Horror for Biological Female Athletes as Olympic Committee Introduces 'Framework on Fairness'
When we can’t acknowledge that a man is a man and a woman is a woman — two of the most basic truths there are — a lot of other words need to be distorted to maintain those falsities.
On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee issued a document titled “The Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations.” It is, indeed, a framework, although a much looser one than you might think. In terms of sex variations, it mostly kicks the can down the road.
Everything else in that title — particularly the word “fairness” — is based on the deliberate debasement of the English language. (And you’d better participate in that debasement if you’re covering it; Google and other tech giants love censoring and demonetizing publications that stray from the party line on this. The Western Journal is fighting this — and you can help us in our fight by subscribing.)
“Fairness” doesn’t just involve the IOC allowing men who identify as women to compete as women and vice versa. It’s already been allowing that — since 2015, actually.
The document didn’t do what it was expected to do, according to Forbes, which was to lower the criteria for what it meant to be considered intersex and loosen guidelines requiring men to reduce their testosterone level if they were to compete as women.
Instead, “The Framework for Fairness” eliminated all of that and let individual sports agencies decide what the standards for determining what a man and a woman should be.
“It must be in the remit of each sport and its governing body to determine how an athlete may be at a disproportionate advantage against their peers, taking into consideration the nature of each sport,” the document reads.
Instead, the individual sports must rely on a 10-point framework to determine who can compete. The 10 points: Inclusion, prevention of harm, non-discrimination, fairness, no presumption of advantage, evidence-based approach, primacy of health and bodily autonomy, stakeholder-centered approach, right to privacy and periodic reviews.
Some of these are self-explanatory to anyone familiar with the linguistic filter applied to transgender issues. “Non-discrimination,” for instance, means that the criteria established by individual sports bodies “should be established and implemented fairly and in a manner that does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance and/or sex variations.”
As long as transgender athletes don’t have any advantage, they “should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with their self-determined gender identity.”
The fairness category stipulates that the individual governing bodies can exclude anyone (and let’s face it — what we’re talking about is men who identify as women here) who “has an unfair and disproportionate competitive advantage,” who poses “a risk to the physical safety of other athletes” or who claims “a gender identity different from the one consistently and persistently used, with a view to entering a competition in a different category.”
The problem, however, is proving that a man who competes as a woman has a leg up. That’s why point number five — “no presumption of advantage” — is a horror for female athletes.
“No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status,” it reads.
“Until evidence … determines otherwise, athletes should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.”
Instead, the “evidence-based approach” laid out by the framework demands that “restrictions arising from eligibility criteria should be based on robust and peer-reviewed research” which “demonstrates a consistent, unfair, disproportionate competitive advantage in performance and/or an unpreventable risk to the physical safety of other athletes” and “is largely based on data collected from a demographic group that is consistent in gender and athletic engagement with the group that the eligibility criteria aim to regulate.”
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, there were over 300 women’s events. To exclude a man who wishes to compete as a woman, therefore, the burden of proof is on the dozens of sporting bodies which regulate each of these sports to come up with “robust and peer reviewed research” directly applicable to the sport in which that athlete hopes to compete.
According to Yahoo Sports, however, IOC officials admitted Tuesday that there was “no scientific consensus on how testosterone affects performance across all sports,” adding that the “role of testosterone” in determining who has an advantage is “unclear.”
“We have not found the solution to this big question which is out there,” IOC spokesman Christian Klaue said.
“But what we have tried to do is outline a process which helps international federations to set eligibility criteria and to find solutions. And we will continue helping them doing that work. But clearly, this is a topic that will be with us for a long time. … It’s a long-term project.”
It’s also worth noting that it’s not clear how serious the IOC is about enforcing this. “The framework is not legally binding,” the IOC’s Kaveh Mehrabi told reporters, adding that policies which violated the 10 points would be dealt with on a “case-by-case basis.”
The guidelines will first be implemented after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding them, as you might imagine. However, there are two things that are clear.
The first is that there will likely be more transgender athletes participating, almost all as women. After Laurel Hubbard, a New Zealand weightlifter, became the first man who identifies as a woman to compete under his chosen gender, he became an international folk hero. Expect more “brave” athletes to follow in his mold.
The second is that the regulations for transgender athletes will be looser. Individual sports federations are being told to the burden of proof is on them to find evidence very specific to their sport that men have an advantage over women (funny how it’s always a man competing as a woman and not the other way around — as if that shouldn’t have been evidence enough) or to allow men to compete, presumably without a testosterone test.
Say what you will about the IOC’s testosterone test method of allowing transgender individuals to complete; at least it was something. What we’re left with is hardly a framework and anything but fair.
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