Andrew O'Neill

We live in the dumbest timeline. Let's bring some common sense and science to it. Why are we here? Let's get controversial (and briefly political)...though it shouldn't be. For way too long, many on the left failed to do the common sense thing for years and say there's an obvious performance advantage for males. This led to no or poor policies. And many on the right seized that idea and has used it as political cudgel to use to their advantage. For a long time, we had poor or non-existent policies. Thus why we had high school kids winning state champs, a trans weightlifter making the Olympics, and Lia Thomas and others winning NCAA champs. Now, was it an overwhelming amount of people. Of course not. But that doesn't negate that it wasn't fair to allow folks with the largest performance boost you can get into a category where no one else had it...To put in perspective, you could be hopped up on all the drugs like a 1970s East German athlete, and still come nowhere close to the boost you get simply from being a male. In recent years, the policies have changed. IOC, NCAA, and a variety of sports have instituted sensible rules protecting the women's category. Tennis just announced their one time genetic test, following in the steps of track and others. Most of the sports include a one test, with further follow up if you present with a DSD to see if that DSD gives you an advantage (Think: Caster Semenya) or not. The WNBA hasn't yet defined their policy. And increasingly, we've had back and forth with players in the NBA who either have said they want to protect women's sports or would be fine with a trans person. Which is why we're here. Contrary to social media narratives, the only thing the WNBA rules/collective bargaining agreement says is that you have to be a women. But it's not defined. There's no policy like track, tennis, etc. that outlines what that means. There's not even a policy, like the NCAA and sports used to have on requiring hormone suppression for a certain amount of time (Note: That was the policy in many sports for a short bit, until most did away with it because it was found that the advantages were NOT negated.) So, Enes Kanter, and others self-identifying technically fits the rules as written. Is it absurd? Of course. So let's do a quick hit of what matters here: 1. Performance advantage: Look, it's just huge. Men get a 10%+ boost in performance just from being male. A little of this is before puberty, and then a big boost at puberty. We have mountains of evidence behind this, from large scale studies on elite, college, HS kids. As well as comparing progressions and so much more. It's just reality. And it's WHY we seperate sports in the first place. If we didn't....there would be NO women in elite sport. The best in the world would be competing against good high school kids. 2. Does hormone suppression eliminate the gap? There used to be hope that if you suppressed T, you'd eliminate the boost. It hurts performance, but it doesn't bring it down fully. Thomas was the perfect test case for this, suppressed they went from a solid male swimmer who competed at the conference level to an NCAA champ and all-american. Research backs this up. The few studies that have found no difference had poor comparisons (They compared athletic women vs. out of shape trans folks). 3. But what about Michael Phelps advantage, or the fact Thomas got beat by women... This is a common misunderstood question. Phelps 'advantage; was tiny. He'd win races by hundredths or tenths of seconds. Even the largest victory of his career was by about 1.4%. The point of sport isn't to have everyone be of equal talent. It's to create a level playing field for those within a category who have the best talent, work ethic, etc. to rise to the top. Which is why we have a women's category or in wrestling/boxing a weight class. The 2nd part: Men and women's performance overlaps. If you take a somewhat talented male, they still will be beat by an elite women. Just look at the NCAA. You have folks on moderate or lower level D1 teams who every year run slower than Faith Kipyegon's mile world record. That's what you saw with Thomas. So what? Most of this craziness would stop if we just acknowledged the performance advantage instead of trying to dismiss it. It's what folks like Coco Gauff and even Sophie Cunningham have said: The performance gap is real, we need to protect women's sport. But at the same time, we don't have to be an asshole to everyone. We can respect and treat people decently, while setting clear boundaries. I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially it. We have to deal with reality, not the reality that you might wish was here. And that reality means that males have a performance advantage and in competitive sport, that means protecting the women's division. That doesn't mean trans folks can't play sports. It just means they need to compete either in the division that matches their biology, or in recreational leagues or divisions that are often co-ed. If you yell that's discriminatory, it's not discriminatory to ban Bryan Johnson, who claims he's at the biological age of 18, from competing in the High School division. Or from keeping the 180lb wrestler from competing against the 140lb. Or from letting a person who doesn't have the required disability from competing in the paralympics. We separate sport by all sorts of things. It's just part of the deal to keep it competitive and give folks an opportunity to compete. There should always be spaces for people to participate in sport. But we need to respect biology and the ways we've separated sport to do so. That's why WNBA coaches and players should just say something along the lines of, "The performance gap is real. We need to acknowledge and protect that. At the same time, I value all people. I think that trans people should have opportunities to play recreational sports or co-ed leagues, or in open divisions so they have a place. They shoudn't be used a political pawns. But we can't ignore biology. We can be both decent and follow the science at the same time." And then the WNBA institute a sensible easy policy. Then it's done. And we can move on from using this as a political weapon, which it's absolutely been used at, and people have grifted their way on the coattails of it. Just follow the science, use common sense, and enact sensible and fair policies and move on from it. Then we can stop yelling and screaming on the craziest timeline this world has seen.