Reading Between the Lines of a USA Today Anti-Trans Column
How does it harm a cis woman to tie for fifth place with a trans woman? Opinion columns opposing trans women’s equal participation in sports won’t tell you.
Opinion, by Evan Urquhart
Picture the injustice: An All-American athlete hopes to compete in the final round of several swimming categories. However, at 17th place, she barely misses the mark and finds herself one spot too low to make the final for the 500 Free. In the same meet she makes to the 400 IM final and the final for two relays.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this sounds like the sort of thing that happens in every single final of every single race in every single individual college sporting event in the entire country. It does. However, this is the story of Reka Gyorgy, who is suing the NCAA to force out trans women. In 2022 Reka Gyorgy came in 17th in the 500 Free preliminary. In a column for USA Today, Ingrid Jaques shares Gyorgy’s story, but fails to explain exactly what the issue is with having trans women competing, instead relying on innuendo and prejudice to do her job as an opinion writer for her.
Why is it more unfair for Gyorgy to come in 17th when a trans woman is a fellow competitor than it would have been if the race had only included cisgender women? Why isn’t the second-place competitor suing, as the woman who would seem to be the most directly impacted. And why does Riley Gaines, who is also mentioned in Jaques column, say that trans women have an advantage when her record against Lia Thomas is of tying her?
This last question in particular is vexing because it suggests that what anti-trans campaigners mean when they say trans women have an advantage isn’t that they dominate or outperform cis women athletes. In common parlance, a race with someone you’re so evenly matched with that you wind up tying would generally be considered a fair one. But it’s not so with trans women, whose advantages don’t have to be proven by those like Jaques, Gaines, and Gyorgy who oppose their participation, they merely need to be asserted.
screenshot from USA Today
Gaines competition with Thomas would seem, by any common sense standard, to have been fair. Far from being outclassed, Gaines tied with Thomas, her equal, fair competitor. But somehow, even while noting that Gaines tied with Thomas, Jaques suggests that Thomas had “clear advantages.” Why were they clear? It doesn’t say. Jaques just seems to assume she won’t be called upon to prove it.
However, in a world operating on objectivity and reason, asserting that trans women have clear advantages would not be considered the same as proving that they have them. When we turn to the evidence, in fact, we find that a review found there are no clear biological advantages for trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression. An inconvenient truth, conveniently disposed of by anti-trans activists.
If objections to trans women’s participation in sports are due to clear, proven, scientific evidence that shows trans women retain a biological advantage over cisgender women athletes after hormone therapy, then those who wish to ban them from women’s sports ought to simply present this evidence. If such evidence does not exist, then in a fair political environment they’d be asked to articulate the basis on which they are arguing against trans women’s inclusion. The fact that opponents of trans women in sports are not required to justify the claims that they cannot compete fairly, and not asked to provide their alternative reasoning for bans in the absence of such evidence, are a sign of a discussion so badly warped by bigotry and prejudice that it cannot be said to be operating on anything like a fair, neutral, or rational basis.
CORRECTION: This story initially misspelled the name of Reka Gyorgy.
Evan Urquhart is a journalist and the founder of Assigned Media.