Liberals Embrace Anti-Feminism in Transgender Sports Debate
Anti-feminists continue their unapologetic efforts to destroy women’s sports at all levels. Not satisfied to just ruin high school girls’ athletics, they are setting their sights higher.
This week’s headline indicated that Juniper Eastwood, a University of Montana cross-country runner, will become the first transgender (i.e. biological male) athlete to compete as a female in division I cross country.
Anyone want to bet against him completely dominating his sport? No disrespect intended towards Eastwood, but he is a biological male. This means that, no matter how much testosterone blockers that he takes, he will still have a massive built-in advantage in strength, speed and athleticism.
As a recent report from Journal of Medical Ethics indicated, “Science demonstrates that high testosterone and other male physiology provides a performance advantage in sport suggesting that transwomen retain some of that advantage. To determine whether the advantage is unfair necessitates an ethical analysis of the principles of inclusion and fairness.”
Another study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that the “effect of the hormone treatment in relation to reducing leg muscle strength, is almost negligible for men who transition to become women.”
The reports were largely unnecessary, since there is already overwhelming anecdotal evidence of these facts since middle-of-the-pack male athletes who identify as women are dominating female high school sports wherever they are given that opportunity, regardless of whatever drugs they are taking. You hardly ever see the reverse, since a female who identifies as a male cannot compete in male sports.
The Journal of Medical Ethics reluctantly admitted that transgender females have a built-in advantage but then, fearful of the liberal backlash and unwilling to challenge liberal orthodoxy, implied that might be a wonderful thing in the interest of inclusion and fairness.
This is also why you see headlines like the one in Slate that recently trumpeted that ”Betsy DeVos may force high schools to discriminate against trans athletes.”
Apparently, protecting women from having to compete against men is a horrible act of discrimination. While DeVos may be viewed as a cross between Cersei Lannister and Darth Vader in liberal circles and within the insanely liberal department she heads, she is adopting both a logical and feminist position. She is trying to protect girls from having to compete unfairly against biologically stronger and more athletic men.
No matter how you spin it, that is exactly what is happening. The best female high school athletes in the country in twenty states are now routinely being demolished by boys who identify as girls. One would think that feminists would throw their full support behind DeVos, but they despise her for it.
Liberal support largely boils down to their embrace of “intersectionality,” which is all the rage in academic circles. Intersectionality was a concept introduced in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights activist and legal scholar. In practice, it sets up a hierarchy of grievances, where the highest consideration and support must be given to those with the highest grievance score.
On the hierarchy of grievances, a false (transgender) female scores higher than an actual (cisgender) female. Faux feminists rush to throw their support behind biological males as they destroy women’s sport while the real feminists, most of whom are now conservatives, try to protect women. It’s toxic liberal virtue signaling on steroids.
Anyone with common sense understands that there are only two biological genders, regardless of how many genders liberals deem to exist. I realize that Joe Biden is out searching for that elusive third gender, but he isn’t going to find it. At the same time, presidential candidate Julian Castro is trying to protect transgender female’s right to an abortion, proving that no position is too ridiculous to adopt in the grievance sweepstakes.
The fact that males are better athletes than females has nothing to do with privilege and everything to do with science. As a general rule, the average male is stronger, faster, and more athletic than the average female. They start receiving a massive amount of testosterone at puberty resulting in a significant athletic gap. Again, any C-grade freshman biology student should understand this reality.
On a typical high school track team, the worst-performing male athletes regularly record better times than the best-performing female athletes. When I was in high school, we boasted the best female cross-country runner in the country. She was an absolute running machine, but had she been on the men’s team, she would have been the fourth best runner. That’s no small gap.
When Martina Navratilova, not exactly a conservative icon, complained about the blatantly unfair situation, she came under such withering attacks from her former allies that she eventually apologized. No one is allowed to wander off the insane liberal plantation. She should have stood by her words because they were 100% true.
She said, "…a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires. It's insane and it's cheating… I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair."
But, the new feminist position is that we should cheer as men destroy women’s sports. This is an illogical and anti-woman outrage. Most of the true remaining feminists based upon the classic definition of fighting for women’s rights and equality are now conservatives.
Fletch Daniels blogs at deplorabletouchdown.com and can be found on twitter @fletchdaniels.