Member-only story
Unrepentant fear of trans bodies
Paris 2023 has been dominated by two women accused of having bodies which fall outside normative female forms. No medical evidence has been presented, only a hidden test by a disgraced governing body that has not been made public. The social media and mainstream media discourse has focused on those rumours and seeming half-truths, and no amount of evidence from either women’s lives is enough to stem the gender critical hate thrown in their direction. This narrative has been dominated by people who have a very particular political perspective: to stoke fear of trans bodies and perpetuate their own version of what female bodies should look like.
None of this is new. Sex tests originated in the 1936 Olympics to stop a trans man from competing, the National Socialists bringing their desire to control all women’s bodies into international sport. Since then various tests have been used to police and enforce women’s sports within a normative understanding of women’s bodies, with most of the women caught out coming from sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian-subcontinent. Non-normative bodies are not trans, yet in the age of the gender critic they have been lumped in with the demonisation of trans women.
Sharron Davies lost to East German athletes who doped, some of whom later transitioned to men due to the levels of testosterone they were given. Davies has used her…
