Headmaster’s trans warning for women’s sport

Headmaster of elite boys’ school pens letter to parents and staff warning sport is under threat from transgender athletes.

The King's School in Sydney’s Parramatta.

Women’s sport is under threat from transgender athletes who identify as women but compete with “the steroidal power” of male biology, says headmaster Tony George of Sydney’s King’s School for boys.

“People with Y chromosomes have a natural source of steroids — these people are commonly known as men, and they have much more testosterone than women, giving them a physiological advantage,” he says in a newsletter for parents and staff.

“Women’s sport is under threat by men choosing to identify as women. No matter how much (trans women) seek to alter, ­repress or change their hormonal environment, their Y chromosome continues to assert its physiological supremacy.

“We are not being sexist here, we are being chromosomist.”

That Y chromosome gave males physical superiority, an edge not found in intelligence or cognitive pursuits such as chess, he said.

In 2015, the IOC ruled that self-identifying trans women could compete within a maximum ­testosterone threshold.

This was still well above typical female levels of the hormone, ­developmental biologist Emma Hilton told a Fair Play For Women protest meeting of more than 700 women in London in July. She said established biology and recent evidence of trans women retaining advantages of male physiology had been ­ignored in a political decision and “female ­athletes are considered collateral damage”.

Last week, The Times newspaper reported a Swedish ­research finding that testosterone suppression for trans women did little to reduce muscle strength even after a year of treatment.

In June, a pro-trans guideline was issued by Australia’s Human Rights Commission and an umbrella body covering seven sports and codes, 16,000 clubs and nine million players. Paediatrician John Whitehall, a critic of the guidelines, has warned in Quadrant magazine that sporting clubs in effect will be conscripted to promote the transgender worldview.

Dr George, who has qualifi­cations in science, education, management and theology, said society had become confused about sex, sexuality and gender.

Speaking as a biology teacher, he rejected the trans formula that sex is merely “assigned at birth as though it were some kind of ­parental preference”.

“In the mammalian world, of which humanity is a member, sex is determined genetically by the presence of a Y chromosome,” he said. He cited statistics showing disparities between the sexes in average height (175.6cm v 161.8cm), weight (85.9kg, 71.1kg), and Olympic records for the 100m sprint (9.58 secs, 10.49 secs), and clean and jerk lift (263kg, 126kg).

His article begins with a trigger warning: “This is an article about boys.”

He said King’s was an inter­national authority on educating boys, and the school enrolled boys born with a Y chromosome, not just “people who identify as a boy, or think they might be a boy, or are considering being a boy”.

Boys on the sporting field were unlikely to face the unfair competition confronting girls.

“Feminists such as Germaine Greer have spoken very clearly against transgender women, as has Martina Navratilova for these reasons,” he said.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins has urged sporting bodies to use the new guidelines “to encourage the ­inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in their sport”.

Joanna Pinkiewicz, from the group Women Speak Tasmania, said she believed Ms Jenkins had “failed women”. The guidelines warning sporting organisations of possible anti-discrimination ­action had been rushed, she said.

The Human Rights Commission said the guidelines allowed for “times” when women’s sport might have to exclude trans women because of “biological ­differences between men and women”.