OK sports fans, here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth: The year was 1957 or 1958 or perhaps even later. Those were the days of starched shirts, good manners, white rather than yellow tennis balls, and wooden rackets. The tournament was in New York City, and I was playing against Yale’s number one, Richard Raskind. He had a big left-handed serve that he used to come up to the net with, and an even bigger left-handed forehand. The match was on a fast cement court that favored his aggressive net play.

I remember thinking Raskind would have been putty in my hand were we playing on slow European clay, my best surface. Dick Raskind won that day, but as we shook hands at the net he acted like a depressed loser. I found him unfriendly, almost unpleasant. 

Many years later I understood why. Raskind surfaced again on the tennis circuit, this time playing as a woman named Renée Richards. My first thought was, “Oh my God, I lost to a woman.”

Well, not quite, but you know what I mean. Raskind’s morose attitude was obviously caused by his suffering from what today is known as “gender dysphoria,” although that particular definition did not exist back then. 

For many years, my favorite practice partner was Althea Gibson, the first black woman to win Wimbledon in 1957. Althea and I obviously played many sets against each other and we had scored about even. But she was the women’s world number one, whereas I was way down the rankings. Even in a non-violent sport like tennis, men have an enormous advantage over women in speed, strength, and endurance—you name it, we’ve got it. 

By the time Raskind declared himself female he was already fending off Father Time. As a woman, Renée Richards won a tournament, but had become far better known for transitioning to another sex than hitting a tennis ball. He… she… was also a very good ophthalmologist and is still with us today at 90 years old. Now all my tennis buddies say I lost to a woman while at my peak.

This was long ago, and now, finally, the U.S. has acknowledged the truth: Sex change treatment endangers children. The Department of Health and Human Services led by Trump appointee Jay Bhattacharya has issued the world’s most comprehensive medical report on the topic. I could have told them that from day one and I have trouble putting on a Band-Aid. Over in that crowded rainy place called Britain, transgender women will be barred from playing for women’s soccer teams after its Supreme Court ruled that Britain’s equality laws were based on biological sex and that trans women did not fall within the legal definition of women. Again, I could have told them the same thing, and I’m baffled by the legalese on a parking ticket.

I don’t even know what words like “transgender” and “nonbinary” really mean—but I do know what nonsense is. Nonsense wastes our precious and finite energies on trivial issues such as redefining the genders. Maybe we should allow this issue to collapse under its own absurdity. 

But this nonsense counts a lot where sport is concerned. Women entering men’s sporting competitions lose, badly. Enough said. And men entering women’s competitions posing as women are simply cheats. The entire fiasco is based on lies. You cannot really change your sex. 

So, how should a parent feel seeing their daughter get knocked out almost immediately in an Olympic boxing competition by a trans-woman who hits like the proverbial mule and looks very much a man? Or watching their daughter left half a swimming pool behind by someone who until recently was swimming for the men’s team? I know what I would do. I would enter the ring and try and stop the match. Or jump into the pool and get in the way of the cheater. But the Olympic Committee is as cowardly as they come, as are universities, with coaches too scared of the trans lobby to throw the cheaters out and keep the girls competing against girls. 

 Perhaps now that the U.S. and UK governments have acted, these cowards who allowed these outrages will finally ban the cheaters. But the incessantly complaining, self-pitying trans lobby is well-funded and supported by Hollywood types like that awful Hogwarts trio Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, and Daniel Radcliffe, all three posturing for progressive causes at the expense of female athletes. And leave it to The New York Times to devote a very long and incredibly boring article on the trials and tribulations of a trans-woman college volleyball player who was eventually “outed” as an ex-man.

Never mind. Maybe trans-women should compete against other trans-women in sport. In the meantime, please think of me as another victim of trans women athletes. I thought I lost to Dick Raskind, but my enemies will say I lost to Renée. ◆