From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Delighted you're joining us. If you're not already a subscriber, please sign up to Free Expression wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, we're looking at sports and gender. Should

athletes-born male be allowed to compete in women's sports? It seems a fairly simple question,

until a few years ago most people would have given a pretty straightforward answer. No,

science tells us that humans-born male have inbuilt physical advantages that mean they run and

swim faster, jump higher and farther, lift heavier weights and generally have physical advantages that mean they run and swim faster, jump higher and farther, lift

heavier weights and generally have physical capabilities that mean top performances by boys

and men in sports are almost universally superior to those of girls and women.

Crucially, those advantages are established by puberty. So when boys transition into girls

then or later, they retain those

advantages. The testosterone suppressing drugs they take when they change gender don't come close

to eliminating their athletic edge. But as transgender activism has taken off in the last few years,

we've been forced to contend with the extraordinary spectacle of seeing biological-born males

competing against, and of course beating, girls and women in sporting contests.

This has left many women outraged at the injustice.

The very principle of sex segregation in sports seems to be under threat.

One of those women is Riley Gaines.

At the 2022 NCAA Women's Swimming Tour tournament, Gaines, a University of Kentucky,

All-American athlete, was beaten by the narrowest of margins for the championship title by Leah Thomas,

biological-born male competing for the University of Pennsylvania.

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