Men dominating women

Think logically, for a moment, about where letting male athletes who self-identify as female compete in women’s sports could ultimately lead. At some point, conceivably, a team established specifically for women could be made up entirely of males who call themselves “transgender.” That team might even win a championship, as male athletes in individual sports like swimming, track and field, and weightlifting have already done.

Leftists pooh-pooh that idea. “Oh, you’re just being alarmist,” they say. They might call you a “transphobic bigot.” Some, such as retired lesbian women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe, may even accuse you of “weaponizing” women’s sports to deny trans athletes their human rights.

The conservative media outlet The Daily Wire has played the idea for laughs, creating the politically incorrect slapstick comedy film Lady Ballers about a team of men trying to win a women’s basketball tournament.

But a look at today’s bizarro sports world shows that, realistically, it could happen—and a lot sooner than some might think.

In Australia, the Flying Bats Football Club, a Sydney-based professional women’s soccer team, recently won a championship in North West Sydney Football’s Premier League. According to Fox News, the club reportedly has as many as five so-called “transgender” players on its roster.

True, the Flying Bats aren’t solely comprised of men who self-identify as women—to its credit, the team has some actual women playing for it. But there’s no denying that a team boasting multiple men in an otherwise all-female league was dominant. Not only did the Bats go undefeated, they outscored their opponents 65-4.

It wasn’t the first time the Flying Bats had engendered controversy—pun intended—either. In March, even before the regular season started, the team—a self-proclaimed “LGBTQIA+ football (soccer) club for women & non-binary people,” according to its X profile—won Australia’s Beryl Ackroyd Cup tournament. In one of the Bats’ matches, a male player scored six goals, leading the team to a 10-0 victory. The team was so overpowering that tournament officials held a meeting to address the crisis in which they warned other teams that forfeiting matches against the Bats could be viewed as “an act of discrimination” and result in disciplinary action.

Australian soccer officials believe male players who self-identify as transgender belong on women’s teams—not just in the name of inclusion but by law as spelled out in the country’s Sex Discrimination Act. Just four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that under Title VII, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in the workplace, employers cannot discriminate against potential employees who self-identify as homosexual or transgender. This means that if a man were to try out for a team in the Women’s National Basketball Association or the National Women’s Soccer League—America’s two most prominent women’s pro sports leagues—that team could, and likely would, face a lawsuit should it choose to cut him.

Here’s the thing, though, opportunities for male athletes to turn pro far exceed those for females. To use pro basketball as an example, the NBA has 30 teams, each of which can have just 15 players on its roster. That means there are only 450 jobs available for players in America’s top pro league—even fewer when you consider that superstars or established veterans with multi-year contracts are certain to make a given team.

The WNBA, by contrast, has just 12 teams, each of which is limited to 12 players. That means the league has just 144 openings—and again, even fewer when you factor in that certain proven players have some job security. Unlike the NBA, which has the G League, the WNBA doesn’t have a minor league where players can gain valuable playing time and hone their skills while readying themselves for opportunities with their parent clubs. This means elite female players have even fewer opportunities than their male counterparts to get paid to compete in the sport they excel in.

This is one reason among many why the idea of letting men displace women in professional sports—or sports at any level, for that matter—is such a batty idea. The point of laws like Title VII was, in part, to create employment opportunities for women who have had struggles in that regard. Letting men who call themselves women take those opportunities undermines the law’s purpose entirely—and hurts actual women and girls in the process.

That’s just common sense. Hopefully, our courts, legislators, and the people who run sports in our country and elsewhere will smarten up.