The US Supreme Court has upheld laws in two states, both under conservative administrations, that exclude all males from competing in female sports.

The ruling is likely to pave the way for similar victories for long-established women's rights in a realm where 'male advantage' is real but has become a matter of bitter debate in the past decade, in part as a result of International Olympic Committee missteps that gave males wishing to live as transwomen access to the female category.

It should never have happened, nor should it have taken a decade of fact/science vs ideology argument to get back to what is clearly the only fair and safe place for sport to be: right back at the gateway to a realm with two overriding gateways, Male and Female.

Good that Kirsty Coventry got the IOC back to that so soon in her tenure as president of the Olympics, even though it bought never to have gone the way it did in the era of Thomas Bach, a man who simple refused to listen to a simple message: males, however they feel or choose to live their lives, do not belong in female competition. A reminder of what Coventry delivered on a promise to do so during her campaign to be elected:

Olympic Ban On Trans/DSD Males From Women’s Sport

New ruling expected to go further than World Aquatics rules by banning not only athletes who developed through male puberty from the female category but also those with male-relevant DSDs. Confirmation to come at 4.15 CET press conference…

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

Of course, the credit for all of that goes primarily to the women who have fought for the best part of a decade to turn the IOC ship around, winning Olympians such as Sharron Davies in the UK and those she works with at the Women's Sports Union she founded, civil rights lawyer Nancy Hogshead in the USA and the women she works with at Champion Women, which she founded, and the Women's Sports Policy Working Group, where we find Donna De Varona still advocating for fair play and rights for women more than 60 years after a golden Games at the Tokyo Olympics.

Here's the spirit of fair play at the heart of the Olympic spirit that IOC leaders have traded on but all too often have veered away from when politics, political correctness, the convenience of friendships with the rich and powerful have blinded them to their duty of care to the asset that keeps them in a job, role and lifestyle: athletes.

At the 2007 gala dinner of ISHOF, when 100 years of women’s swimming history was being celebrated, Donna De Varona said: 

"100 years of women in swimming. Our history is rich not only for the world records and Olympic medals won but for the men and women who have through their dedication inspired excellence, forged social change, fought for fairness, and created a network of individuals worldwide who are dedicated to making a difference in a world constantly seeking common ground.

"Time, place and circumstance are the gifts to our talents. Great coaching and the opportunity to share the water with others who are as passionate and dedicated has made water sports a cornerstone for all the world and especially the Olympics. NBC would have a very difficult time with those ratings if the Games didn't start out with swimming.

"Those of us who have made it to the top of the victory stand know that we didn't do it alone. A rival is just as important as a coach. However, when the fierce days of competition are over, it is the friendships forged through mutual respect that count the most."

De Varona was appointed to the United States Department of State's Empowerment of Girls and Women through Sports Council by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2021, she also joined the Women's Sports Policy Working Group, to oppose President Joe Biden's Executive Order 13988 that mandates blanket inclusion for all transgender women athletes.

And that's the point: regardless of the politics setting the agenda in any term or era, speaking truth to power and assisting those in charge get done what needs to be done is where sport finds the best non-political version of itself. You can read more about the soaring achievements, careers and long-term commitment of Donna De Varona in our fledgling SOS Hall of Fame:

Donna De Varona, 1st Queen Of Versatility In The Olympic Pool & Lifelong Advocate For Fair-Play

An Olympian at 13, the American set 18 World records between 1960 and 1964, became the first women’s Olympic medley champion, and then, retired at 17, the youngest network sports TV presenter and a lifelong advocate for fair play and women’s rights

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

I make the same point on politics below when referring to an article in The Guardian that fails to mention the word 'male' until the penultimate paragraph but includes this in its intro: "...to pave the way for similar bans throughout the US and handing Donald Trump a key “culture war” victory."

No! Why go there in a news story? Politics. And nothing to do with the substantive issues. Did Trump use his opponents' stance on the trans issue in sport as a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election? Yes, he did. But that's politics, and from a man who has proved himself to be just as capable of manipulating words and truth as any politician who struggles to utter the first line of any dictionary description "woman" when asked to do so ("an adult female human being").

The issue in sport is about the truth, the facts, the science, the undeniable context, the language we use and how we may use it to obfuscate the truth just as much as shone a light on it; about clarity on the nature of respect and tolerance, neither of which can be had through colonisation, the two-way street the only one worth going down.

In the wider societal debate about transwomen's access to women's sex-based rights and the places and spaces where red lines had already been drawn, the more extreme wing of trans activism has demanded, often in aggressive ways, that they have a right to colonise the very rights and spaces already protected in national laws far and wide.

That wing of activism and those who remain silent about it have done the trans community that simply wants to get on with life as they choose to live it, peaceably, no favours. Those extreme campaigners have been encouraged by the lack of honesty by those who would rather the issue be fought out on a political battle-line and struggle to tell us what a woman is. The same people remain silent when women in maternity wards are being described as 'people who lactate', 'birthing people' or 'chestfeeders'.

