SARAH VINE: Are you really telling me Lia Thomas is playing fair?

SARAH VINE: Are you really telling me burly swimmer Lia Thomas who set a new record for the 200-yard freestyle race is playing fair?

On Friday night, Lia Thomas, a transgender woman athlete, set a record for the 200-yard freestyle race in the Ivy League university swimming championships in the US, beating her closest opponent by half a pool length.

Her win was widely praised as a victory for women’s sport as Thomas, who until 2019 was competing – with notably less success – in the male category, took to the podium to claim her prize.

Alongside her, somewhat dwarfed by her broad shoulders and imposing stature, her defeated opponents smiled and applauded in the approved manner, as though the entire thing were completely normal.

No mention of the fact that they had just been bested by someone with an inherent set of physical advantages: muscle mass, speed, size.

No acknowledgement of the fact that, in reality, they never stood a chance against someone such as Thomas.

Just smile and nod and take it on the chin, girls, and don’t you dare complain. And frankly, who can blame them?

In the current climate of terror created by extreme trans activism, what choice do they have? What choice, for that matter, does any of us have?

It seems we have finally passed through the looking glass.

Forget believing six impossible things before breakfast, as the White Queen said to Alice; nowadays we must believe whatever nonsense the woke supremacists want us to believe, no matter how scientifically inaccurate or, for that matter, unfair it may be. Or else suffer the consequences.

In the context of trans ideology, this means total and complete acceptance of anyone who self-defines as female, regardless of the impact upon other females around them. Biological sex doesn’t exist, and anyone who dares to question the wisdom of, say, placing vulnerable women in hospitals or prisons alongside individuals who were born males, risks obliteration.

Doesn’t matter how calmly or rationally they argue their case (JK Rowling being the most obvious, but there are countless more), it’s sentence first, verdict after, off with their heads, and so on.

To be branded a transphobe is the equivalent of being called a Communist in McCarthy-era America: the end of everything. Unless we all agree that two plus two equals five, we risk being cast into the outer darkness.

And the truth is, it’s working. Like those girls standing next to Thomas on the podium, people are starting to accept this new reality for the simple fact that they haven’t the strength or the fight to challenge it.

They’re scared, and rightly so. They just want to protect their jobs and their reputations, and they don’t want to have the black mark of the TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) placed upon them.

It’s how radical ideology has always worked. Frighten people out of their wits, threaten their livelihoods and their reputations, and eventually they will agree to anything. Even the impossible.

Like those girls standing next to Thomas on the podium, people are starting to accept this new reality for the simple fact that they haven’t the strength or the fight to challenge it

But I am not easily bullied, and I refuse to parrot the lie.

The truth in this case is that Lia Thomas, while emotionally and psychologically a woman, still retains much of the physical attributes she acquired as a man. And as such, she should not be competing against other women who do not possess her inherent advantages.

It’s the equivalent of pitting an eight-year-old against a fully grown adult. It’s not a question of transphobia. Absolutely no one in their right mind, certainly not me, cares about that. It’s about honesty, fairness and maintaining a level playing field.

That is why, in all sporting disciplines, there are such hard and fast rules around doping. Performance-enhancing substances give competitors an unfair advantage, from increasing concentration to optimising anaerobic respiration.

And there are few more powerful performance-enhancing hormones in nature than testosterone. A substance that males possess in abundance; and that women, on the whole, do not.

To my mind, it’s as simple as that. If we allow trans women who have gone through male puberty equivalence in women’s sport, we are effectively condoning doping – and making a mockery not only of women’s sport, but of the fundamental principles of fair play.

This was a week where we saw a 15-year-old girl – Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva – crushed and humiliated in the eyes of the world after being accused of taking a banned substance.

Perhaps we will never know whether the heart drug found in her system was ingested intentionally or, as her family claim, by accident (although either way she can’t really be to blame, since she is a minor). But the opprobrium heaped upon her slender young shoulders was certainly real enough, and I would surmise very hard to bear for one so young.

And yet were she a strapping 22-year-old biological male identifying as female, no one would bat an eyelid. Or, for that matter, dare to challenge her.

That, I’m afraid, is the reality of the world we live in now. And I for one don’t think it’s right or fair.

I can’t help wondering who wants this war between Russia and Ukraine more: Vladimir Putin, spreading misinformation and fuelling paranoia in the hope of justifying an invasion, or Joe Biden, a weak and unpopular President for whom the prospect of socking it to a few Ruskies might deliver a ratings boost. Either way, it’s never their lives at stake, is it?

Whisper it, but I actually feel a bit sorry for Prince Andrew. After all, it’s not his fault he was brought up to believe he could do no wrong, and that everything was simply his for the taking. How was he to know that he’d wake up one day in a world where being an arrogant, entitled mummy’s boy would no longer shield him from his mistakes?

Parks closed, warning notices everywhere, transport at a standstill – even a sodding Cobra meeting. Yes, Storm Eunice was bad, but there’s something about our post-Covid world that seems to make the authorities think they can keep us hermetically sealed in our homes at the slightest hint of danger.

Thank God, then, for the hero of the hour: plane-spotter Jerry Dyer, who stood in a field outside Heathrow merrily filming planes bouncing off the tarmac at Heathrow. ‘C’mon Qatar, let’s see what you’re made of, son. Beers are on me if you bring her in… Bosh!’ No wonder his YouTube channel went viral: that’s the spirit we like in this country. Quick, someone put him in charge of Sage.

Woke word of the week: ‘resilience bucket’, as in ‘I’m not angry, my resilience bucket is just empty’. Brought to you courtesy of Rachel Tomlinson, head teacher at Barrowford Primary in Lancashire, who made headlines for, among other lunacies, banning meat in pupils’ lunchboxes. Ms Tomlinson is the very personification of the infamous education Blob, a woman who puts her own crackpot theories ahead of the needs of children. Resilience bucket? More like crock of something else.

Supermarket sweep… on me

My purse was stolen the other day. Stupid me, I didn’t realise it had gone until I checked my banking app and found someone had conducted a supermarket sweep of all the corner shops and off-licences within a two-mile radius of my home, aided and abetted by the e-scooters usefully supplied by Transport for London.

Thanks to contactless payments, they managed to do considerable damage – until eventually my bank’s fraud systems clocked that perhaps it wasn’t me buying rolling tobacco and Jack Daniel’s on Earls Court Road at 2am.

For once, I am grateful to the technology for knowing me better than I know myself.

Source: Read Full Article