Mick Hartley

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Sex is real, and it matters. In sport, this elemental truth cannot be affirmed loudly enough. It is impossible to mount any effective defence of the female category without first stating why the inclusion of trans athletes compromises its integrity, namely because they are biologically male. When the fundamental physiological differences related to sex – whether muscle mass, bone density, or cardiovascular capacity – directly influence performance and fairness, “biological male” becomes a crucial clarifying term for the characteristics that affect competition.

So far, so uncontroversial, you might think. And yet when I described Blair Hamilton, a transgender goalkeeper signed for Sutton United Women by a transgender manager, as a biological male in these pages last September, the player complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that the label constituted a “transphobic dog whistle”. According to this argument, the description disregarded Hamilton’s “lived experience and affirmed gender identity”, not to mention “personal journey as a transgender woman”.

Six months on, the press watchdog has rejected this complaint, instead determining that The Telegraph’s use of the term was “genuinely relevant” to the issues raised by a biologically male goalkeeper competing for a female football team. “The committee did not consider that the term in the context in which it had been used was belittling or demeaning to the complainant, nor insulting in a manner that it considered pejorative or prejudicial,” it added.

The verdict marks a significant watershed. It can seem sometimes in this debate as if we have passed through the looking glass, with years of pandering to self-ID lobbyists threatening a situation where athletes had to be accepted as whatever sex they purported to be. Somehow, this fallacy reached the highest levels of global sport, with the International Olympic Committee’s former medical director Dr Richard Budgett infamously declaring in 2021: “Everybody accepts that trans women are women.”

Au contraire, Dr Budgett. In 2025, the conclusion of the UK press regulator flies in the face of that ludicrous pronouncement, supporting a report that trans women are in fact biological males – and establishing that it is legitimate for journalists to remind their readers of this essential, indisputable fact.

It's astonishing that we've reached this stage – that it needs to be confirmed that the importance of sex in sport is actually of profound significance – but yes, good news.

The IPSO ruling places the immutable laws of human biology above emotive personal testimony. Hamilton, who in addition to being a goalkeeper in a women’s team is an academic specialising in the impact of gender-affirmative care on the athletic performance of transgender athletes, had appealed for a definition of womanhood “beyond mere anatomy”, rejecting any reference to being biologically male on the grounds that this “inaccurately reflected an outdated understanding that did not account for the complexity of gender”. Except anatomy is not some frivolous detail here. It is the centrepiece of the entire discussion: that men and women are different, and that the delineation of sports by sex serves as a crucial protection for fairness and safety.

For too long, there has been a form of coerced speech on this subject, where pronouns mattered more than practicalities, where affirmation was prized above accuracy. It is still enraging to recall Thomas Bach, the outgoing IOC president, declaring at the height of last summer’s boxing scandal at the Paris Olympics that womanhood could somehow be validated by an “F” in an athlete’s passport.

People don't fall for this bullshit any more.

Now journalists should no longer feel cowed into toeing the activists’ line. It is critical that all reporters seeking to report the science are not intimidated into falsifying reality or into fooling their readership. I hope, too, that this IPSO decision has repercussions beyond the industry. I know of academics who have been furiously rebuked within their profession for going down the “biological male” route, even when they are guilty of nothing more than the faithful recording of facts. So, let us throw out the reflexive accusations of transphobia once and for all. This, ultimately, is about honest and transparent reporting of an issue at the heart of fair play. “Transphobic dog whistle”? How about just settling for the truth?

And abandoning this new Lysekoism once and for all.