As George Orwell noted it in his landmark essay Politics and the English Language:

"... the great enemy of clear language is insincerity"

To put it mildly.

The author of highly relevant works 1984 and Animal Farm hailed from the United Kingdom, which has been a key battleground in a fight women had imagined they would never have to fight again, having fought so hard for so long for the sex-based rights secured.

The row in Britain eventually led to a review and legal judgement, one keenly watched around the world, being handed down. In summary, this is how it went:

• The UK Supreme Court ruled that references to "sex," "man," and "woman" in the Equality Act 2010 refer strictly to biological sex (assigned at birth) rather than an acquired gender. The landmark ruling allows for single-sex spaces to be restricted to biological females but does not remove discrimination protections for transgender individuals.

That still leaves us with sides being taken and arguments having to be had over toilets, and the search for solutions that are already in place yet for some still need to be discovered - for example. And, leaping Down Under for a moment, it still leaves us with this kind of mind-numbing exchange in which one of the smart women involved appears to have parked her intellect and doesn't know where to find it:

In sport, however, the debate is effectively over, among things that remain to be seen the rate of catch-up around the world of governance that was sold on pleasing Bach's IOC and is now left trying to explain its big leap from the illogical to the logical.

It's not political! Or, at least, it ought not to be. It's the simple truth! It's about the nature of sport, those signs on the two gateways at the entrance of sport: Men (male) and Women (female). Which is why we find the map of the issue turning red in the U.S. as a reminder of what the blue needs to fathom, politics and 'culture wars' apart, if it wants to be seen as a group of folk who understand the nature of sport and other sex-based places where to speak of biological reality is essential, not discriminatory.

The U.S. court voted to overturn previous judgements issued by lower courts in favour of two trans students. Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school student from West Virginia, had sued after being barred from competing in their respective states.

Split 6-3 in a conservative-liberal majority, the Supreme Court ruled that banning transgender women and girls from competing in sports does not violate Title IX, a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in education and in place in the early 1970s, and at a time when there was no other way of interpreting that direction than "sex-based", a time when gender meant the biology you were born with.

The moment was celebrated far and wide, among those doing so the women already mentioned above. Here's Davies with two points of context in two tweets, for example, one general, one swimming:

The Numbers Game

Back in 2024, Charlie Baker, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), told Congress that he was aware of only 10 transgender athletes out of more than 500,000 students on campus sports teams.

So what! There's Lia Thomas, a man well past puberty just a season or two before being allowed to compete among women at NCAA championships, permitted to use the changing rooms, granted a women's NCAA title being handed to the first recipient who'd had testosterone running through his veins and building the man for a couple of decades (yes, it starts before birth).

There's Thomas, sporting a male leap off the blocks, the seven women in the race caught at a completely different angle and trajectory. That shot is iconic because it speaks a thousand words about height, size of hands, feet, heart, lungs, level of power, why difference in sex matters in sport. Unfair Play writ large to just about everyone who ever understood the nature of sport and the science confirming it.

Yet, cue the dead-hand of denial and the scrape of high-horse heels digging in.

Since then, the NCAA and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committees have ring-fenced the women's category for females only, if only to fall in line with executive orders from the White House, but also in line with polls that show a majority of Americans in favour of sex-based categorisation in sport.

Media, meanwhile, still has a journey to go on the issue. I find much to admire in the work carried out at The Guardian in the UK, for example, but were it not for the fine reporting of sportswriter Sean Ingle, you could comfortably say the newspaper (not alone in this regard) has a blind spot when it comes to the matter of clear language used when discussing the obviously unfair (sometimes unsafe) play inherent in allowing males to participate in female sport.

And I say that for all levels, from community sport for health and wellbeing through to the Olympic showcase that covers the spectrum of world-class elite, professional sport through to local club-level/participation sport in the solidarity class.

Here's what I mean, a report on the US Supreme Court decision that does not mention the word 'male' until the penultimate paragraph, and then only to make the point that the male-born person in question is said to have started transition when he was eight.

US supreme court rules states can exclude trans athletes from female sports

Justices voted to overturn judgements issued by lower courts in favor of trans students who sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho

The GuardianRobert Tait

Here's that reference:

"... Pepper-Jackson challenged West Virginia’s law on the grounds that she had undergone gender-affirming treatment at a young age, did not experience male puberty, and thus enjoyed no unfair advantage. She has identified as a girl since the age of eight and was issued with a West Virginia birth certificate identifying her as female, later becoming the statewide champion in the shot put. She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls sports in the entire state."

In swimming, World Aquatics rules protecting the women's category for females only have been in place since June 2022, when we heard fine speeches and explanations from a think-tank of experts, practitioners and champions, Cate Campbell and Summer Sanders among those who argued for two-way respect and tolerance alongside deeper understanding of why women must mean female in sport.

