Welcome to the Quillett Podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at Quillett.

Quillett is where Freethought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

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articles and early access to Colette social events. And this week some of you may

notice that the little graphics icon representing this episode of the Colette

podcast contains a split image. If you look closely you'll see two pictures of

the same woman. This week's guest Mary O'Connor. On the left is an image of Mary from 1979 when she was a member of the US National Women's rowing team.

On the right is Mary, who's now a doctor by the way in 2023 44 years later. Now there's a reason why I included

both photos which is also tied to the theme of this week's podcast. Back in the

1970s Mary was still fighting traditional sexism in US collegiate sports.

As she'll discuss with us, these were the days when women, even elite varsity athletes such as herself, often didn't even get their own dressing rooms.

It was the era of Title IX and Mary and her classmates were at the forefront of the fight for equality,

a fight that they eventually thought they'd won. But now fast forward to

2023 and female athletes are fighting another battle, one that Mary is also at

the forefront of. This time it's biological men who self-identifies trans women

demanding entry to protected female spaces, including female sports. And as we saw with

the Lea Thomas debacle in swimming, the Laurel Hubbard situation in weightlifting, and Natalie Ryan in disc golf, this can lead to awkward, divisive and ultimately unfair situations, since male bodies, regardless of their pronouns,

tend to be bigger, faster, and stronger than their female equivalents.

Earlier this month, Mary was among a group of former American Olympic rowers who co-wrote a

Newsweek article entitled, U.S. Rowing denies fairness for female athletes.

Describing how the same transgender controversies we've witnessed in other sports are now coming to rowing.

...