Over the weekend, Rachel McKinnon, a biological male who claims to be female, won the female Cycling World Championship.
Letting biological males compete against women in athletic events is controversial, to say the least, and many critics have pointed out just how unfair it is to let McKinnon compete in a women’s cycling event.
In response, McKinnon reportedly said, “My doctor treats me as a female person, my racing license says female, but people who oppose my existence still want to think of me as male . . .”
To be clear, we don’t know of anyone who opposes McKinnon’s existence. They just don’t think it’s right to let men compete against women in a cycling race.
This is not the first time a biological male who claims to be female has dominated in a women’s sporting event.
In a 2014 Mixed Martial Arts fight, Fallon Fox — a biological male who identifies as a female — destroyed Tamikka Brents.
Brents was badly beaten, and she came away from the fight with a concussion and broken eye socket.
In an interview after the fight, Brents described how “overpowered” she felt fighting Fox.
Fox underwent sex-reassignment surgery in 2006 and had been on hormone therapy ever since — meaning Fox was as “transitioned” as a transgender athlete could be, and still the match was incredibly one-sided.
Right now our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are representing a group of high school athletes in a lawsuit over whether or not male athletes who identify as female should be able to compete in girls’ track and field events.
Situations like these have real-world consequences.
For star student-athletes like Selina Soule, letting boys compete alongside girls could jeopardize her ability to qualify for scholarships or play collegiate sports.
Writing at Breakpoint, John Stonestreet recently summed it up this way:
Whenever men use positions of power over women, we call it “toxic masculinity.” What masculinity is more toxic today than a man stealing a woman’s time and voice, or claiming women’s championships, or insisting on being housed with abused women at shelters or using their locker rooms?
The most toxic masculinity in our culture right now is coming from the T in the [LGBT] acronym. In fact, maybe that’s what the T really stands for.
