Who pays
This is how it should work – the disadvantage is only to the gender-swapper, not to all the women in the gender-swapper’s chosen sport.
Transgender male swimmer Iszac Henig has admitted that his transition has made him a statistically worse swimmer after he finished 79th out of 83 at men’s meet – but says he ultimately ‘lives more’ as a man.
Fine. No problem. Nobody loses.
Henig, 21, has begun swimming for the Yale men’s team after placing as an All-American on the women’s team the previous year.
In an op-ed published Thursday, Henig notes that his times are ‘about the same’ as last season when he swam with women but that as a result, in a November meet, he finished 79th out of 83.
Yes, and that’s exactly why men should stop making this move: the people who pay for it are the women the men compete against.
It’s a far fall in terms of competing, given that Henig was such a heralded women’s swimmer she competed in the 2016 Olympic trials and was named one of the top 100 female swimmers in the country.
But the fall is taken by Henig alone, and Henig considers it worth it; no harm no foul.
The objection to men doing this to women isn’t arbitrary and it isn’t “transphobic”; it’s specific to men doing it to women, because it’s damaging and unfair.
In my view, there may some remaining elements of unfairness when women compete in the men’s category. I can think of at least two possibilities.
First, unless the “men’s” category is formally denoted as an “open” competition, it’s unfair to the man who is eliminated from the team and replaced by a woman. He is prevented from taking his rightful place on the men’s team. His chances to gain from membership on the team and to improve his own performance are forfeit to the vanity of a woman pretending to be a man.
Second, although the woman may not represent a significant threat to the personal physical safety of the male team members, at least in the way that men generally represent such a threat to women, men also have a right to a modicum of privacy in places where they undress, such as locker rooms, and are entitled to sex-segregated spaces, just as women are. I don’t know if this woman is using the men’s locker room, but if she is, that’s wrong.
Agreed, though I’ll note it becomes more complicated if she takes testosterone to physically transition. Though my thinking is to take a blunt approach in that instance: removal from competition. Taking performance enhancing substances is banned to the top of the field and the bottom alike.
maddog, yes, the mens’ division is more or less the open division in many sports, though it may vary as to how each individual club or competitive organisation views it. I’m open to a club viewing it either way. And if we are thinking of some event with limited positions available, those positions will almost always go to the man rather than the woman competing for the spot.