In California in the fifty-something week of shut-down it is easy to stop focusing on the impact of the political decisions being made today. But in the first days of the Biden Administration something shocking happened; Roughly fifty thousand teenage girls had their college dreams crushed. Literally in his first hours in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that became so wildly controversial that the blue check "Fact Checkers" had to come to his rescue obfuscating the actual meaning of the bill. The fact is that while the order in question would help a handful of transgender identifying athletes, it would definitely hurt tens of thousands of teenage girls and young college women. This action effectively destroyed the college dreams of a lot of teenage girls who were depending on track and field scholarships to help pay for college.
The media chose to spin this story as an inspiring moment for transgender athletes. Very few people have the courage to say what this actually means for thousands of biologically female girls: It means the playing field won't be fair and it means lots of girls and young women won't have a chance to pursue their dreams in college. Transgender athletes who were born with male genitalia --and may still have male genitalia, these days being "trans" often is a matter of public identification for younger people and may not involve any surgery-- and choose to identify as female have a muscle mass and testosterone advantage in many sports that NO biological female has. Testosterone IS an advantage in building muscle mass. Testosterone, like anabolic steroids, is such an advantage in building muscle mass that at a serious competition level if a female athlete tests positive for synthetic hormones she can not naturally produce she gets disqualified from competing. If you want to know what an advantage male testosterone in female sports can actually look like just check out the East German women's Olympic teams from the 1980s.
The East German athletes were doping back in the '70s and '80s, they were using anabolic steroids and a cocktail of other synthetic hormones to build muscle mass and heal faster. This gave them an obvious advantage at international competitions. Many of the female athletes who were doped back in the '70s and '80s weren't doping by choice. (Some of the East German female athletes literally didn't know why they had begun to grow facial hair. Some blamed their coaches for turning them into men.) But the Soviets would do anything to win, including doping their young athletes. Sadly an unintended consequence of the Soviet doping program was that many of their athletes died too young. An unintended consequence of the Biden Administration's desire to bring transgender athletes, a.k.a. BIOLOGICAL MALES into women's sports --especially at the highschool and college level-- is that a lot of biological females will have their college dreams crushed.
In a practical sense it probably means that at least some young women won't get to go to college. There is a reason why there are different teams for boys and girls. It is about fairness.... It is inherently unfair to make one group of people compete against another group of people who happen to have a built in physical advantage as a result of sex.
In the political world it is pretty much a given that the Democrats have a vote advantage with women, particularly "soccer mom" suburban women. If you live in Marin County that seems obvious. If you see a Range Rover with 4 expletive laced bumper stickers demanding we "Dump Trump" it is probably being driven by a fifty something blonde woman who has a couple of college bound teenagers and religiously votes Democrat. (Back in October I actually saw an example of that suburban soccer mom.... Newer SUV, blonde hair, bumper sticker for private school --a lacrosse mom, not a soccer mom-- and a couple of Harris-Biden bumper stickers. The lady was notable because she leaned out of her window to curse out three elderly nuns who were standing on the sidewalk in front of a Catholic church. Apparently the sight of nuns in public "triggered" the lady. Frankly I was embarrassed just to share a zipcode with the cursing lacrosse mom and I feel sorry for her children. It is embarrassing enough to be a teenager suffering through puberty without adding in a mom who roams around spontaneously screaming curses at nuns.)
As a female Millennial Republican I believe in free choice. (I also believe in freedom of religion. Personally I think it is a trifle weird to adopt a political party as your faith of choice, but you do you.) I also believe in personal responsibility. If you are promoting an agenda that will negatively impact the lives of tens of thousands of people, you should not be allowed to claim ignorance. Right now a LOT of people are attempting to pretend that no one will suffer as a result of the Biden Administration's move to open up women's college sports (and girls' highschool sports) to biological males.
When we talk about transgender athletes we usually focus on the individual transgender athletes and we do not talk about what the presence of transgender athletes means for non transgender athletes. In women's sports it usually means you are adding a class of people with a built in advantage; an advantage that if gained for any other reason other than being "transgendered" would usually disqualify an athlete. In a practical sense it means biological females --often underage girls-- can be required to share locker rooms and dressing rooms with transgender people with male genitalia. It also means that prizes and scholarship money intended for female athletes go to biological males who identify as female. In the state of Connecticut two transgender athletes have dominated girls' track and field since 2017. Quite simply biological females aren't winning titles in Connecticut anymore. Biological females aren't winning in women's sports.
In a practical sense this means that two individuals who were born male are now DOMINATING women's sports in a state where women's track and field has been a big deal for years.... If you are a fan of trans athletes that is probably good news. If you are the parent of a teenage girl who lives to run this is probably devastating news. And if you are a girl who was depending on a statewide championship win to help pay for college... well you will probably have to go into debt to pay for college. Or maybe you won't get to go to college.
In the weird new gender obsessed world we now live in where the same people who tell us "gender doesn't matter" also tell us that "gender identity" matters more than anything we rarely waste much time talking about scientific facts anymore. (In fact last week I spent some time trying to figure out why a writer who prefers to identify as "gender non binary" writes for a blog called "Girl Boss" about whether or not the word "womyxn" is inclusive or exclusive isn't off writing for some gender non binary blog. And no... that isn't a joke. "Womyxn" is apparently a thing now.) But we should talk about the science, we should also talk about history.
