Last week a high school race in northern California made news after a trans athlete finished in 2nd place, pushing the 4th place finisher out of competition for the state finals. There was a similar story in southern California where another trans girl finished third and was deemed eligible for the state finals. Attention was drawn to the races by groups who object to trans athletes competing with girls. The state finals took place over the weekend and neither of the trans athletes showed up. The CIF, which is the state governing body, denounced the criticism of the two athletes.

“The CIF is disappointed for two of our student-athletes and their families because due to the actions of others, they found it necessary to withdraw from the State Track and Field Championships out of concern for the student’s well being,” the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports in California, wrote in a statement provided to The Los Angeles Times.

“The CIF strongly denounces discriminatory or harassing behaviors that impact our student-athletes’ opportunities to participate in interscholastic competitions.”

The LA Times spoke to five coaches about the issue and three of them gave non-answers while two of them were brave enough to admit there was a problem.

The Times spoke to five local coaches of runners who were either slated to compete in Friday’s girls’ 1,600-meter heats, competed in last Saturday’s Masters against Barrett, or both. When asked for their views, three said they simply coached athletes to compete against anyone in the field regardless of identity, while two expressed belief that transgender girls should be placed in their own separate heat for competition.

“Adults have created this problem,” said Oaks Christian coach Wesley Smith. “Adults need to fix this problem.”

The three coaches who dodged the question ought to step up and answer it directly. It’s not enough to say you coach your athletes to compete against anyone. The question is whether it’s fair to make females compete against trans athletes with male bodies. And of course the answer is no. It’s not fair which is why World Athletics announced that male to female trans athletes would not be allowed to compete with women a couple months ago.

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has also announced that it is reconsidering allowing trans women to compete with women in professional races after a trans athlete won the Tour of the Gila, a stage race held in New Mexico.

All of this is in flux right now with governing bodies uncertain where they will land but you wouldn’t know that from reading the San Francisco Chronicle which frames the issue as if the only issue here is bigotry.

Schuyler Bailar, a trans man who competed for the Harvard men’s swimming team for four years, has seen this many times.

“I’ve talked to so many young trans people who are afraid to enter sports because of the amount of hatred,” he told The Chronicle. “Especially anyone who was assigned male at birth. All this only furthers discrimination against people who already experience that.”…

“It’s propaganda based on lies, because science is for the inclusion of trans people,” Bailar said. “These statements like ‘what is a woman’ or ‘women equals adult female’ are harmful to cis women too, because it reduces a woman to her reproductive capacity in order to distinguish her from a trans woman. That is not a primary cornerstone of feminism — women are more than their bodies.”

I’ve seen very few if any people complaining about trans male athletes competing with men so it’s disingenuous for the SF Chronicle to take this approach. The issue is trans female athletes competing with women. It’s an issue because males have an obvious advantage physically.

The group Women Are Real, which has been protesting at these events, linked to this website noting that the top track and field runners among high school boys usually beat the Olympic qualifying times for women athletes. Here’s just one example.

On another page you can see the age at which boys surpass the women’s world record.

Note the caption which points out the women’s record mentioned here was run by an East German athlete in 1985 who was strongly suspected of doping.

The trend is pretty clear. In most of these races (both track and field and swimming) male bodies have an advantage which makes is very unfair to force women and girls to compete against them. Why can’t we just acknowledge that reality and give girls and women a fair playing field for competition?