Stopping the erasure of women

One of the latest fronts on the seemingly all-encompassing fight over gender and sexuality involves youth sports. In a recent piece for The Atlantic, for example, Maggie Mertens argues that sex differences shouldn’t separate kids in athletics: “Old notions of sex as a marker of physical capability are changing, and more research is making clear that sex differences aren’t really clear at all.”

The truth is, though, that in athletics, especially in contact sports, the competitors who are bigger, faster, and stronger will have an advantage. These aren’t the only factors, of course. The film Rudy should be sufficient to dispel the idea that physical characteristics are the only factors that matter. But that is really the whole point of the movie, which came down to one final play. Movies aside, size and strength are most frequently the factors that have the most to do with safety.

And the truth—an increasingly inconvenient truth for transgressive gender ideology—is that males tend to be bigger and faster and stronger than females, and this becomes even more of a factor at certain ages and stages of physical development.

The perspective articulated by Mertens and many other revisionists exemplifies the difference between different generations of feminist activism. It used to be the case that feminists argued that women should have a fair chance of doing anything they wanted. If there are clear performance standards or some other objective measure of ability and women can meet or surpass those standards, then there should be no additional barriers to female participation. “Anything you can do, I can do better,” the old song goes.

This kind of feminism, which in many cases is simply advocacy for just and equal treatment, has largely been the basis for females participating in some historically male dominated sports. There are and will continue to be exceptional female athletes who can compete at the highest levels regardless of gender concerns. The fact is that there are no linewomen in the NFL. That is not due to male oppression and the oppressive patriarchy.

Contemporary feminist analysis goes deeply awry when crucial distinctions between the sexes are denied. When the argument for gender integration of youth sports just denies important distinctions, we see the further expansion of the case to erase the reality of all sex differences altogether. In this way, the case to overturn the “gender binary” really amounts to the attempted undoing of gender differences as such.

This is precisely why feminists of the first kind oppose gender ideology so fiercely. They see that this movement isn’t really about creating opportunities for women to excel—it’s ultimately about erasing women altogether. For the sake of radical gender ideology, women’s liberation has mutated into the abolition of womanhood.

This is a manifestation of the spirit of revolutionary ideology that Carl Trueman, among others, has diagnosed so well. And it is the same spirit, which is antagonistic to God and his created order, that the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper perceived so clearly: “Modernism, which denies and abolishes every difference, cannot rest until it has made woman man and man woman, and, putting every distinction on a common level, kills life by placing it under the ban of uniformity.”

The endgame for this kind of social gambit is likewise clear: youth and collegiate sports as a common endeavor connected with public institutions and schools will cease to exist. And to the extent that they continue, they will be increasingly unwelcoming and hostile to women and girls.

Other communities will form that recognize the legitimacy of distinctions, acknowledge real truths about the human person and sexual difference, and truly care about the well-being of participants. And those new leagues and systems will need to be defended in the public square and protected by the law. The move to privatize youth sports will continue to gain momentum.

Already in many sports, including hockey, soccer, and basketball, club, travel, and pay-to-play organizations have supplanted and surpassed sports at the high school level. At the collegiate level, these trends point toward possibilities for development of alternative groups like the National Christian College Athletic Association, which can define their own rules and standards to protect the integrity of men’s and women’s sports.

We can hope that when the safety of their children and young people is clearly at stake that parents will be galvanized to take action and confront the dangers of radical gender ideology—whether it manifests in destroying youth and collegiate athletics or in invasive and destructive surgical interventions. The future of our society—and the lives of our children—depend on it.