When will sporting governing bodies see the reality that we all know to be true – that male bodies have an advantage over female bodies? Granted, many organisations have seen the light and taken action, but others remain in some sort of cloud cuckoo land where transwomen – biological males – are allowed to compete against biological females.
The latest outrage has happened in the United States. Austin Killips, a 27-year-old transgender cyclist won first prize for women at the Tour of the Gila, the premier road race in New Mexico. Killips is now being tipped to challenge for a place at the Tour de France Femmes and at the Paris Olympics next summer.
This is wrong. Sport is divided into female and male categories for a reason, and it is not to affirm anyone’s identity. I’ve said this before: women’s sport is not for males who cannot cut it against their own sex. Killips may well have lost some competitive advantage after undergoing hormone therapy, but that does not mitigate the differences between the sexes.
Clear rules – based on biological sex – should apply throughout sport from the grassroots to the Olympics. My time for a 5 km park run will never set any records, even in the 50+ age group, but I still won’t participate against women – it would be wrong for me to push just one woman down the rankings in her own category.
But it’s even worse when it comes to competitive sports that have prize money. Reports suggest that Killips earned almost £8,000 for finishing top of the women’s general classification in the Tour of the Gila, plus a bonus of £800 as ‘Queen of the Mountains’. Money earmarked for women has been taken by the other sex. This year, for the first time, the Tour of the Gila offered equal prize money for the men and women’s races. The fact that biological males have won both pots makes a mockery of this worthy move.
The impact all this is having on girls cannot be underestimated. Why bother training hard – possibly for years on end – when biological males will just come along and take the medals? Killips only took up cycling in 2019. Sport will struggle to remain attractive to girls if they know they will be forced to give way to competitors who are stronger and faster and post better times in most disciplines simply because they are male.
No doubt arguments will continue over hormone levels and the effect this has on performance, but this misses the point. Sport is for all but it is divided into sex-based categories for the same reason that it is divided into age-based categories: to ensure fair competition between people with different bodies.
We would not allow a grown adult to compete with under-11s because they chose to identify as a pre-pubescent child. Neither should we allow males to compete against women when they take on a transgender identity. It’s not fair, and it may well be dangerous. This madness has now gone on for far too long. Women and children are the principal victims, but it is also bringing transgender rights – my rights – into disrepute. It needs to stop, and the world needs to return to reality.
Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.
* This article was first published by The Spectator on 3 May 2023: Biological men shouldn’t be competing against women.
Debbie Hayton 
22 replies on “Biological men shouldn’t be competing against women”
Great article, Debbie. Thank you for speaking out.
I’m wondering what you have to say to people who claim that trans people are such a small group that their impact on women’s sports is negligible. My argument against that point of view is, first of all, that being trans has become a fad, so there are more and more people claiming to be trans. Secondly, even if trans people are a small part of the population, the psychological damage to women of knowing that people like Austin Killips and Lia Thomas are out there puts a damper on all of women’s sports. This kind of unfair practice is kind of like a murder. If we are able to stop it, we should stop it in all instances. Tolerating the occasional murder would be wrong if we had the power to stop them all.
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You are the first person, apart from me, that I have ever read who brought up the psychological, as opposed to the physical, effect on females of having to put up with all this nastiness from ‘trans women’ and, sometimes, ‘trans men’. It really is a complete breach of our human rights and our civil rights. I would estimate that the psychological damage to women and children in the longer term will play out for years to come, and all because an utterly narcissistic group of people have decided that we should be made to pay for their body dysmorphia which manifests as ‘gender dysphoria’, at best, or, more likely in the case of at least 95% of these men, their discomfort with having to admit to their unlimited fetishes and their desire to take everything from us that our foremothers won. That so many cannot, or do not wish to, see the gross violation of decency is terrifying. Madness and totalitarianism now walk hand-in-hand in the UK – indeed, in the entire West.