If, like me, you are female, and you care about history, education and athleticism you KNOW that the fight for women's team sports was a brutal part of the Feminist battle to give girls an opportunity to run, play, make friends and learn how to lead. Up until World War II it was common for American highschools to offer team sports for boys and no team sports for girls. In the bad old days boys got to play basketball and girls got to sit in the bleachers and watch the boys play. In the twentieth century that changed. Girls got their own teams and the world of women's sports was born. Women got a chance to compete, lead and win. For women like my grandmother, playing sports was one of the best parts of being a teenager. Sporting icons like the great Trudi Ederle --Olympic swimming champion and first woman to successfully swim the English Channel back in the age of Flappers and bathtub gin-- were true role models for women like my grandmother. They proved to us all that a girl could compete and a woman could be an athlete in her own right... not just a girl sitting in the bleachers. Post World War II the battle to carve out space in school budgets so that there would be space and time and money for girls' sports continued. At the University level Title IX changed everything... universities make money off of men's football, in general there is little or no money to be made off of women's college level sports. (There isn't much money in some of the more esoteric men's sports either --male gymnastics definitely isn't football.) In a practical sense Title IX meant that schools would be forced to invest in women's sports. For a couple of generations of women it meant that women had a place in college sports, it also meant there would be scholarship money. Girls who ran track or competed in other sports in highschool would have a shot at college level athletic scholarships.
Opening up women's college level sports to trans athletes means that in a practical sense we will be turning the clock back for girls. Girls will still be allowed to compete, but a lot of girls --who don't have a shot anymore of winning a title-- will end up second class athletes in their own teams. And a lot of other girls will end up sitting in the bleachers watching biological males win the girls' tournaments. This isn't fair, and it isn't right. If we, as a society, ACTUALLY want to be fair to student athletes, both biological females and transgender identifying females, we would add a trans classification to competitions. Men's sports, women's sports, and trans sports. Instead, in 2021 we are looking at an ugly reality where too many girls will be forced into second class status within their own teams.
To a gender theorist or an HR director who cares about identity more than reality this makes sense.... To those of us who live in the real world none of this makes sense. This is the definition of unfair, this is the definition of lost opportunities, and this is the definition of fake. The question is, does this seem fair to the soccer moms who voted for Harris-Biden? Does that soccer mom feel PROUD of the fact that she may have thrown her OWN daughter's college dreams under a campaign bus? If so... hey... you do you.... We all have priorities. But we should ask that woman what her actual intentions were... did she want to help turn back the clock for women's sports? Did she want to destroy the college dreams of a generation of American girls? Did mommy really want to cancel college?
In the event that a seventeen year old girl who loves basketball, or track and field, and whose mom has a Biden bumper sticker on her SUV, is reading this and trying to figure out what her college experience is going to be like.... I think it is time to have a talk with mom. Ask her a couple of serious questions: Was your goal to cancel women's sports? Does having Biden in the Whitehouse mean more to you than having your daughter have a shot at playing college level sports? This is no time to waffle or allow lies and prevarications. This should be a simple answer. Did you want to throw your daughter under a campaign bus? Did you want to throw THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN DAUGHTERS UNDER THE CAMPAIGN BUS? Did you WANT female athletes to become second class citizens?
And as for that teenage girl.... When you turn 18 and register to vote, think about who cancelled your sport.
I'm a Millennial, I'm a female. I used to be a Democrat. Back in college the Democrats just tried to shove me in to a box. Criticized me when I tried to think for myself. Told me I needed to vote Democrat because Republicans would abuse me. Guess what? I grew up.... decided to stop being bullied into a box by a pack of control freaks and victim hustlers. I decided to ask some questions, find some answers that weren't fake, that weren't part of a narrative. And as a Republican I KNOW the Republican Party doesn't have all the answers.... but no one gangs up on me to put me into an intellectual box. And I actually am respected as a woman. My rights, my ideas, my opinions, my strengths --and frankly my weaknesses too-- are respected. Better yet, I'm a person, not just a token. It was my choice to write under a gender neutral initial rather than my very feminine first name. I'm not ashamed of being a woman, I just didn't want to be treated like a token. And the Republicans --who have frankly been savaged by the media for years for not putting "tokens" front and center-- didn't push me to take one for the team and turn myself into a token.
I'm a Republican because I started asking questions. I suspect we are facing this bizarre nightmare in the world of collegiate sports right now because for too many years asking questions has been discouraged. For fear of being labeled transphobic, administrators threw the girls under a bus. If schools really wanted to be inclusive of the transgender community, if they really wanted to be fair to EVERYONE and accept that we actually do have physical realities rather than mere gender identities, schools would add in a trans category for sports.
Doing the right thing is hard sometimes. But asking hard questions, and asking embarrassing questions, is easier than forcing a generation to accept lies. And it is a lie to refuse to acknowledge that including biological males in women's sports puts actual biological females at a disadvantage.
Ask the Democrat voting soccer moms who helped throw a generation of girls' dreams under a campaign bus what they are going to do to fix this... better yet... look in a mirror and ask yourself what you are going to do to ensure actual fairness and make sure girls don't end up sitting on the bleachers, locked out of their own sports.
2022 is closer than you think... Now is the time for all good women (and men), to step up to the plate and hit for the boards. You don't have to be Trudi Ederle to run for schoolboard, but if you run for schoolboard you may help all the Trudi Ederles of tomorrow live their dreams. Don't let girl's dreams get cancelled by woke madness. Don't let women get crushed.