Pepper-Jackson is not a swimmer but under those rules would have to show the evidence of early transition, including professional confirmation and how male puberty was avoided, in order to be eligible for the female category.

The rule states that any athlete who developed as male through Tanner Stage 2 puberty can never compete in the women's category. That rule recognises the reality of 'male advantage' that female athletes should never have to or even be asked to compete against.

Laws and rules on equality is firmly in play: male advantage among males is a non-issue because they are all male, and the equivalent of female advantage among females is, equally, a non-issue. In short: on the list of reasons why male advantage in female sport ought to be banned is this: it trashes any notion of equality.

Then there is this reality absent from that Guardian report that ends with "She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls sports in the entire state.": the numbers game has long been one of the biggest red herrings in the entire pond of weak arguments from those who appear to think women's rights are the rights of anyone who says they are whatever they feel.

Whatever the circumstances of Pepper-Jackson, you cannot frame and shape the entire sports world and its understanding of fair play, nor impact the destinies and lives of women, on the basis of any outlying circumstance or rare case. Nor should sport encourage tortured and complex regulation that is based on sex, particularly when it knows full well tat too many loopholes are already to be found in precisely the places that seem so very attractive to rogues.

Sport screams the daftness of the numbers game. The biggest experiment in world sport that tested the reality of 'male advantage' - and confirmed it, with a following wind - was the GDR's State Research Plan 14:25, under which more than 10,000 athletes across a range of sports were given this kind of substances highlighted in Unfair Play by Sharron Davies, written with me:

Unfair Play | Swift Press

A TIMES AND DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2024 Sharron Davies is no stranger to battling the routine sexism of the sporting world. She missed out on Olympic Gold because of doping among East German athletes in the 1980s; now, biological males are being allowed to compete directly […]

Swift PressAuthor profile page

A Snap Shot Of Male Advantage Granted To Girls To Dominate Female Opponents

What was administered, and the female dominance it delivered:

The list of substances above represent what was administered not naturally occurring, as in:

• Exogenous: The scientific term for a substance that originates outside of the body and is administered for medical purposes, or in Olympic and other sports signed up to the WADA Code, because the supplier and the taker intend to cheat.
• Endogenous: anything produced naturally within the body

That includes all those mentions in the list of testosterone. It, and its precursors and derivatives, grant male advantage.

And here is what that looked like in practice, 1973 to 1989:

It took an average of 8 (10 at the outside) East German girls placed on testosterone (from as early as 11-12 years of age) in every passing Olympic cycle 1972 to 1989 in swimming to dominate, make a mockery of and do immense harm to generations of women, all involved counted as victims and survivors for the rest of their lives and, for some, until the moment they were lowered into their graves too soon.

In Olympic, World and European competition between 1973 and 1989, there were approximately 6,000 races swum by women. The GDR entries accounted for about 5% of those swims but here are the corresponding percentages for podium places that show us what happened when the GDR girls were given a touch of what boys get at puberty in order to make the propaganda of an East German medals machine the Machiavellian nightmare it was ...

Keep in mind that the example is one that shows us how GDR women boosted by male advantage dominated the female category in a way that male athletes would have needed no chemical help to do, the standard of a good male club swimmer well shy of international-selection standard, or even 15-16-year-old best of boys capable of making Olympic podiums and finals in the company of the very best female swimmers in the world - not because they are 'better' but because they are 'male':

So, that's more than 80% of the gold and more than half of all medals at the three biggest levels open to European swimmers, Olympic, World and continental.

Such figures alchemise an abstract argument into an undeniable, concrete reality.

The GDR case is the perfect storm of an experiment to refer to precisely because:

• It was controlled and documented — State Plan 14.25 was meticulously recorded
• It was sustained — 16 years of consistent data across three levels of competition
• It was involuntary — many athletes didn't know what they were being given, removing any "choice" argument
• The outcomes were measured — both in medals and tragically in the long-term health of the women involved
• And, critically — the mechanism was testosterone and its derivatives, making the biological argument explicit

Again, 80% of available gold medals from roughly 5% of entries.

The real victims in that story are twofold, and three in number:

• The GDR girls handed medals and a lifetime of health consequences
• Their competitors handed a lifetime of lamenting what might have been, and never being recognised for their true achievement (extend the thought to coaches, parents and others who supported athletes, some own whom were written up as 'also-swums' and even 'failures' on their way to undeserved and cruel anonymity that has shamed every generation of wilfully blind IOC leaders ever since

GDR Doping - State Of Swimming +

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

• The third line ties the first two and all others caught up in the preventable and bitter debate of the past decade together: women.

An argument that ought never to have started is, effectively, won, yet women still find themselves having to fight to see fair play, safe play and sex-based rights back where they should be: as the three pillars holding up the two gateways to sport.