A group of female athletes and advocates for sports is calling on the United Nations (U.N.) to protect fairness in women’s sports and to ban men who identify as women from competing in women’s sports.
The effort to convince the U.N. to step up to support women’s rights was sponsored by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International and the Permanent Mission of the Gambia and fronted by British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies and American college athlete Chelsea Mitchell, as well as U.N. Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem.
Mitchell is currently suing the state of Connecticut for allowing boys to compete as girls in high school sports, which resulted in boys winning several top slots in girls’ track & field competitions in 2019 when she was competing in her teen years. The athlete says that allowing men to compete as women necessarily puts girls at a disadvantage.
“It tells me that I’m not good enough, that my body isn’t good enough, and that no matter how hard I work, I am unlikely to succeed, because I’m a woman,” Mitchell said, according to Fox News. “Girls everywhere need to know their value, which is why I have come to the United Nations to stand up for the human rights of women and girls in sports across the world.”
“I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two male runners. With every loss, it gets harder and harder to try again,” she said of her high school experience. “That’s a devastating experience.”
“I worked hard to be in the running to win a state championship, and four times, I watched as that title went to a male athlete,” Mitchell said before the U.N. “It was heartbreaking. But what was even more frustrating was knowing that two males were being named state champion, while us girls were being pushed to the background in our sport.
“Over their high school careers, the male athletes collectively won 15 women’s state championship titles. Titles that were held by nine different girls in 2016,” she explained. “They set 17 new individual meet records and eliminated girls from advancement opportunities more than 85 times.”
Alsalem has also warned that allowing men to compete as women is a detriment to female athletes. In December 2023, for instance, Alsalem warned that allowing men to compete as women would result in “unfair treatment and unlawful and extreme forms of discrimination against most women and girls on the basis of female sex” and “undermine the access of women and girls in sports to equal opportunity as well as undermine their overall participation in society and public life.”
Alsalem also warned that allowing men who claim to be transgender women to compete against women presents health risks to natural-born women.
The U.N. rapporteur said that the harm would include “loss of privacy, an increased risk of physical injury, heightened exposure to sexual harassment and voyeurism, as well as a more frequent and accumulated psychological distress due to the loss of privacy and fair and equal sporting and academic opportunities.”
Finally, Davies recounted her experience trying to compete against women who were pumped full of testosterone by the East Germans during the 1980s Olympics and how women without such chemical enhancements lost out on medals to those pumped full of the enhancing substances.
“We know that the physical attributes caused by testosterone give males an unfair and irreversible advantage — yet time and time again, they are given a ticket to compete in female-only events, causing worthy female competitors to lose out,” Davies told Fox News. “This is the sporting crime of the 21st century.”
“What is happening to women and girl athletes is a far-reaching human rights abuse with egregious implications for not only fairness and safety, but also for their opportunities to succeed in sports, scholarship opportunities, and beyond,” she continued. “As this issue comes to a head, it is imperative that the international community do all it can to defend the basic human rights of women and girls in sports.”
The ADF added that the history of these altered athletes showed that, in their later years, they suffered serious health consequences, and those who later became pregnant bore children with birth defects.
ADF representative Giorgio Mazzoli insisted that the U.N. step up to protect the rights of women.
“Female athletes have equal rights to fairness, safety, and privacy, both on and off the playing field. Authorities must follow the science and steadfastly uphold the integrity and fairness of female sport,” Mazzoli said.
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