Celebrating the Cheater

How to beat women in the 21st century

This week, yet another women’s sporting competition was won by a man.

We are a sexually dimorphic species, in which men are, on average, larger and stronger than women. More broadly, but also more to the point, we are a sexually reproducing species, with two and only two sexes. Each of us has been bathed in genetic, hormonal, and other developmental inputs that are particular to our sex, since before we were born. There is a lot of variation, of course: growing up with a bunch of brothers will affect a girl, for instance. And in other species of mammals, the sex of the siblings you are next to in utero affect how “masculinized” or “feminized” you end up being. But these experiences don’t change your sex. Humans, like all mammals, have two sexes, and we cannot change between them. No amount of fiddling with our biology can change that.

It is not, therefore, surprising, that a man who has moderate skills for a man, can beat a woman who has superior skills for a woman. A competition between the two is not fair, and he is being allowed to cheat. What is surprising is that anyone allowed him to compete against women in the first place.

We have separate men’s and women’s divisions in sport because until yesterday, everyone understood that men and women are different, and have different capacities and strengths. Different divisions by sex aren’t about how you feel; they’re about what you are: male or female.

Historically, most sport has been single sex. Specifically, most sport has been played by men and boys. In the United States, after Title IX was enacted in 1972, women’s sports proliferated, and greater female access to sport resulted in more girls and women playing.

Now we’ve got men coming into women’s sports and obliterating female athletes and female records, on the basis that they say that they feel like women. And all too many people are standing around pretending that this is okay.

Here is Austin Killips, the man who beat a woman this week, talking about how proud of himself he is after the race. Apparently, he trained hard. Perhaps he did. That doesn’t make him a woman any more than do the earrings dangling from his ears.

In an article published in Cycling News in May of this year, Killips says that it is “incredibly painful to be othered.” Cyclist Hannah Arensman, who finished fourth behind Killips in the US Cyclocross Championship event in December 2022, presumably feels differently:

“I feel for young girls learning to compete and who are growing up in a day when they no longer have a fair chance at being the new record holders and champions in cycling.”

The article in Cycling News—which is sympathetic to men claiming to be women, but notably unsympathetic to actual women—continues: “Arensman confirmed her decision to retire in a Supreme Court filing in support of a West Virginia law that seeks to keep transgender student-athletes at all level of competition to play against those with the same gender assigned at birth, instead of the gender with which they identify.”

The linguistic mud of that sentence obscures its central claim, which is this: gender is assigned at birth. The claim is false. Nobody is assigned a gender at birth. More importantly: Sex is not assigned at birth, either. Sex is observed at birth. (And when prenatal testing has been done, sex can be observed before birth).

Given that sex is observed rather than assigned, it follows that allowing people to self-assign themselves into the opposite sex makes no sense at all.

Your sex does not depend on how you feel about yourself. How you feel about yourself is somewhat dependent on what sex you are, but the reverse is never true. It may be that you don’t really feel like the sex that you are, but those feelings do not change what sex you really are.

The race that Austin Killips “won” this week is a 131-mile bike race in North Carolina with almost 14,000 feet of vertical climb. Nearly half of it is off-road, and the route includes single track with sand, rocks, and water crossings. That’s a helluva contest. Despite being in the lead during some of the middle part of the race, Paige Onweller, who came in 2^nd to Killips, says “I just couldn’t match Austin in some of the single track. The power is just not comparable.”

This is bad for women. For it to be good for women, you need to redefine what a woman is¹, and that is—again—cheating. We have become a world that celebrates the cheat.

“Male” and “female” are concepts that exist outside of human existence and experience. We did not invent sex. We are in a lineage that, for at least 500 million years, has reproduced always and exclusively with two and only two sexes. Male and female are words that describe what sex you are. Gender is, roughly speaking, the software of sex—the behaviors and choices and preferences that are downstream of what sex you are. In other species, we call this “sex role.” So humans didn’t invent gender either, although we have stretched it far beyond what other organisms have.

Moose and manakins, for instance, have highly constrained behaviors that they engage in, depending on what sex they are. Their sex predicts their behavior with a high degree of accuracy. Humans have far greater freedom. You can’t tell what sex a person is on the basis that they are (metaphorically) locking antlers, or dancing, or singing. This is part of what makes us human.

Humans have obligate maternal care, so the fact that men can be the primary caregivers of children reveals that we have moved beyond some of the constraints of sex. And humans have sexual dimorphism, such that men are generally larger and stronger, so the fact that women can be firefighters, again reveals that we have moved beyond some of the constraints of sex. This does not mean that the supremely care-giving Dad or the female firefighter have changed sex. No human ever has, or can, change sex.

Cheaters will always exist. Austin Killips ought to be ashamed of himself, but hoping for him to correct his behavior, when he’s being lauded for behaving this way, is foolish. The thing to do with cheaters is not let them cheat. Call them out, and prevent them from doing it again. Instead, we are celebrating the cheats. And then we act surprised when more and more cheaters show up, and women’s sport becomes a thing of the past.

1. A woman is an adult human female. I am a woman (and a biologist.)