What’s the difference

What’s the difference between an athlete born a girl who takes drugs to enhance her performance and an athlete born a boy who goes through puberty as a male then become a trans woman?

International sports bodies have spent years trying to get rid of performance enhancing drugs but now are too cowered by people who deny scientific reality and scream transphobic at anyone who dares to point out the biological fact that such competition is unfair.

But how can this be fair?

An IOC rule change could see Kiwi weightlifter Laurel Hubbard become the first transgender Olympic athlete.

Inside the Games website reports Hubbard is effectively guaranteed a spot in the women’s super-heavyweight category, after the International Olympic Committee approved an amendment to the qualifying system, due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hubbard, 43, competed in men’s weightlifting competitions, before transitioning in 2013.

She has been eligible to compete in the Olympics since 2015, when the IOC issued new guidelines allowing any transgender athlete to compete as a woman, provided their testosterone levels were below 10 nanomoles per litre for at least 12 months before their first competition.

Weightlifting has been at the centre of the debate over the fairness of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports and Hubbard’s presence in Tokyo would attract huge media attention, as well as criticism from fellow lifters and coaches. . .

Women and men do not compete against each other in sports for very good reasons – male hormones make men faster and stronger than women and competition between them could never be equal because of that.

A trans-woman who has transitioned after puberty has the same natural advantage a man has which makes competing in women’s competitions unfair.

That shouldn’t be construed as being trans-phobic but it will be.