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There are indisputable facts in life and we start to learn them as children. It is a fact that there are fundamental differences between boys and girls, men and women, and they are determined by biology in the form of chromosomes and hormones.
As a society we are currently grappling with how these biological truths marry with an individual’s belief that they are not meant to live a life as the gender assigned to them at birth.
The meeting of truth and belief is particularly evident in youth, adolescent, NCAA, and Olympic sporting events, especially women’s swimming where the two are clashing.
I am proud to have represented Team USA in the 2008 Olympics. I’ve lettered in two NCAA Division I sporting events, qualified for twelve World Teams, and won a Pan American Games Gold Medal. Needless to say, I have spent a better part of my life swimming competitively.
Eli Bremen competes in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
I started swimming competitively at age 7. At age 7 the girls my age were bigger than me and my teammates, they were stronger, and their qualifying times for state championships were faster than mine.
This changed drastically when I was in high school. The female’s qualifying times would not have even qualified them for the male’s JV swim team.
There was something else I learned at seven. There was a girl’s locker room and a boy’s locker room. Separated for a reason. For privacy, for safety, and based on gender assigned at birth. There was no option to identify as a female and therefore join the girls in their sacred locker room.
The question of transgender athletes begs many questions. Two very fundamental issues come down to fairness and safety.
I have fought on behalf of women’s rights in sports for over 10 years. I was one of the first people to warn of the structural malfeasance within the Olympic Committee being such that female athletes were at risk for abuse.
ESPN has largely ignored transgender Penn swimmer Lia Thomas.
(Hunter Martin/Getty Images)
I will now continue to fight on behalf of female athletes saying that it is not fair for biological men to compete alongside biological women for scholarships, titles, and accolades. There is no biological level playing field where this will ever be fair.
I will also say that this is a safety issue for girls and women in sport. I have a 7-year-old son and just as I learned, have taught him that he is not to be in the girls’ locker room.
Imagine the discomfort of a young girl and her parents having to confront the physical difference between her and a transgender athlete.
Unlike so many things that we work to understand in life, there is a fact-based solution in this debate. To maintain safety and fairness in sport, the answer is not complicated. Your locker room and therefore your competitors are decided at birth, by chromosomes, and hormones.
There is no place for boys in the girl’s locker or vice versa.
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