Time to Address the Issue of Hatesport

Over at her blog, my friend and podcast colleague, Aimee Byrd, has drawn attention to the recent injuries inflicted on a woman MMA fighter by a transgender male competing under his new gender identity. As she points out, this is a fine example of where women’s rights and the demands of the LGBTQQ etc. lobby are on a collision course.

It also makes me wonder if it is time to abolish the anachronistic distinction in sport between men’s (sic) and women’s (sic) competitions. Given that this rests upon outdated cisgender and heteropatriarchal categories, the very existence of such would seem to go well beyond a mere microaggression and to be a rather hate-filled and oppressive phenomenon. Indeed, to coin a term, they are surely examples of hatesports, perpetuating stereotypes and the evils of institutional cissexism.

It would also seem that in a post-Jenner world complaints about unequal pay for men and women in athletics are profoundly misplaced and merely part of the ongoing reactionary attempt to protect the imperialist structures embedded in these hatesports. Why should human beings who self-identify as women and yet who consistently fail to break the four-minute mile, years after it became a routine event at men’s college track meets, receive the same remuneration as other human beings who do?

Indeed, every cloud has a silver lining. Perhaps the one benefit of the current gender revolution might be the abolition of oppressive heterosexist sporting categories, and the mediocrity (and hate) they perpetuate and reward. Or maybe the “heads I win, tails you lose” logic of the left will save the day for the lobbyists on this as on so much else.

Carl R. Trueman is Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary. His previous posts can be found here.