Excellent article discussing the current situation with Fleming in the larger context of what it means for women's sports if athletes like Fleming continue to claim privacy as a reason for their sex not to be known. For those who want a summary, here are a few important paragraphs:
https://www.thefemalecategory.com/p/the-evolution-of-male-inclusion-in
“Will (Lia) Thomas was first gen. He “transitioned” very publicly, striding around the women’s locker room, maleness swinging, after three years on U Penn’s men’s team. That Thomas was so obviously male made it extremely difficult for the NCAA and U Penn to appear sane, much less fair, and it chummed the waters for a media feeding frenzy
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That was a first gen strategy error. The next Lia Thomas, we agreed, would be much more stealth, transitioning very early, well out of the public eye, birth certificate changed, documents in order, going the whole nine yards with surgery and hormones, and passing quite well. For the next Lia Thomas, “transition” would be so far in the rear view mirror by the time college came as to be virtually invisible, so seamless that coaches and school administrators might not know they were recruiting a male athlete for their female team. Teammates, fans—no one would know. And if done right, who would question someone who appeared female and had been playing female sports since, well, before anyone was paying attention? All the unpleasantness of Thomas’s very public “transition” would be avoided. No (public) trans, no foul.
Enter Brayden (Blaire) Fleming.
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Fleming might have pulled it off were it not for the irresistible desire to flaunt his breaching of women’s boundaries, like the women’s bathroom selfies that proliferate on trans-identified males’ social media.
There is evidence that Fleming’s path is seen as the way of the future for trans-identified males. Recall my previous post about Nike and Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance funding a study of the sports performance of kids as young as 12 who are on puberty blockers. “That’s the million dollar question. I think if we start kids at a younger age with treatment, we don’t know how much of an effect that’s going to have on performance,” said lead investigator Kate Ackerman. For Ackerman and co-investigator Joanna Harper, the holy grail is to “start kids at a younger age,” to try to bypass male puberty and its attendant massive jump in male performance advantage, to help erase male appearance, to make a male into a more perfect facsimile of a female, or at least a male no one would have the temerity to question.
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Jon Pike, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University in the UK, studies the ethics of sport. “This idea of getting kids young enough, I was naive enough to think no one would go down that road,” Pike said. “It’s impossible for a 10- or 12-year-old to give informed consent to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It’s barbaric, experimenting on children. Regardless of fairness in sport, which it does not achieve because of the mini puberty that happens in utero, it’s an appalling way to treat children.”…By participating in competitive sport, they are implicitly saying I will play by the rules. Fleming proceeded on the basis of false information that affects the fairness of sports. He’s playing as if he had a female history, when in fact, he has a male history. The coaches who recruited Fleming also acted wrongly, unethically, exploiting male advantage.”
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ICONS co-founder Kim Jones responded: “Yes, women absolutely need to know if they are competing with or against a male player. There should be no right to obscure sex in any situation where sex is relevant, and that includes women's sports and women's spaces. There should be no right of a man to hide his sex from women, but especially not in situations involving consent or where women could be unknowingly taken advantage of on the basis of sex. This includes all situations where men could obtain physical access to vulnerable women, success and accolades due to women, or power over women by hiding their sex.
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In all of those thoughts on ethics, personal responsibility, truth, honesty, and the word should are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Women should be respected as distinct but equally deserving humans.
More than anything, I find male inclusion by deception depressing, because it demonstrates that a significant portion of our society cannot manage to do that. Activists crowing that trans-identified males have been in women’s sports and spaces forever and we didn’t know it is neither the character endorsement, nor the compelling argument for inclusion they think it is. That there are men running in the women’s category of my local half-marathon without my knowledge does not excuse the lack of consent, the breaking of boundaries. Ten minutes ago, girls’ and women’s sports, women’s classes, women’s bathrooms all operated on the honor system, the key word being honor. Of course, any man could enter those spaces, and some did, but there was stigma attached to it. It was not honorable.”