A 50-year-old transgender Canadian man was allowed to compete against teenage girls at a swimming competition in Canada after officials said they were simply following national swimming guidelines.
“It’s disturbing. It’s a male person going into a girl’s race, which is absolutely unethical,” said Linda Blade, the former president of Athletics Alberta and author of Unsporting. “If any man can come along and check a box and say, ‘Oh no, I’m actually a girl today,’ that’s just wrong.”
The Richmond Hill Aquatic Centre’s Fall Classic allowed the biological male to compete against young girls ages 13-17, at the Markham Pan Am Centre, near Toronto, Canada.
Nicholas Cepeda, who goes by Melody Wisehart, made a mockery of his nine competitors, all of whom were 13-years-old.
“It’s dangerous for little girls and women,” Blade said.
Cepeda competed in the “Girls 13 & over 200-meter competition,” yet he was the only male, and the only swimmer in the entire event over 17 years old.
“Don’t talk about gender for me because I do not know, because the registration [is] whatever they enter,” organizer Richard Chan told local reporters.
Cepeda is also a professor at York University, researching areas of aging, children, youth, and cognitive processes among others.
Blade called on athletic organizers to take a stand against men competing in women’s sports.
“Sports organizations need to pony up, grow a spine, and say no, we compete in the sport on the basis of biological sex, which is still in the charter by the way.”