How Long Before Gender-Segregated Sports Are Eliminated?

As I’ve said previously, what were considered eternal pillars of human culture just ten years ago are now being challenged on an almost daily basis. The latest examples of this are the debates over “bathroom bills” which seek to clarify that only biological men can use the men’s public restrooms, and conversely that only biological women can use women’s restrooms. (The reality, which usually isn’t reported, is that most conservatives are fine with transgender individuals using the bathroom of their chosen gender, as long as they’ve undergone reassignment surgery.)

The most common compromise suggested in such debates is to have gender-neutral bathrooms set aside specifically for transgender individuals. This has the added benefit of accommodating “gender-fluid” individuals who don’t identify as either male or female. But some of those individuals respond by arguing that by being directly to special restroom facilities, they are being discriminated against. This, coupled with the notion among some radical feminists that separate facilities for men and women serve as gender discrimination, is slowly giving rise to the notion that gender-segregated restrooms and similar facilities should be done away with entirely.

To be clear, only a very few on the hard Left have advanced this idea so far. But I could see it taking hold among a larger proportion of liberals in the years ahead, possibly to the point where the issue will be debated in the political mainstream.

The many reasons why such proposals must be rejected out of hand should be clear. But along with the debate over bathrooms will come a broader debate over other facilities and activities segregated by gender, and in honor of the opening of the Olympics I want to look at that possibility as well.

Specifically: Within the next decade, will we see the end of gender-segregated sports? Will men’s swimming and women’s track be eliminated in favor of events open to both genders? And what would such an arrangement look like?

Change is already coming to the Olympics, with the IOC issuing new guidelines allowing, for the first time, transgender athletes compete in events corresponding with their gender identity, without having to first undergo reassignment surgery. To be clear, those athletes must still be undergoing hormone replacement therapy, but the change is still significant.

But take a movement away from specialized gender roles in recent years, such as the American military allowing women to serve in combat roles; a resistance by many on the Left to recognize any sort of biological difference between genders, coupled with a movement away from biology and toward psychology as a way to determine gender; and the long history of the IOC and other international bodies in actively promoting a variety of liberal causes—and the possibility, at the very least, of the eventual elimination of gender-segregated sports at the international level becomes clear. From there, it is a practical matter of the U.S. Olympic trials and other national competitions becoming gender-neutral, a change that would eventually filter down to the state and local levels of competition.

It’s impossible to know for sure how just how likely any of this is of actually occurring. The only thing that’s clear is that the current trend suggests that such an outcome, within the next couple of decades, is at least possible.

But if it does occur, and gender-segregated sports are eliminated? There would be no ignoring for long the scientific fact that men and women are biologically different, which leads to differing average results between genders in physical activities, and is the reason segregated sports exist in the first place. Assuming every athlete continues to perform at their absolute best, a wide discrepancy would emerge between men and women in terms of those athletes making it to the World Championships or the Olympics, as well as those who eventually won medals.

The only option to keep both gender-neutral events and a more even ratio between male and female victors would be to institute some sort of affirmative action program, at both the initial qualifying stage and to determine the final individual medalists. Of course, this would seemingly undermine the whole point of having gender-neutral events in the first place, but realistically it would be the only way such an arrangement could survive over the long term.