Is it fair to allow athletes who are biologically male to compete in sports for women? Many say that it’s obviously unfair and should not be allowed, while others (“progressives,” mostly) insist that it is a violation of the rights of transgender individuals to exclude them from whatever they want to do.
In today’s Martin Center article, Harrington Shaw reports that the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics has written sensible rules to cover this matter.
He writes: “In April of 2024, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) unanimously passed a new transgender policy, which states that only ‘student-athletes whose biological sex is female’ may participate in women’s sports. Additionally, athletes whose biological sex is female, but who have ‘begun masculinizing hormone therapy,’ are ineligible for intercollegiate competition. On the other hand, all eligible NAIA athletes may participate in men’s sports, regardless of their biological sex.”
NAIA schools are smaller ones, not the big NCAA schools.
Shaw believes that ensuring fair competition is more important than pursuing the leftist obsession with “inclusion.” I think he’s right.
He concludes, “The NAIA’s transgender policy provides a promising framework for protecting fair competition in women’s sports while steering clear of the ideological fervor surrounding transgender issues in our current politics.”