A scandal in chess has reignited an old argument that sports shouldn’t be segregated by gender – an idea lefty intellectuals think will solve the question about trans participation in sports. Matt stamps it as a bad take because it’s based on a falsehood, that women aren’t allowed to compete against men in chess – they are! The idea, Matt points out, requires a belief that biology is“a social construct.” Laura agrees it is bad take, but she sees it as more insidious. Intellectuals, she argues, are threatening the existence of women’s sports behind a sheen of progressivism. No elite woman athlete – cis or trans – is calling for the end of segregated sports. The question is who gets to play women’s sports, not whether they should exist.