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Michael Higgins: What have the Liberals, and the CBC, got against women?

Ottawa doesn't seem too happy about IOC decision to limit women's categories to females

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As the world slowly comes to terms with restoring the rights of women, the Carney government seems intent on perpetuating discrimination against females.

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The International Olympic Committee, once steadfast in its bizarre commitment to opening up the female sporting category to all and sundry, is the latest organization to see the light.

Michael Higgins: What have the Liberals, and the CBC, got against women? Back to video

A statement last week from the IOC was headlined “on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport.”

The IOC’s new policy is that only “biological females” will be able to compete in the women’s category.

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It’s a sensible, if long-awaited, decision although the left will rail and fulminate against it — in its coverage of the decision, the CBC described “biological females” as a “problematic term.”

The CBC’s offensive posturing is part of the continuing effort to erase women from the lexicon altogether so that we are left with “pregnant persons” or the even more dehumanizing “menstruators.”

Last year, the United Nations even recognized that the words women and girls were in danger of being erased from the language with Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, feeling obliged to write a special report in support of biological women.

“I never imagined the day would come where my mandate would deem it necessary to prepare a report affirming that the words women and girls refer to distinct biological and legal categories,” she said in a speech.

The IOC’s new policy rests on a “once-in-a-lifetime” sex test that would ensure only females compete in the female category. It would essentially ban transgender women and those with differences in sexual development conditions.

From the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games onwards, the IOC will administer a saliva, cheek swab or a blood sample test checking for the SRY gene.

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The IOC said “the presence of the SRY gene is fixed throughout life and represents highly accurate evidence that an athlete has experienced male sex development.”

Kirsty Coventry, a former Olympic gold-medal swimmer who was elected IOC president last June, said in the statement, “At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat. So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”

The new policy mirrors the approach taken by the World Athletics organization last year when they introduced gene testing in the female category.

In a statement, World Athletics president Seb Coe, said, “We are saying, at elite level, for you to compete in the female category, you have to be biologically female. It was always very clear to me and the World Athletics Council that gender cannot trump biology.”

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The 2024 Paris Olympics were engulfed in controversy, particularly over Algerian Imane Khelif who won the women’s welterweight gold medal for boxing. A leaked DNA test later revealed Khelif was a biological male with XY chromosomes.

But restoring the women’s category to only females doesn’t appear to sit well with the federal government.

A statement from Adam van Koeverden, the sports minister, while not outright denouncing the IOC policy, seemed to imply that the government was not happy with the ban on transgender athletes.

“Our government believes in a sport system that provides opportunities for all Canadians, including the transgender community, to participate in sport and excel without discrimination,” he said.

The government was reviewing “the impact of this decision on Canadian athletes,” he added.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre seemed happy to back the IOC.

Poilievre reposted a statement from author J.K. Rowling that called the IOC decision a “welcome return to fair sport for women and girls, but I’ll never forget the scandal of Paris 2024, when people who consider themselves virtuous and progressive publicly cheered on men punching women.”

Poilievre commented on Rowling’s tweet, “What she said.”

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) on the other hand was clear in its condemnation of the IOC.

“The introduction of new rules restricting participation in women’s sport categories to ‘biological females’, determined through mandatory genetic screening and testing, imposes exclusionary criteria,” it said in a statement.

But that’s the point: it’s way past time to exclude people from the female category who don’t qualify as “biological women.”

The CCLA insisted that the policy was discriminatory in that it banned transgender women. But if transgender women take the test — which World Athletics called “a reliable proxy for determining biological sex” — and they fail it, indicating male sex development, what are they doing in the female category in the first place?

The new IOC policy is welcome in that restores the right of women to compete in their own category, will make it safer for them in their individual sports and because it’s the right thing to do.

The headline on Koeverden’s statement said it concerned the IOC’s “decision regarding transgender women athletes.” It talked about “integrity and fairness” in sport; “equal opportunities and respecting human rights” and “empathy, respect and care” for all Canadians.

But tellingly, Koeverden never used the word women in his statement, another example of erasing women from the public space.

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