Harvard Crimson Claims It's 'Unclear' If Men Have An Advantage Over Women In Sports
An interesting editorial appeared in the Harvard Crimson student newspaper on Tuesday. The article is titled, "There Are Many Obstacles Facing Women’s Sports. Trans Athletes Aren’t One."
As soon as I saw that headline, I knew I was in for a good read. Then, right below the headline is this important note: "This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings."
So, the majority opinion of the editorial staff at one of the most "elite academic institutions in the world" is that biological men competing in women's sports is completely fine, if not encouraged. Off to a good start.
The article uses the recent NAIA ban of biological males in women's sports as its jumping off point. Then, the fun starts.
The Harvard Crimson says there's no real evidence biological men have an advantage over women in sports.
"We’ve all heard the arguments in favor of such bans: transgender women hold a biological edge over their cisgender opponents, some say, and the sanctity of women’s sports is in jeopardy as a result," the article reads.
"Some say." Yeah, some people say that men have an advantage over women when it comes to athletics. And others say … what? That's not true? OK.
They add that "the science is far less conclusive." Then, they go into the typical talk about things like testosterone levels in transgender athletes, which they say are similar to those of biological females after 12 months of hormone therapy.
Penn swimmer Lia (formerly Will) Thomas, a biological male, stands on the podium after winning the 500-yard women's freestyle as other medalists (L-R) Emma Weyant, Erica Sullivan and Brooke Forde pose for a photo at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming & Diving Championship.
(Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)
Firstly, testosterone level is not the sole deciding factor in whether a person has a biological advantage in sports. The science is very clear that men who go through puberty have major advantages over women, athletically.
In fact, a study done by Emma N. Hilton and Tommy R. Lundberg in Sports Medicine states "current evidence shows the biological advantage, most notably in terms of muscle mass and strength, conferred by male puberty and thus enjoyed by most transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed as per current sporting guidelines for transgender athletes."
Their data showed that men have a minimum of a 10 percent advantage in sport-related actions and as much as a 50 percent advantage in some categories. The Crimson did not include this "science" in their article.
(Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage)
Despite the initial claim that the science isn't "conclusive," they quickly change their tune a few paragraphs later.
"The science clearly indicates that the focus on trans participation in female sports is misplaced: Fair, competitive, and equitable women’s athletics face many obstacles, but trans women aren’t one of them." (Bold added for emphasis by OutKick)
The editorial pivots to a common rebuttal OutKick heard after asking Dawn Staley about transgender athletes.
Their next point, which many people love to bring up, is that the number of trans athletes is too small to matter.
"Consider the strikingly minuscule number of total trans athletes, let alone trans women competing in collegiate athletics: Out of the more than 500,000 athletes that compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an estimated 40 are trans. That’s less than 0.008 percent," the article states.
I've countered this silly argument a few times, so I'll just quote myself here:
It's not just about the number of athletes. What about all the teammates on the biological male's team? What about their opponents? The coaches?
How about the athletic trainers that, in addition to doing their normal jobs, now have to account for athletes that are taking life-altering medications like hormone blockers? This issue doesn't just affect the athlete. It affects everyone around them.
Sure, biological men haven't yet completely invaded Division I women's sports, but that's because this issue is relatively new.
Just this weekend, a biological male came in second place in two track & field events at a girls' high school track meet in Oregon. The athlete would have finished 61st and 46th in the boys' division, but took a silver medal away from the girls instead.
It's even more ridiculous that the Crimson not only claims that biological men invading women's sports isn't a big issue – the staff claims it's not AN issue. Like, at all. Yet, these stories keep coming up time and time again.
Additionally, the editorial staff is only focusing on the athletics part of the equation and whether there's a competitive advantage (there is). But allowing biological males into women's sports also brings up a privacy issue.
Paula Scanlan, a teammate of Lia (formerly William) Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania, was forced to share a locker room with Thomas for an entire season.
Scanlan was sexually assaulted when she was 16 years old. She says that being forced to change in a locker room with a transgender woman, who had fully-intact male genitalia, made her constantly relive her trauma.
"I had nightmares for weeks about men being there while we were dressing," Scanlan told the New York Post.
Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, testifies during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government hearing on gender-affirming care for children.
(Jasper Colt/USA TODAY)
Two years ago, Harvard proposed a new definition of "consent" with regard to male and female activity. The Crimson published a lengthy story about how their definition wasn't good enough.
Apparently, though, this doesn't apply to fully-intact males in women's locker rooms where the women in the room didn't provide their consent. Paula Scanlan certainly didn't consent to Lia Thomas changing in the women's locker room. Where's the outrage?
Crimson claims that non-transgender women will be subjected to invasive medical testing to prove that they are women.
This is another tried-and-true fear tactic used by people who support biological men in women's sports. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC as she's known more popularly, used this same argument during a Congressional hearing.
AOC claimed that denying trans-identifying biological men entry into women's sports means that biological female athletes will face invasive "genital examinations" to prove they are women.
Riley Gaines, a former All-American Division I swimmer at the University of Kentucky and current OutKick contributor, debunked this claim.
"That's incredibly uniformed information she was spouting," Gaines told OutKick's Charly Arnolt.
"Actually, the people that had their genitals inspected were the females in that locker room who had a man in that locker room. But, that doesn't matter to AOC, or any of the other democratic members in the House, the Senate or the Biden Administration," she added before saying that AOC was simply "fearmongering."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is among the American politicians pushing for transgender women (biological males) to be allowed to compete in women's sports.
(Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman/USA TODAY NETWORK)
Gaines pointed out that all athletes, male and female, transgender or not, undergo a physical examination by a medical professional before they can compete in sports.
It should be noted that Riley Gaines spoke at Harvard last November and the Crimson editorial staff attacked her appearance while somehow still maintaining that they love free speech.
The Harvard Crimson calls on its university to "vocally oppose [the NAIA] ban" and "support the rights of its trans athletes."
The article drops in a few more gems about science being inconclusive when it comes to the male advantage over female athletes. One sentence reads, in part, that "trans participants' … ‘biological advantages’ are unclear."
They add, "Until better research is conducted into trans athletes and the effects of hormone therapy on the body over time, blanket bans must not be implemented. Nuanced, science-driven, sport specific policies are clearly better than culture war-motivated crusades. The NCAA must take note."
(Writer's note: both "sport-specific" and "culture-war-motivated" need hyphens, but the Crimson editorial staff missed those grammatical errors)
The paper also demanded that its university take a stand: "Harvard must vocally oppose this ban and support the rights of its trans athletes."
Wait, are there trans athletes at Harvard? I thought there were so few transgender athletes in Division I that this issue isn't an issue? Why do they need to put their support behind such a small and insignificant number of athletes? Isn't that one of the biggest points that they tried to make?
A woman stands in front of the Ohio Statehouse to protest against legislation banning transgender women from participating in female sports.
(Getty Images)
See how these arguments all fall completely flat when you start looking at them from a logical and reasonable standpoint?
As someone who spent time on Harvard's campus last fall, none of this is surprising to me. What was once an institution of higher learning and one of the most cherished universities in the world is just a shell of its former self.
Now, some of the "smartest college students in the world" are arguing that we don't yet know if men have a competitive advantage over women in sports, despite the fact that we separate men's and women's sports in the first place for that exact reason.
The editorial staff at the Harvard Crimson will eventually graduate from the university and head off to jobs at the Washington Post, New York Times and other formerly prestigious organizations.
But their desire to be activists over journalists has ruined the credibility of all of them. It's sad, but that's where we are in 2024.