Triggered…

Rachel McKinnon (Center)

As you know Hill1News is primarily an anti racist publication. Every now and then we get out our lane to address political and social questions. Back in the day when something bothered you, we used the term, ring your bell.. ring it, ring it… ring-a-ling-a-ling. Nowadays they trigger you… and you don’t think their is a gun problem in America? Anyway, we have been triggered and are about to fire.

Rachel McKinnon from South Carolina cycled to win the gold medal in the women’s 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles. So Rachel is a transgender woman. Bang! Bang! Bang! Reload!!! Bang! Bang! Bang! Now a lot of us pride ourselves on being liberal because we know about the difficult realities facing someone who is different from the rest.The cruelty of discrimination runs skin deep and yes.. I’m gonna stop that. Now we are liberal, but we are not stupid. It’s one thing to be who you are and love who you want. But loving who you want and loving what you want are two different things. We can legislate your right to be happy base on who you are. We cannot legislate your right to be happy based on what you want. For the record, I’m against transgender females competing in women’s sports.

Renée Richards. 

Some History

For thousands of years competitive sports has been divided between the sexes of male and female. With the advent of gender reassignment competitive sports is facing a problem unlike any it has faced in human history. In 1966 at John Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Dr. Elmer Belt performed the first sex reassignment surgery in the United States. The rest is herstory… okay you’re right.. I have been waiting a long time to say that. In 1975 the first high profile transgender athlete participated in professional tennis. Her name was Renée Richards. That her in the picture above. Before Richards underwent sex reassignment, she was a professional tennis player in the men’s tennis circuit. After her gender reassignment, Richards went on to compete in women’s tournaments. Well after the media learned of her gender change, the resultant publicity “triggered” a groundswell of resentment from other professional women tennis players. After she accepted an invitation from US Open, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the United States Tennis Association, withdrew from the tournament taking 30 women players with them. Subsequently they introduced the Barr Test. Basically it’s a test that proves if you are a man or woman. Richardson refused to take the test, stating her civil right were being violated. The New York Supreme Court agreed and ruled Richards legally female in 1976. She competed in the 1977 US Open at the age of 43, but lost in the first round. She retired in 1981 and went back to practicing medicine. In 2014 a wooden racket used by her was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C..

Start.. Get Ready… Go!!

It’s getting ready to go down in Connecticut. Selina Soule and two other female athletes are filing suit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. They say the conference policy which allows transgender females to compete without hormone therapy is unfair. “All you have to do is say you are a woman and you can compete in their conference. These are my words, not the plaintiff’s in the case.” You know how I like to joke around and I was going to make a joke about it, but I don’t want no Queer Bootie Party in my front yard like they did to Vice President Pence. True story. Anyway, Soule tells the CT Mirror, “Just like my fellow competitors, I race to win. But that’s virtually impossible now in an unlevel playing field.” They point out that both the NCAA and the Olympic Committee require transgender women to receive hormone treatment for at least a year and be tested for testosterone levels. I’m not really sure if hormone treatment will be the magic bullet. The IOC rules used to say that in order for male to female competitors to compete in female sports, they would also need surgery on their genitals. They would have to have their male genitalia removed. New IOC guidelines came out in 2016. Female-to-male athletes can now compete without any restrictions. Male-to-female athletes no longer need to have reassignment surgery, but they do need to demonstrate lowered testosterone levels. Transgender athlete must show that her testosterone levels have been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition. But… That concentration – 10 nmol/L – is around the bottom of the range that clinicians consider normal for adult males, but is more than three times higher than the upper limit of the normal range for adult females – around 3 nmol/L.

Terry Miller (C) at the heart of the Connecticut debate.

The female athletes filed suit with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in June arguing that their Title IX rights have been violated by a policy that they say pits girls against athletes who are biologically male despite their female gender identity. They contend the situation has robbed them of top finishes and possibly college scholarships. Bang! Bang! Bang! Reload!! As I said before, I was against transgender males to females competing in womens or girls sports. I have not altered my position even after reading more on the subject from experts. It’s a complex subject and I would not feel comfortable leaving you without all the facts. You can read more about Terry Miller and Selina Soule here. As for Rachel McKinnon and her dominance over women’s cycling, well lets just say she has an uphill battle. Her detractors are loud and unapologetic. You can hear what they have to say about her here. The debate over gender reassignment with regards to sports athletes will be with us for quite a while. Hopefully one day the answers will level the playing field.