Men don't need to prove they're Men

Why a women's category in sports requires discrimination

Any method of “testing” that someone is in fact the sex they claim to be will necessarily be invasive. Whether it’s examining genitals or running blood tests it’s easy to imagine how these practices might feel “creepy” or demeaning to the individuals being tested. And putting aside the inherent intrusiveness of such tests, having your sex questioned in the first place could be threatening to your identity. Well before trans people were in the public conversation misgendering (or in this case mis-sexing) has always been considered offensive.

So when it comes to women’s sports and the debates over trans and intersex inclusion, I’ve heard many people wonder: “Why don’t the men have to get tested? Why is it only women’s bodies that we’re comfortable monitoring in this way?” Or, in response to the new World Athletics rules (the governing body for track and field)—which require some intersex athletes to lower their testosterone levels to the top of the female range in order to be eligible to compete at the elite level—I’ve heard the complaint that: “There’s no top of the male range, why is it only femininity that we feel comfortable interrogating and defining, isn’t this just another way of denying women’s diversity?”

No. It’s not. But I get the intuition behind these questions. Men and women should be treated equally, so testing women but not men feels unfair and discriminatory to women, especially because such testing primarily impacts women who don’t conform to traditional beauty standards or expectations of femininity. And sports is all about celebrating outliers, so who are we to say that a woman’s testosterone is “too high” or that she has too much of a “natural advantage”? Isn’t that the whole point of elite sports? Celebrating the genetic freaks among us?