As a girl, Faith Kipyegon always raced other girls
Girls in the U.S. deserve the same
Let’s take 3 minutes 49.11 seconds to appreciate Faith Kipyegon’s world record at 1500 meters. Her power coming off that last turn is truly a thing of beauty. I may or may not have hollered at my screen, willing her ahead of that green pacing light. And her story is equally inspiring—taking time off at the peak of her career to have a child (and Kenyan women are serious about taking time off; most take a full year with no training at all) and working her way back to be stronger and faster. The way her body is built, the way it responds to training, the monthly cycles, the dramatic changes around pregnancy and childbirth: This is a woman’s story, start to finish, and needs to be appreciated as such.
The men’s 1500 meter world record is 3:26. Literally thousands of boys and men will run faster than Kipyegon’s 3:49 in this year alone. This gaping chasm in performance is why World Athletics “prioritized the integrity of the female category,” restricting it to those who were born female and who have gone through female puberty. That is, at the elite level.
Kipyegon, and all the other women in that race, did not suddenly appear at a Diamond League meet one day, fully formed track stars. She started out racing other school girls, working her way up through local and regional competitions. Encouraged, she kept moving up until she reached the world stage. We celebrate her advantage over the other women in the race—which may be a second or a tenth of a second, not the yawning gulf between elite men and elite women—because all the way through her career, the playing field has been level. She’s been racing other girls and women. She did not have to race trans-identified boys because gender identity issues are a uniquely privileged problem. School children in Kenya are concerned with being able to afford shoes and where their next meal is coming from.
While high schoolers in this country are for the most part well shod and well fed, girls are losing places and opportunities to trans-identified boys. In state track meets this spring in California, in Washington, in Pennsylvania, in Nevada where trans-identifying male Diamond Solorzano accounted for nearly half of the team’s points at the state track meet, boosting them nine places from last year, it’s hard to see the girls that are not there. Girls that these boys beat all season long in order to get to the state meet. Girls who are struggling with the realities of their female bodies, who maybe started to see being female as an impediment to sports. Girls who are under incredible social pressure to be nice and believe that a trans-identified boy belongs on the girls’ team from peers and most notably, from the adults in the room—high school sports federations, coaches, and parents. At a time in their lives when they are most likely to question themselves, and are most vulnerable to dropping out of sports, adults have lied to them. This is unconscionable.
An interesting aside—to my knowledge there were no trans-identifying girls at any state track meets bumping boys out of places and opportunities. That’s because trans-identifying girls, even if they have started testosterone (which very few have in high school), are at a huge sports disadvantage simply by the reality of their physiology. Pushback to trans-identified boys on girls’ teams is not about athletes being trans, as falsely reported by the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle, but that they were male competing in the female category. THEY’RE IN THE WRONG CATEGORY.
To be perfectly clear, this is not the trans-identified boys’ fault, nor is this something high school girls can fix. Adults have created this problem and they need to fix it. Expectations need to be set early on. Linda Blade, recent past president of Athletics in Alberta Canada ran for office on a platform of sex-based guidelines. “I got 96% of the vote,” she said. “In Alberta, if you’re born male, you compete male. The point of our club system is to teach expectations from grassroots all the way to the Olympic level.”
Blade said every parent of a trans-identifying child she’s encountered has accepted that rule without complaint. “I’d rather see a boy stamp off than see ten girls discriminated against. By being very clear about our expectations, you can’t believe how easy it’s been.”
High school girls in the U.S. deserve fairness, just as elite athletes do—that’s where the next crop of elite athletes come from. Faith Kipyegon might never have made it out of the regional competition if she had to race trans-identified boys. She may have quit running. Girls in this country are experiencing that right now. The adults in the room in the U.S.—high school sports federations, coaches and parents—need to set sex-based guidelines from the grassroots level, both to protect and encourage girls’ sports, and to encourage boys’ sports to include trans-identified boys. It’s a win-win.