Former athletes and activists spoke this week at a United Nations assembly urging the international body to encourage sanctions on men who try to compete in women’s sports.
Olympic silver medalist Sharron Davies and former West Virginia athlete Lainey Armistead were among those who spoke at the Wednesday event in New York City, describing the obvious advantages men have over women in athletics.
‘NO males at all in women’s sport.’
“I’m here today because we’ve all seen what happens when males are allowed to compete on women’s teams. … It’s demoralizing and unfair, and just plain wrong,” Armistead said.
The soccer player explained that while West Virginia has laws that ensure only biological women can compete in women’s sports, she still heard stories at her university about women getting hurt during competitions against men in female athletics.
“In just the last three years, the one male athlete who has been allowed to compete against girls in West Virginia has already displaced nearly 300 girls. And that’s just one athlete.”
Davies was much more blunt in her speech, speaking on the simple biological differences that should be seen as “common sense.”
“Females are at a physical disadvantage,” she said. “This doesn’t mean that we’re worse or better; it just means that we’re biologically different.”
Davies is a former Olympic swimmer who won silver in Moscow in 1980, competing in three Olympics in total. She also won two gold, two silver, and two bronze at the Commonwealth Games between 1978-1990.
“I don’t know a single person that wants to exclude anybody. However, we do want to see women have fair and safe sport. And we cannot wait until a woman is seriously injured or worse still, killed, to be able to deal with the science and the obvious and the common sense,” she added.
Davies has consistently called for sex screening to return to the Olympics, stating explicitly that even in the 1970s it was a simple process.
“A sex screening test takes one minute once in your life only (because humans can’t change biological sex) which is a simple swab to the inside of your cheek. I had one at the Montreal Olympics. Not at all intrusive especially when Olympic athletes have to consent to drug testing,” she wrote on X in July.
“NO males at all in women’s sport,” she urged in September. “Inclusion is now exclusion of females from their own races by males!”
Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom — including Kristen Waggoner and Reem Alsalem, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls — joined the athletes.
Both called for the international sports community to ensure women can participate in athletics without being at risk of harm from men.
“Our plea to the world is to learn from the mistakes that have been made — and that are now being corrected — so that your daughters can walk into a future of fair and safe sports,” Waggoner asked.
Alsalem, a longtime advocate in the space, said that the failure to protect the female category has been one of the most egregious forms of discrimination against women.
She added that the essence of being female has been “willfully pushed aside” despite the pain, distress, and humiliation women are facing at the hands of men who want to beat them in their own competitions.
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