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I don’t understand why women athletes don’t just refuse to compete en masse when a transgender woman is included. Then the competition wouldn’t be able to go ahead. This would only have to happen a couple of times for the sponsors to get the message that this is not acceptable. Why is it that women can’t seem to work together on this problem? We shouldn’t behave like weak little creatures who have unfair rules imposed upon us, that’s what women’s lib was all about. There’s strength in numbers ladies!
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Oh, I SO agree with you, Pauline. I suspect that female athletes continue to participate for several reasons: (1) Some of them may feel sympathy for trans women. (2) They want it on their résumé that they participated in important sporting events and didn’t just sit them out (which would look bad). (3) They are young, and this is the time to build their athletic résumés, despite who they must participate against. (4) Eventually, society may come to its senses and realize that allowing trans girls/women into women’s sports is wrong. When that happens, the REAL girls and women who lost will be elevated as the winners in the record books. (5) Even if the participation of trans women is not eventually discounted, the names of trans athletes will always have asterisks next to their names revealing the truth about who and what they were. (6) Some of the female athletes may believe (or hope) that they have a chance of beating the imposters.
Overall, however, I agree with you. Even if it just happened in one event, it would make a statement that would become news across the country.
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Great idea, and all power to the female athletes. My guess is that it might be difficult for any single woman to take the risk of the vicious backlash that would undoubtedly be unleashed on them individually. Their power together would be great against the governing bodies, as you say, but the insane trans ideologues is another matter. I hope it happens, though, and the rational sports fans and sane majority support and defend them all the way.
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“We would not allow a grown adult to compete with under-11s because they chose to identify as a pre-pubescent child.” – I wouldn’t put anything past the wokerati.
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Wasn’t there an American guy who competed against under-12s (girls) in skateboarding and took away a trophy and prize money? Think so. He claimed to be a ‘trans girl’. They will stop at nothing. Absolutely nothing.
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The current top women athletes need to lead the way. So far we’ve only really heard from the retired ones which is good but they don’t have enough influence. They need to realise how discouraging this is going to be for younger women.
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I do not wish to be a party pooper – and I see that yet another comment of mine has been erased – but the whole plan is to erase females. If the female athletes walk, the ‘trans women’ will win. It really is that simple. Women everywhere, in all areas of life, need to get their heads around the fact that this is a ‘war’, and the people who back this stuff are very, very determined to take women out of the equation entirely. None of this is accidental. Women need to refuse utterly to work in any way with these larpers, but they must not walk. They need to use their heads now and think up strategies and tactics to shame these larping men, to dismiss them, to make them feel as they are making women feel. Difficult with narcissists, but they have to try. Otherwise, there will be no female anything in a few years’ time. We have said, no, and many men, including the larpers, do not like women to say, no. Unless women get their act together and start organizing with a united front, we will be erased completely from all public life – all of it. No exaggeration.
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I agree about women getting their act together but we shouldn’t underestimate the financial aspect of women’s sport. I feel that these are the people we need to influence. Look at the mess Bud Light got themselves into.
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Lorncal, if all of the real women withdrew from a competition because a trans woman was in it, that might just leave one, perhaps two, trans women in the competition. The likelihood is that the competition would be cancelled. So, let’s say that the competition ISN’T cancelled, and two trans women end up competing against each other. The embarrassment to the athletics community and to the organizers of the competition would be enormous. The public embarrassment would be huge. No, I think that a total boycott of some (not all) athletic competitions by real women would be very effective. the problem is, there are still too many women athletes who feel sympathy for trans women.
So, you had a comment deleted from this page? Who is doing that?
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The whole drive is to push all females out of public spaces, Caleb, where they will have no voice or presence. That is what I meant by ‘erasure’. These men are narcissists: they enjoy being in the spotlight and they do not care how they do that. Do you really believe that it is about competing in a sport? Really, when they are competing against women? They want the glory of winning, but they are Beta sportsmen, not Alpha, they they have no hope of gaining the fame and prize-money through their own endeavour and skill and talent in their own sex’s sports, so, they invade women’s.
