Maggie Mertens has a really, really long piece in Deadspin Wednesday about trans women being denied participation in sports such as powerlifting. As Twitchy has reported, tennis star and LGBT pioneer Matina Navratilova has taken a beating from the transgender community for disagreeing with the ACLU’s take that “sex discrimination in sports is wrong. Period.”

As we mentioned, the Deadspin article goes on quite a bit, but when it comes to the scientific evidence involved, the author consulted … a philosophy professor?

A philosophy professor and expert on athletes’ rights:

USA Powerlifting’s response to transgender athletes is head-spinning. The thing about all this talk equating hormone replacement therapy to doping, and the threat to “biological females,” and the “unfair advantages” of “male puberty,” is that it’s based entirely on social perceptions of gender.

“There’s absolutely no scientific evidence at all that supports their position,” said Rachel McKinnon, an expert on athletes’ rights and a professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston, and a world champion track cyclist to boot.

When we shove the concept of athletic ability—strength, for instance—into the same black-and-white binary that we try to put gender into, we’re wrong. There is no stark line separating what men can do athletically and what women can. Some women, in fact, are bigger, faster, and stronger than some men.

Of course some women are bigger, faster, and stronger than some men. That’s not the part we’re having trouble buying — it’s the idea, once again, that biological differences are entirely a social construct.

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And why is it that only cis males are ever accused of “toxic masculinity”?

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Tags: athleticsbiologyDeadspinGenderpowerliftingRachel McKinnonsocial constructtransgender