All along female athletes have been calling for a fair and safe competition when it comes to sport. There has been a strong resistance to males self-identifying as female for the sake of sport due to their unfair physiological advantage and for the sake of dignity and privacy in the change rooms.

Despite women’s pleas many sporting bodies, especially in Australia, have insisted that males who appropriate female stereotypes are entitled to compete as women if they feel like it.

Many advocates, including Binary, have called for males to play in male categories, after all we have male and female categories for a reason. Bodies play sport, not feelings. If that fails then why not open competitions or mixed competitions. Why do women have to give up their single-sex spaces and services for entitled males who wish they were women?

World Aquatics’ has been one of the few sporting bodies to listen. They planned to hold an open event at the World Cup in Berlin, but it has just been cancelled after no entries were received.

Swimming’s governing body, which voted last year to ban transgender women from the elite female category, had promised to stage the “pioneering pilot project” to promote its “unwavering commitment to inclusivity, welcoming swimmers of all sex and gender identities”.

However, its intention to hold an “open” category, with 50m and 100m races across all strokes alongside its men’s and women’s competition, has been put on hold.

“Following the close of registration for the open category competitions at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup – Berlin 2023 meet scheduled for 6-8 October, World Aquatics can confirm that no entries have been received for the open category events,” it said.

World Aquatics’ decision to bar transgender women from elite female competitions if they had undergone male puberty came after research showing trans women retained a significant advantage over female swimmers even after reducing their testosterone levels through medication.

Of course, male athletes retain their advantages and it is only fair to exclude them from female competitions. They are not excluded from sport and in this case, they have been given their own fair and safe category, which they have rejected.

It is clear that such athletes do not simply want to participate in sport; they want to dominate female spaces.

Males are not females. Males cannot become female. Female is not a name, a costume, a drug regime or a surgical procedure. Women simply are women by virtue of reality. Women and girls deserve fair and safe playing fields without male bodies. Males can either play in male categories or take advantage of open or mixed competitions. Their rejection of these inclusive measures reveals what they are really after.