After months of dealing with the murderous consequences of a narcissistic White House bully and his belly-crawling enablers during a pandemic, I find it a great relief to finally tackle the arrogance that passes for modern progressivism. I'll spend many 2021 days discussing blithering moral absolutism. May as well get things rolling.
I was between my freshman and sophomore years at Penn State when a 6'2", 195-pound icon of masculinity named Bruce Jenner pulverized the decathlon world record at the 1976 Olympics. As a college cross-country runner, I was duly impressed by Jenner's clinching 4:12 1500 meters. Despite being able to run five miles under 30 minutes, I was not able to run a 4:12 1500, and distance running was my thing. Jenner did it as the culmination event after two days of brutal competition involving the hurdles, high jump, long jump, 100, 400, javelin, shot put and (gulp) pole vault.
Now it's 2021, I look as bad as Will Smith in this week's Instagram post, and Bruce Jenner, he of the decade of Wheaties boxes, is a she. The latter takes some mental adjusting on my part.
Down the road, I'll devote entries to the pronoun debate and other trans issues. Today, I just want to touch on the legislation being enacted in various red states to prevent genetic males from taking part in women's sports.
Caitlyn (previously Bruce) Jenner told TMZ last Saturday that she was against genetic males competing in women's sports. I completely agree. Let me repeat that as my progressive friends faint. I completely agree with Caitlyn Jenner on this.
I have my reasons. As always, I'm open to changing my mind, but that change of mind would have to be fueled by new data or my grasping some heretofore unseen flaw in my base logic. So I'm going to lay out my specific reasoning as to why I agree with Caitlyn Jenner. My reasoning has absolutely nothing to do with culture warring. In this post, I'm going to narrowly focus on two main arguments, then expand on them in future entries.
First, college educations in the United States are not free. They represent enormous financial investments by both parents and students. For better or worse, built into the American educational system are tiers of athletic scholarships ranging from partial tuition to free rides.
Genetic males have an advantage over genetic females in virtually all American sports. Name the American sport, and genetic males outperform genetic females overall. It's not really close. Baseball, softball, football, basketball, soccer, track and field, cross-country, swimming, wrestling, boxing -- for all of these sports, the average genetic male, equitably trained, outperforms the average genetic female. You can argue all you want for cultural biases working against women and women not getting the hours of training to match men, and to a degree you would be correct, but the fact remains. Given equitable training, the average genetic male outperforms the average genetic female in American sports. If you refuse to acknowledge this, you are as delusional as the 70% of the GOP that thinks Biden lost the 2020 election.
The practical consequences of superior performances by genetic males in sport is that a biological male adopting a female gender will move up the performance bell curve when competing against genetic women. This bell curve shift and enhanced standing is undeniable. What therefore happens is that the heretofore gendered male, when hopping over to a female gender, will receive more notoriety for essentially the same abilities and performance. For example, a genetic male running a 4:40 mile as a male is considered good, but not really college scholarship material. A genetic male running a 4:40 mile as a gendered female, however, is scholarship-worthy for women's track.
My concern is that when genetic males compete against genetic females at the high school level, the genetic males will slot themselves into scholarship opportunities that would otherwise go to genetic females. A displacement would occur at each scholarship tier. Even the best genetic females risk being displaced from the best scholarships into inferior scholarship slots. If colleges that offer athletic scholarships were to outright ban genetic males from women's sports, then my concern for scholarship distribution would be unnecessary. But if different universities adopt different rules, then the teams employing transgender genetic male "ringers" would have an obvious advantage, no matter the sport.
Now to my second point. The same slotting domino effect would occur when scholarships are not the issue. Simply making high school teams becomes more difficult for women when genetic males are allowed on the same teams. Imagine three genetic males with female gender trying out for a high school basketball team. They would likely take three spots that would otherwise go to genetic women. If a genetic female makes the team, then practice time with the first team would be hijacked by the genetic males. Finally, actual game time would be hijacked by the genetic males.
So it's not just about scholarships. It's about making the teams or not, and roles on the teams. It's about opportunities to learn, discovering how to shoulder psychological responsibilities, networking, and getting public recognition for athletic roles and accomplishments. Genetic males have the capability to hijack those roles and recognition as assuredly as any cuckoo bird.
I suppose that the pushback questions against what I've argued are, "Shouldn't genetic males living as gendered females have their emotional needs met? Is not their cumulative mental health more important than any scholarship?" I'm a bit of a cynic when these questions are asked. I'll tackle them in my next trans-issue entry.
Bob Dietz
May 6, 2021
