The Battle over Women’s Sports: What’s Next?

The Battle over Women’s Sports (full series)
Modern History of Women’s Sport | What Is a Woman?
Betrayal | What’s Next?

What’s Next?

As it turns out, the truth of Dora Ratjen wasn’t as simple as the story Time magazine and Berlin 36 told. In 2009, Der Spiegel revisited the case and refuted many of the central claims of the popular narrative, asserting that the Times article was based on “meager and imprecise” information. Dora, who later went by Heinrich and then Heinz, was probably intersex. The doctors were unsure of his gender at birth and noted abnormalities in his genitalia. He was, however, raised as a girl, and the records suggest the Nazis did not know he wasn’t a normal woman. The idea that they unleashed Dora to trick the world and steal gold for themselves? Fiction.

Ratjen was a rare exception, not the general rule, who didn’t fit perfectly into male or female categories like the vast majority do. And that’s the point. The vast majority fit into those categories; we don’t use exceptions to make the rule.

That brings us back to the 2024 Olympics. There were no natural-born men competing in female sports at the Paris Olympics. Instead, Khelif and Liu both failed gender tests, having male chromosomes, but are likely intersex. They are, like Ratjen was, rare cases. Exceptions. A special category. And that is a small victory. The war isn’t over, but today, men in dresses aren’t able to compete in the women’s Olympics. A hermaphrodite may still be able to slip in, so there’s still work to be done. But the trans agenda has still failed to put natural-born men into the women’s Olympics in 2024.

This is an improvement. In the 2021 Olympics, a male powerlifter, Laurel Hubbard, competed against women. In 2024, that same athlete would not be allowed to compete in women’s events. This is progress. There was a time when the trans agenda seemed like a tidal wave, coming from all major corporations and dominant institutions in society, ready to crush all opposition. But the tide is going back out.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still work to be done. People like Khelif, who failed gender tests due to male chromosomes and elevated levels of testosterone, should not be competing against female athletes. It’s not fair. Khelif has an unfair advantage against women, but perhaps such athletes need their own category, a place for intersex people. But the case of Khelif is far different than that of Laurel Hubbard.

The battle over women’s sports in the 20th century wasn’t won in a day. It was a long, hard-fought war. So it should not surprise us that the struggle against the trans agenda, which is dead set on destroying women’s sports, isn’t quick. But if the recent victories have any lesson for us today, it’s that reality is on our side.

This article was published in the November/December 2024 issue of Capital Research magazine.