Lisa Nandy has abandoned women’s sports

Just weeks after declaring the culture wars to be ‘over’, UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy seems determined to start them up again. This week, ahead of the Paris Olympics, she claimed that trans-identifying males should be allowed to compete in women’s sporting events.

Speaking to the House magazine, Nandy said that it should be left to individual sporting bodies to decide their own rules on trans athletes. ‘I think we ought to respect the fact that they’re far more expert in making those judgements and decisions than we are’, she said.

That might sound fairly noncommittal, like an attempt to sit on the fence. But in practice, it is an endorsement of the continued participation of men in women’s sports. After all, there is a huge variation between sporting bodies and the rules they impose on trans-identifying athletes.

As it stands, some bodies have already placed outright bans on biological males competing against women, such as UK Athletics, British Cycling and World Rugby. Others have placed limits on testosterone levels, like the Football Association, the England and Wales Cricket Board and British Rowing. Although imposing such restrictions may seem like a step in the right direction, in practice there is little that can be done to actually enforce these testosterone limits. In any case, no amount of female hormones can erase the biological advantages gained when boys go through puberty, such as greater height, strength, muscle density and lung capacity. If a women’s competition has a man in it, then it is no longer fair.

This scattered approach to the rules has essentially led to a situation in which some sports are fairer for women than others. If an aspiring female athlete pursues a professional career in cycling or running, she knows her competition will be other women. But if she wants to be a rower or a footballer, she may come up against a male opponent. She may also be expected to share changing and shower facilities with men who identify as women.

Nandy did, at least, pay lip service to the fact that transwomen have a biological advantage over women, stating that: ‘Most [sporting bodies] have come to the conclusion that, although they want to be as inclusive as possible, biology does matter when it comes to sport, and that it’s impossible to balance the requirement of fairness without ensuring that they take biology into account.’

Acknowledging that biology is real and matters may seem like a pretty low bar to clear for the woman in charge of UK sports. But it is somewhat of an improvement for Nandy, who as recently as 2020 said she thought that trans criminals, including rapists, should be sent to ‘a prison of their choosing’. Also in 2020, she announced she was in favour of expelling Labour Party members with ‘bigoted, transphobic views’ – that is, people who believe in biological sex and single-sex spaces.

All this is only made worse if you remember that only a couple of weeks ago, Nandy made the bold claim that the ‘era of culture wars is over’ under the new Labour government. Supposedly, her Department for Culture, Media and Sport would be able to easily resolve all those thorny issues that ‘divide ourselves from one another’. But advocating for men to be allowed into women’s sports is presumably the very definition of stoking a culture war.

As Nandy’s ill-informed remarks on trans athletes have revealed, Labour’s motto is clearly ‘culture wars for me, but not for thee’. Prioritising ideology over biology is exactly the kind of divisive, culture-warring behaviour Nandy seems to think she stands above. Labour is already proving that it cannot be trusted on the trans issue – and that it is willing to sell out women at the earliest opportunity.

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.