Rugby referees in the UK would rather quit their jobs rather than watch male players who identify as females injure and maim actual female players. The Sunday Times reported that the fear of “being sued as more men claim to be women join the women’s leagues and end up hurting natural-born female contestants with their strength and speed” has led to their decision to resign rather than take the liability.

The refs also report that they have been warned not to question even bearded men for fear of being seen as non-inclusive. Women’s rugby does have a testosterone limit, but instead of testing the participants, refs are told to take the transgender athletes at their word.

Referees would not speak on the record but instead shared their concerns with the Times anonymously. One said, “being forced to prioritize hurt feelings over broken bones exposes me to personal litigation from female players who have been harmed by players who are biologically male. This is driving female players and referees out of the game.” Another said he is tired of being called a “bigot” for doing his job and questioning the male athletes.

Kelly Morgan (33) is playing rugby for Porth Harlequins Ladies in Wales after transitioning from male to female. https://t.co/fMsA4SsZUR — RugbyRocks.com (@rugby_rocks) August 22, 2019

Kelly Morgan, a biological male who plays on a women’s team, is hurting his own teammates, the BBC reported “She’s going to be a good, good player for the next few years,” said Brian Minty, Porth Harlequin coach, “as long as we can stop her injuring players in training.”

The Times had to issue an apology for posting a photo of Verity Smith, a biological female living as a male who actually did play women’s rugby with a beard. But if you’re confused as to why Smith didn’t play on a men’s team when she claimed to be a man, so am I. Smith, to her credit, says she’s against biological men in women’s sports. The unnamed refs told the Times they saw at least five players with beards in the ladies’ league.

.@thetimes has printed a retraction following the blatantly inaccurate use of @VeritySmith19’s photo in @thesundaytimes anti-trans hit-piece: “Injury fears over rugby’s trans women drive referees off pitch” They’re so desperate to smear trans people, fact-checking is ignored! 😞 pic.twitter.com/hRiFwGgu0b — Helen🧜🏻‍♀️🇪🇺⭐️ (@mimmymum) October 1, 2019

Some trans players are up in arms over the article because they are claiming that the unnamed refs don’t exist.

No direct quotes from referees, no corroborating evidence from RFU documents or testimony, no evidence whatsoever. All referees anyone I know have reached out to say nothing was said at all. It's completely invented, sorry mate. — Natalie (@Transsomething) October 1, 2019

Biological men taking over women’s sports is a major issue. Not only are records at stake, but scholarships and women’s educations. There are feminists like Martina Navratilova who are being silenced for sharing valid concerns about allowing men to dominate women’s’ sports. Navratilova was kicked off the board of Athlete Ally for penning an op-ed vocalizing her concern that the practice of letting men compete with women is “unfair.” Charlotte Allen at First Things reported all the injuries the male athletes are inflicting on female opponents,

In 2016 another male-to-female transgender sprinter, Nattaphon Wangyot, took home all-state honors in Alaska’s girls’ track-and-field competition. In 2018, Rachel McKinnon, a transgender philosophy professor at the College of Charleston, won first place in the women’s cycling sprint 35-39 age bracket at the Union Cycliste Internationale’s Masters Track Cycling Championship. A photo of the event shows a hulky McKinnon in bicycle shorts towering over the second- and third-place winners. Transgender mixed-martial-arts fighter Fallon Fox cracked the skull of her opponent, Tamikka Brents, in a 2014 match, culminating a brief career of five wins to one loss. In 2012 trans woman Gabrielle Ludwig, 50 years old, 6’8” in height and 220 pounds in weight, joined the women’s varsity basketball team after enrolling at Santa Clara’s Mission College in California. She had fought in Operation Desert Storm as a man and had been married and divorced twice before changing her birth certificate to reflect her new female identity. Ludwig’s coach predicted to the Mercury News that she would be “the most dangerous player in the state”—a not unsurprising assessment since Ludwig was about a foot taller on average than any other woman college player at the time.

Despite the relatively small phenomenon of men in women’s’ sports, it continues to pose a problem, especially in high schools, where female athletes are competing for college scholarships.

Male-to-female transgender athletes are vanishingly few in number (like male-to-female trans people in general), but as the above examples indicate, when they compete, they pose a crushing existential threat to women’s sports. That is because the very existence of women’s sports is predicated, as Martina Navratilova recognized, on the now-highly politically incorrect observation that the two sexes are radically different physically. Women on average are not only smaller than the average man, but they cannot punch as hard, lift as much weight, or run as fast, owing to the enhanced bone density and muscle mass that testosterone affords (healthy young men’s testosterone is about ten times the level of women’s, and even when male-to-female trans people take testosterone-suppressing hormones, their bone and much of their muscle structure remains).

Megan Fox is the author of “Believe Evidence; The Death of Due Process from Salome to #MeToo.” Follow on Twitter @MeganFoxWriter