UNITED NATIONS: Trans ideology has women’s sports on the ropes

A U.N. report strikes a rare note of common sense. The next U.S. president should listen

By Nicole Ault


WSJ
 (28.10.2024) – You won’t be surprised to learn that a new United Nations report on “violence against women and girls in sports” says that “sports institutions are built on colonial and extractive structures.” That’s a fairly standard assumption among the international bureaucrats who work in places like Geneva and Turtle Bay. But you might be surprised by the report’s recommendation: Countries and institutions should do what they can to ensure that female sports competitions are limited to athletes “whose biological sex is female.”

Special rapporteur Reem Alsalem, a Jordanian appointed to the volunteer position in 2021, presented her report to a General Assembly committee this month. Her presentation turned heads precisely because she avoided the groupthink that international bureaucrats find so familiar. The report attracted criticism from those concerned “almost exclusively” with the report’s “recommendation to protect the female category in sport,” Ms. Alsalem says in an interview. At the assembly, U.S. delegate Dylan Lang accused Ms. Alsalem of using “demeaning language to refer to transgender persons,” although Ms. Alsalem didn’t do so. South Africa delegate Jonathan Passmoor said the report’s recommendations ran counter to U.N. resolutions on human rights. 

Ms. Alsalem’s report is a recognition of reality, not a human-rights violation. Progressive activists may agree that forcing women to compete against men in sports is necessary to advance the transgender agenda. But Ms. Alsalem’s report is unequivocal: Female athletes are “more vulnerable to sustaining serious physical injuries when female-only sports spaces are opened to males.” She cites a 2021 study finding that “even in non-elite sport, ‘the least powerful man produced more power than the most powerful woman.’ ”

Safety and privacy aren’t mutually exclusive. Mixed-sex spaces violate women’s right to privacy under international law. But according to the report, women “who object to the inclusion of men in their spaces” are “silenced or forced to self-censor.” This happens despite plentiful empirical evidence “that sex offenders tend to be male and that persistent sex offenders go to great lengths to gain access to those they wish to abuse.”

Those who would force women to use locker rooms alongside and take the field with men have powerful allies. Organizations like the International Olympic Committee have deemed it offensive to verify an athlete’s sex, though that can be done with a test as simple as a cotton swab in the cheek. In comments submitted to Ms. Alsalem ahead of the report, the IOC said sex-verification tests “create harmful environments for all women and girls.”

Human Rights Watch chimed in to assert that “sex testing regulations” are “inherently degrading and humiliating.” 

Feminist organizations like the Affiliation of Australian Women’s Action Alliances disagree. Letting athletes choose their own sex categories for competition “compromises safety, fairness, dignity, and participation” for women in sports, the group wrote to Ms. Alsalem. She notes that, at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, female boxers had to compete against two competitors whose sex was contested. The IOC refused to subject those boxers to sex screenings and both of them ended up winning gold medals. (Those boxers weren’t transgender, but the International Boxing Association had previously disqualified them from competing in the world championships after saying they failed an unspecified sex test.)

Ms. Alsalem’s report has no enforcement power, but the next U.S. president would be smart to pay attention. Last year Ms. Alsalem questioned the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rule, which instructed schools to accommodate “gender identity” in sports. “I am concerned that the amendments to Title IX would also be contrary to the obligations of the US Government with regards to equality and non-discrimination,” she wrote in a letter. The White House punted on the sports regulation when it published its final Title IX rule this year, likely to avoid turning it into a campaign football, but the issue isn’t going away. 

Whoever wins the election will have a decision to make: Protect women’s sports, or sacrifice sex-specific competition to transgender ideology. 

Ms. Ault is an assistant editorial page writer at the Journal.

Photo: Reem Alsalem, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. Credits: BIANCA OTERO/ZUMA PRESS