Olympic medallist Sharron Davies faces backlash for saying ‘binary sex matters’
Sharron Davies’ Team GB ambassador portrait in 2011. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images for Team GB/British Olympic Association)
Ex-Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies is being criticised after she said that “humanity dies out” if you put a “biological male and a trans woman on an island.”
“Binary sex matters,” Davies, 56, said.
If you put 2 biological females on an island humanity dies out (but they’d talk loads) if you put a biological male & a trans woman on an island humanity dies out. But if u put a male & a female there we might stand a chance! Providing they can fish of course. Binary Sex matters
— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) July 1, 2019
The former British swimmer won an Olympic silver medal in the 400m individual medley at the Moscow Olympics in 1980.
In March 2019, Davies said that she doesn’t believe transgender women should be allowed to compete in women’s sport.
“It’s not a transphobic thing,” she told the BBC at the time.
Twitter users have criticised Davies’ latest comments.
Have you ever tested Sharron for doping @ukantidoping? because she sounds like she’s on crack pic.twitter.com/XbQ9Sqf9cJ— Summer Ray (@SummerRay) July 1, 2019
“She sounds like she’s on crack,” one user wrote.
Greg Owen, a co-founder of the I Want Prep Now campaign, replied to Davies’s, “You ok hun?”
They'd still die out bc you need more genetic diversity than 2 sets of DNA to sustain a population— Relentlessboredomm (@Relentlessbored) July 1, 2019
This post is so relentlessly dumb for so many reasons. If there are only two humans left humanity will die out anyway as there's not enough genetic diversity. If there were two people on the island they might not be fertile but they'd still experience a dynamic between the two…— Katy Montgomerie ? (@KatyMontgomerie) July 1, 2019
women are biologically more talkative, lmao, yeah, i take my transphobia with an extra dash of sexism thanks
— Leah (@9BillionTigers) July 1, 2019
What if the "biological female" is infertile, what if the man is? What if they hate each other (assuming she's not advocating rape) or actually think its quite selfish to birth a child on an uninhabited island. This hypothetical scenario has more holes than a crochet crop top.— Hatpin Drill (@PippinDrill) July 1, 2019
James Felton, the Bafta-winning writer of CBBC show The Dog Ate My Homework, said, “Why are you putting imaginary people on imaginary islands in order to manufacture problems that don’t exist? “Ah you don’t mind trans people now, but what if they were the last people on an island i made up, hmm? DO YOU WANT HUMANITY TO DIE, HMMM?” makes you think.”
Other users have highlighted that in Davies’ scenario, repopulating the planet becomes difficult due to the limited gene pool.
And even in this bizarre scenario, we would only 'stand a chance' for one additional generation before things got a bit, you know, incesty…— Phil Corrigan (@PhilC2010) July 1, 2019
Yet more Twitter users have criticised what they see as Davies’ anti-feminist perspective.
Reducing women to breeding stock. It’s like feminism never existed.— Sarah Phillips (@originalpsarah) July 1, 2019
This is a long way of writing "Adam and eve not Adam and Steve". Quit your homophobia.— Christina Grimwade (@Chr1stinaG) July 1, 2019
The trans activist and writer Shon Faye said, “Hard not to read this tweet and imagine myself, a trans woman, at the end of humanity. Being repeatedly mounted by my male companion, who hopes to populate our new home, to no avail.”
Davies’ responded to some Twitter users, including those who accused her of homophobia.
True… Adam & Steve wont work on the island for this particular experiment but Adam & Steve might be super happy & certainly doesn’t bother me… what ever rocks your boat ?— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) July 1, 2019
Davies also added on to her original tweet that her experiment would only work if “we haven’t killed all the fish with plastic first!!”
And we haven’t killed all the fish with plastic first!!— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) July 1, 2019
