Writers Abigail Shrier and Juliet Jacques debate these very questions in our latest Newsweek “Debate of the Week.” We hope you enjoy the exchange.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek opinion editor, a syndicated columnist, a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation and of counsel at First Liberty Institute.
There is hardly a woman alive who has not, in her teen years, challenged a boy her age to some competition she easily dominated when they were young, only to discover that in the footrace, the arm-wrestling match and the attempt to move a heavy box, the young man now has the better of her. She may be far more athletic, in much better shape, but that turns out not to matter when pitted against young men in contests of pure strength and speed.
I kept playing soccer after transition, but once I reached the point of two years after surgery, aged 32, having had HRT to put my testosterone and estrogen levels within a “normal female range,” I decided to carry on with a men’s team (admittedly in an LGBT+ league), preferring that discord to the inevitable attention and abuse that would come with playing for a women’s club. When I did play, casually, with cis women, I found my advantages were not hormonal—I was less quick and less strong than many of my new teammates—but cultural. Having been raised male, I’d had far more coaching, having not been discouraged or excluded from soccer at a young age like some of them. Consequently, I had advantages in its less physical and more teachable aspects: passing, moving off the ball and shooting.