It doesn’t matter to them that it might last only a few seasons and that women’s sports will be diminished or destroyed. They would just move on to children’s sports and youth sports, claiming they are children or young girls. Some already do. Don’t you get it yet? They believe in their own heads that they are far better women than women are or better girls than girls are or even better (female) babies than female babies are. I’m sorry, but you are naive. They would simply turn women’s sports into ‘trans women’s’ sports. You’d find lots emerging from the woodwork to fill women’s places.
That is what we have discovered here, in the UK, with the GRCs. Even the moronic Scottish government had to admit that they expected the applications for, and number of, GRCs to rise massively – and we can be sure that they deliberately underestimated. I do not wish to be patronizing towards you, Caleb, but you do not have much real knowledge of this lobby at all.
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Trans athletes are Stunning and Brave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXjAx_0Ffns&t=71s
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Yes, indeed, Pauline – the universities, the sports bodies, etc. However, this is so much bigger than sports. It is across the board. If we can get the legal principle established that the 2010 Equality Act’s protected characteristic of ‘sex’ means ‘biological sex’ in all circumstances, half the battle will have been won. The Westminster government, though, is dragging its feet and has ruled out repeal of the 2004 GRA in which a GRC was never, ever intended to be anything other than a means of securing same sex marriage and not the panacea for all gender ills that it has become.
I really think, if we all look at what has been happening with women’s prisons, etc. we are getting a glimpse of what is in store for all of us across the board. Look at America which is even further gone that we are. These larping men are not going to stop, and neither are the insane and malevolent activists. Every concession is used as a battering ram on the next redoubt of women’s rights. They are not going to stop at sports. They want it all. Too many females think that they can be halted by being nice to them and making concessions. They won’t be. They have declared war on us.
The hatred and cruelty are hard to stomach, but we have to be very strong and face them down. I now believe that sadism is at the heart of much of this for the front-line foot soldiers of the ‘trans’ movement, and for those who back them: sexual sadism. We, as a society, have always underestimated the numbers of psychopaths and sociopaths in our midst, not to mention fetishists, and just what they are capable of. They range from the woman-hating, mask-wearing men’s rights activists who have latched on to this movement, to the ‘misgender me and I’ll literally DIE, you bigot’ types, to the ultra wealthy, shadowy men – always men – who finance this movement from behind the scenes.
Stonewall and its many tentacles is merely a facade for what is really behind this sex-driven malevolence that has been unleashed (Queer Theory, kink and so on), and the politicians do not want to alienate these big guns of corporate capitalism who are aiming to swallow up our NHS and everything else worth anything at all, so women and children are a price worth paying for investment. Sport is just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it is easy to see the physical differences between men and women in sport, and, maybe a woman will have to be killed for those who push this stuff to put an end to it – they all want to win, winning is all, as, of course, is the prize money, the scholarships, the fame, the attention (narcissists) even when cheating. How dare women have anything? We cannot have just one front – sport – and we must refuse any compromise.
Compromise here would spell the end. One man = no single-sex sport, space, rights, services, etc. We need the GRC removed. Other legislation now enshrines same-sex marriage in law, so no need for this spring-board to encroach on even more rights that do not belong to ‘trans’ people as if they are some group uniquely blessed from on high.
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Lorncal, although I don’t want anyone’s comments to be deleted, sometimes you step off the deep end. You are becoming radicalized. Even when a person is basically right, radicalization is a bad thing. There is always another point of view, and the people who hold that point of view can also become radicalized. If you allow yourself to be radicalized, you are no better than all those foolish young people who become radical just by reading the wrong web sites and end up killing people.
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Radicalized? No, Caleb, I’m ‘woke’ – in the original African-American meaning of that word. You are somewhat hysterical. I’m an older woman and I’ve lived too long to put up with silly brats telling me I don’t know what a woman is or that ‘trans’ even exists. If you do your research, you will have your eyes opened. Please, don’t mansplain things to me that I know about far better than you do because I have taken the time and effort to research them properly – and because I am a woman, not a pseudo one either. I am talking about proper research, not “the wrong websites”. Some of the things I have discovered would turn your stomach, others would make you tremble for the future and for our children.
