Editorial: ​The unfairness of a biological man winning in a women’s race

Another week, another story about a biological male entering a women's sporting event and winning.

This time the event in question is in Oregon, USA, where an athlete who was born and raised a boy but now identifies as a girl won a major high school sporting 400m race (the Americans take their high school sports extremely seriously).That it happened in a relatively obscure regional US championship has not stopped it becoming fuel for a Twitterstorm on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Any woman who supports this is a traitor to their sex," wrote Piers Morgan to his 8.7 million Twitter followers."It’s shameful that the integrity of women’s sport is being destroyed like this."

Another Twitter user joked: "I identify as a six-year-old so I’m going to compete in my children’s sports day."

Well, quite. The number of times this same thing has now happened makes it difficult to keep count, and those are just cases which reach the headlines – doubtless many more do not.

Each case makes the insistence of transgender activists that a male body provides no inherent sporting advantage over a female one seem increasingly delusional.

Despite some significant push-back over this most elementary unfairness, we can expect to keep seeing such examples across the world – and perhaps, before long, closer to home too.For the last several years the News Letter has led the way locally on reporting about how institutions from the police to Church of Ireland clergy have embraced the views of transgender activists. Many have seen these views as worthy of applause, but not exploration.

In contrast the News Letter has run scores upon scores of articles on the subject, meeting a desire among the public for news on the topic. Expect more to come.