from the truth as to be worse than risible. Perhaps sport isn’t the author’s forte, but even a casual observer would be able to identify a plethora of alternative athletes more worthy of the accolade. Steve Redgrave anyone? Kelly Holmes, Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Mo Farah? All of these have actually won Sports Personality of the Year, for example, and many have vastly superior Olympic achievements. Daley did, at least, finish runner up last year in the BBC’s prestigious poll, beaten by that ‘much loved Olympian’ Emma Raducanu.
The main focus of the article, however, (or at least the subject highlighted in the article’s headline) is Daley’s views on ‘the decision to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s diving’. This, Daley said, made him ‘furious’. The reason for his fury, seemingly, is that ‘everyone should feel welcome when they try sport’. Daley is falling into the same error as most of the pro-inclusion commentators here. FINA’s ban does not stop anyone from being ‘welcomed’ into the sport, it merely prevents male-born individuals from competing unfairly in female categories. Moreover, trans identified females who are not supplementing with testosterone are perfectly able to compete in their proper female sex-category.
Fairness, of course, is a tricky subject to handle from a ‘pro-inclusion’ perspective, as is highlighted above. It is no surprise, therefore, that the article sidesteps the issue completely. There is a one-line reference to the argument against ‘inclusion’ which is immediately dismissed because Daley is said to be making a ‘broader’ point. “I just think of myself when I was younger,” Daley says. “I am not transgender, obviously, but if I was told as a gay man I was never going to be able to compete because of who I was, then of course I’d never have tried.”
The most obvious criticism of this is that it is not a ‘broader’ point at all. It’s an extremely narrow one that deals with his own personal circumstances that bear no relationship whatsoever to the issue of trans inclusion. Banning gay athletes is clearly discriminatory because the ONLY reason for such a ban being enforced would be related solely and exclusively to a person’s sexual orientation. Gay men are still men, still the beneficiaries of male puberty and they do not have any sporting performance advantages over other males. As we have seen, trans identifying males do retain significant performance advantages over females and their ‘inclusion’ would be intrinsically unfair (and, in some sports, unsafe for female athletes).
Perhaps most telling however, is the misogyny on display. No thought whatsoever is given to the impact upon women’s sporting ambitions of being faced with the prospect of never being able to win anything because there would always be a man on the top podium. Does Daley think that women do not have the same inner competitive desire as men? Does he believe that women’s ambitions do not count? Or does he think women should just be content with the joy of participating? Maybe he thinks women deserve to be relegated to being also-rans behind men, because that is what a fully trans-inclusive policy would lead to.
Daley clearly doesn’t ‘do’ irony, though, for a few paragraphs later (when talking about his politics) he expresses concern for those who are vulnerable, including his brother who is an apprentice who has ‘a little girl’. Let’s all hope she doesn’t grow up to want to be a competitive swimmer in Daley’s Brave New World.
Thankfully, Daley says he is not interested in being a politician, although he does raise the spectre of continuing to use his public platform to speak out. If this article is anything to go by he needs to stick to the platform he is best suited to – the one that’s 10 metres above a pool.
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