Biology trumps identity

This entire “debate” over trans women’s participation in women’s sports is depressing.

Most sociological debates have nuance, dead ends, gray areas and “trolley car” like choices. This does not. This is SO easy to get right.

Just a few short years ago a man who “identified” as a woman was able to make a mockery out of NCAA Division One Women’s swimming by thoroughly dominating biological girls in his signature event.

The specter of 6’4” Lia (nee William) Thomas towering over his legitimately female competitors at the awards podium looked like a scene straight out of South Park. But Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s savage parody is no match for real world silliness.

I most certainly am no fan of President Trump, but I was hoping that his election portended that We The People were largely done with some of the worst silliness that has emerged over the past decade from the way-too-far-left. But this issue of trans women in women’s sports stubbornly will not go away, despite the fact that roughly 80% of people think trans women should not compete athletically against women.

This debate has taken on new life because a WNBA player had the temerity to suggest that biological boys should not be allowed to compete against biological girls in sports. Really. That is why this issue is showing up in our newsfeeds again.

The predictable forces are chastising Sophie Cunningham, calling her all of the pejoratives they rustle up whenever anyone commits the sin of disagreeing with them. In short, another trite and tiresome spectacle.

In a world where so many issues are hazy and gray, this is not one of them. And it is depressing this has not been relegated to the scrap heap of history.

The very existence of women’s sports owes itself almost exclusively to male puberty. That natural biological process confers athletic advantages so pronounced and obvious that post-pubescent athletic competition between males and females is inherently unfair.

If male puberty did NOT grant these advantages, there would never have been a need for women’s sports. Men and women could compete alongside and against each other and nobody would think twice about it.

But male puberty DOES grant these advantages. I don’t know why, but it does. To deny it is to deny biology.

Women’s sports had to be invented because without it, there would be next-to-no opportunities for high-level athletics for women.

Because of women’s sports, females now have just as many opportunities as males to compete in high-stakes athletics.

To allow men who have gained the advantages of male puberty to compete against women because they *identify* as female is nonsense on stilts. I am not denying what they identify as. What I am denying is that they are fairly able to compete alongside and against women.

I have heard learned people try to argue that a couple of years of hormone therapy can mostly negate puberty’s physical advantages. That is more nonsense.

In order for any therapy to erase the advantages of male puberty, it would have to actively reduce 30-40% of a person’s muscle mass, physically SHRINK their heart, purposefully make their bones less dense, sharply decrease their lung capacity and do several dozen other things that would have a deleterious impact on the body.

Any doctor prescribing a therapy that does those things to a human body should be jailed. NO ethical doctor is going to do something that would essentially destroy a healthy body.

The changes conferred by hormone therapy are largely cosmetic. They have some impact, of course, but not nearly enough to erase what happens during male puberty.

There are probably some reading this who will conclude that I am a “transphobe.” That’s because they are not bright people. The social forces that keep trans women out of women’s sports are the same ones that prevent me from playing Little League baseball.

One is no less a “trans woman” if they are prohibited from playing women’s sports. That’s because eligibility for women’s sports is based on biological sex, not the gender with which one identifies.

The defense that there are very few trans women playing in women’s sports is not a defense. The frequency with which something wrong occurs doesn’t make it less wrong. And it certainly doesn’t make it right. That is a silly argument made by silly people.

The devil on my shoulder envisions a wicked scenario. Five very good boys high school basketball players suddenly announce they identify as girls in California. By that state’s rules, all they need to do to get on the girl’s team is “identify” as a girl. And with that state’s open-enrollment for high schools, they decide to join the same high school and play on the girl’s hoops team. They crush every team they play and win the state championship in a laugher.

As they are getting their state championship trophy and being called “stunning and brave” by the way-too-far-left, they announce to the world that they no longer identify as girls. They then laugh and leave the arena.

I know this would be embarrassing to the girls they stomp on the court, which is why I don’t really want this happen. But I fear it make take an absurd demonstration like this to properly demonstrate the absurdity of this effort and forever put it to rest.