I have no wish to kill, hurt or harm anyone. Unlike the moronic ‘trans’, I am not speaking ‘literally’. When I say ‘war’, I mean it is a sadistic, evil, misogynistic movement that needs to be removed by legislation, and any vestiges rendered impotent. ‘Trans’ people in the UK have all the same rights as the rest of the society. What they want is a large extension, actually, never-ending, and, in particular, women’s and girls’ rights. Anyone who believes, or professes to believe, in this horse manure needs to be removed from office, from all positions of authority and influence ASAP. Over 95% of the men are AGPs/paraphiliacs/fetishists. Sex is as great a mind-bender as power and wealth, and it drives, just like the other two, much of male human behaviour. There is no compromising with them, as you will discover one fine day. Didn’t you say you were gay? Well, here, in the UK, they are ‘transing’ the gay away, too. Look to yourself, Caleb.
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I agree Lorncal about the GRC because once that is established and a person can legally change their sex then can it be legally challenged? So a trans woman with a GRC could not be prevented from entering a female competition or women’s spaces? That seems to me to be a very dangerous step to take and yet the Scottish parliament seem to think it is something that can be established after just a few months without even any medical confirmation. I tend to think that a GRC should only be granted after full surgical transformation if we have to have them at all. Also someone needs to control the doctors who are carrying out this surgery, surely there are supposed to be rules governing appropriate surgery for people with mental health issues?
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I agree. It’s not only unfair but it can be dangerous. And taking note that the trans woman had obvious advantage having a male body shows how ridiculous it is to have them competing on a woman’s team.
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They are supremely unnecessary, as DH has stated on numerous occasions. People who wish to live out their lives peacefully, as the opposite sex, are not the problem – albeit, they should not enter any female space, etc. The problem lies in the vast number of these men who are intact males and who specifically wish to enter female spaces for validation (that’s the least of it), sexual kicks, intimidation, making females uncomfortable, pushing them out of public spaces, etc. If they are fetishists and are allowed entry, and not predators in the worst sense, they are still men practising their sexual deviance in female spaces, and it directly conflicts with female human rights as laid out by the UN. The repeal of the 2004 GRA and the removal of all GRCs is definitely the goal, as is the clarification of the 2010 Equality Act definition of ‘sex’, which, when you read the Act thoroughly, does, in fact, in black and white, refer to ‘sex’ as biological sex. GRCs were intended to be used in same-sex marriages before the introduction of the more recent and more comprehensive same-sex marriage legislation that we have now. That was their only use, according to the 2004 GRA, but the ‘trans’ lobby has used the 2004 Act as a springboard to dive head first into all female spaces, services, opportunities, sports, etc.
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Where did you get the 95% figure from, lorncal? Is it from a study?
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My reply to you has been removed again, lettersquash, so I will not be commenting in future. The truth is too much to be read, apparently. No, it comes from a number of studies, from the 1950s to the present day, when everyone knew that cross-dressing men were motivated by sexual fetishes. It has got a lot worse now.
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OK, I see (re: 95%), thanks for that. I would be sorry to see you go over this, lorncal, because freedom of speech is important. Have you asked Debbie if she made that decision and if so why? Sometimes the most curious things happen on t’internet, and it’s easy to think someone’s done it. On the other hand, if it’s Debbie’s decision, I entirely stand by her right to vet comments on her blog, for whatever reason (I guess you probably do too). It would not be my choice on my own blog without discussing the issue in public with the commenter.
May I say that at first I thought your comments about men trying to erase women were entirely wrong, but in the meantime I have moved slightly in your direction – not far, but there are a lot of men in positions where they’re making terribly misogynistic decisions, and I certainly agree that trans rights seriously impinge on women’s rights in a way they don’t on men’s rights. But they do impinge on men’s rights, and particularly (where males are concerned) on boys’ rights to grow up into natural men. As I’ve said before and hardly need repeat, I attribute to ignorance much that could be thought of as due to evil, and evil to damage done to the evil-doer, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight against evil and ignorance.
If we don’t converse again, all the best!
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