Gender Benders

Readers may recall that I like to say my hobbies are cycling, chess and monogamy. Two of those are in the gender bending news this week.

Item 1 is from a women’s crit cycling race in New York.

Here is what USA cycling says regarding who is eligible to compete in ‘woman’s’ races: “Those who transition from male to female (MTF) are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:

• “The athlete has declared that their gender identity is female.” (I declare that I am a talented cyclist, but that don’t make it so…)
• “The athlete must demonstrate that their total testosterone level in serum has been below 2.5 nmol/L for a period of at least 24 months.”

Normal testosterone levels for a male are 10 to 35 (nmol/L) so it is obvious that any MTF person has to take a lot of hormone altering drugs to get below the 2.5 level. It is also obvious that having gone through puberty and much of adulthood as a male, this 42 year old athlete has more muscle mass and a different bone structure from female competitors. And nowhere does it require that the MTF person be altered in the most obvious way.

I ride my bike with some very, very strong women. I’ve been dropped by some of them, and I block the wind riding in front of some others, and I marvel at how strong they all are. But as far as I know, they are all females who identify as women, although we’ve never discussed pronouns.

Item 2: From the world of chess: a male, who identifies as a male, decided to surreptitiously enter the Kenyan Open Chess Championship as a woman, using a disguise:

“We didn’t have any suspicion at first, because wearing a hijab is normal,” tournament director Wanjala said. “But along the way, we noticed he won against very strong players… and it will be unlikely to have a new person who has never played a tournament [being very strong].”

“One of the red flags we also noticed [was] the shoes, he was wearing more masculine shoes, than feminine,” he added to BBC Sport. “We also noticed he was not talking, even when he came to collect his tag, he couldn’t speak, ordinarily, when you are playing, you speak to your opponent… because playing a chess game is not war it’s friendship.” (I’m not so sure that chess is friendship and not war. There is a book written by a psychiatrist called “Chess and the Dance of Death”. And in chess the King is the most important piece but the Queen is the most powerful. That is also true on Brumby Road: If Stoker isn’t happy…)

Officials reportedly were afraid to call out Omondi at first in fear of accusations of profiling, but when they did call him out, he came clean. Omondi registered as Millicent Awour. He admitted to his transgression in a letter, saying he had “financial needs.”

It seems the Kenyan Chess Federation has more stringent rules about who can compete as a woman than USA Cycling or the NCAA. The director noted that the hijabed individual was wearing ‘masculine shoes’. And they noticed that ‘she’ never spoke a word, keeping silent lest someone notice ‘her’ deep voice and identify ‘her’ as a him.

Kenyan Chess officials were afraid to call out the faux Millicent, because they were in fear of accusations of profiling. If you happened to notice what happened to Riley Gaines when she spoke in San Francisco about what biological males are doing to women’s competitive swimming you can understand their reluctance.

But in the end they did call him out, and Omondi nee Millicent came clean. Apparently he really identifies as a he, and the idea of removing his he-ness is as appalling to him as it would be to me. He said he needed money and knew he could win the women’s tournament and get out of debt. So he masqueraded as a female without identifying as one. To their credit the Kenyan tournament officials annulled his results and gave the prize to a real woman.

And to add to the irony, I would say that chess is a sport (is it?) where men have no inherent physical or mental advantage over women. Why are there chess competitions that only allow women to enter? There is a US Women’s Championship and a Woman World Champion. There are also women who achieve the title of International Grandmaster, which is open to both men and women. I don’t object to the women-only events at all. The Kenyans agree and want to preserve women’s sports (including chess) for women while the NCAA and USA cycling are not as concerned even if biological males have physical advantages.

The third hobby has no gender news to report. Brumby Road remains binary. Delightfully so. Vive la différence!