Olympics Erasing Women: Two Lies Olympic Games Executives Told the World
By Linda Blade (@coachblade on Twitter)
By now everyone who cares about the Olympic Games has heard about Laurel Hubbard – the weightlifter from New Zealand who was born male and “transitioned” to “woman” at the age of 35 years. This male athlete has been admitted into the Olympic Games to compete with women in weightlifting.
Such an outrageous lapse of ethics and judgment by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is bewildering. How can it be happening?!
Since Canadians are compelled by Bill C16 (2017) to distort biological reality and comply with socially contrived pronouns, I will henceforth refer to Hubbard with pronouns “she^” and “her^”; the added circumflex symbol serving to denote that that biological sex differs from self-identified gender.
Without consulting broadly or notifying many, the IOC decided in 2015 that male athletes could self-identify as women and would then be allowed to compete against female athletes. [Reference: The 2015 IOC “Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism”]
This is nonsense.
As anyone can see from the Olympic record charts across many sports, male performances surpass female performances by a vast margin.
Sexual dimorphism (physical differences between males and females) is so great in sports that even the males who placed last in their Olympic final far exceed the feats of female champions in the same events. The following chart shows the differences in performance between 8th place males and female champions in track and field events.
There is a logical reason for this difference in male performance. The male body has a physical advantage that ranges from 10%-160% depending upon the activity and the sport:
- Heavier by 20-40%
- Stronger by 30-60% [Especially stronger in upper body activities]
- More Explosive by 33%
- Running 10-15%
- Kicking 20%
- Punching 160%
- Scrum forces in Rugby 40-60%
- VO2max 20-40%
- Throwing 20-30%
- Weights 30-50%
- Tendons much stiffer
In the process of explaining their bizarre form of “inclusion,” the IOC told two gigantic lies.
Lie #1 – Hormone treatment levels the playing field
The 2015 IOC “consensus” asserts that the male advantage disappears and the female playing field will be level if the male athlete ensures that his testosterone concentration remains below 10 nmol/L for one year.
This assertion is patently false! The female testosterone norm is at least 8 nmol/L below this level and, in any case, women do not have the genetic makeup to take advantage of testosterone the way a male body can.
Every study that has measured male bodies both before and after hormone therapy shows that there is no significant reduction of the male performance advantage. Evolutionary biologist Emma Hilton and colleague Tommy Lundberg published a helpful review of the literature to underscore this point.
Of course, the ordinary citizen could surmise the same thing without science.
How does a man make his bones and body smaller to match female size?!
How does he reduce the size of his heart and lungs so that oxygen transport capacity is reduced to female level?!
Surely, the IOC must know that its position on this matter is absurd. It is an insult to women, to sport, and to the Olympic ideal.
Lie #2 – The impact of male self-identification upon sportswomen will be negligible
A leading member of the IOC medical commission insisted at the outset that the number of trans-identified males in the female category would be few; implying that the numbers would be so low as to pose a negligible impact upon women’s sports. This assumption has also proven to be false. Over the past few years, the world of sport has documented a growing number of males, calling themselves “transgender,” robbing female athletes of opportunities on teams and podiums.
A thorough sampling of such people can be found on the Save Women’s Sports website: https://savewomenssports.com/males-in-female-sports-1
There are now more than 70 such males self-identifying into the female sports in various realms beyond the Olympic Games and it has had an enormous impact. Take the two transgender high school athletes from Connecticut, for example. In the three years they were competing they stole 15 women’s state championship titles, causing at least 85 female athletes to lose out on opportunities for advancement.
How could the IOC overlook the fact that one male athlete like Laurel Hubbard in the group creates a false outcome for every female below her^ in the competition. Even if Hubbard does not win gold, every performance below hers^ will have an asterisk beside it. For example, the 11th place finisher will know that she was actually a top 10 finisher, even though the results don’t reflect this fact. The same thing will be true for every finisher thereafter down the line like dominoes falling throughout the entire group.
And worst of all, since the field of competitors is necessarily delimited (not everyone makes it to the Olympics) the presence of Hubbard means that somewhere in the world there is a woman who did not get to attend the Olympic Games at all. It is difficult to know who that weightlifter is without seeing the chart of potential applicants.
In short, the presence of a male competitor does, indeed, have a huge impact on female Olympic athletes. No matter which way one might look at it, the 2015 IOC “consensus” excludes female athletes from their own sports. It is certainly not “inclusive” as claimed. At least not for the women.
This is bewildering and demeaning to women in sports and it undermines the integrity of the Olympic Games themselves.
What can citizens do about this injustice?
Those who understand this injustice need to contact Mr. Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, and let him know that the 2015 “consensus statement” on self-identification in sports must be suspended and that a more thorough consultation regarding trans inclusion in sports should be undertaken in the immediate aftermath of Tokyo 2020. A sample letter can be found at this link:
Linda Blade is the author of Amazon bestseller Unsporting – How Trans Activism And Science Denial Are Destroying Sport
