It seems churlish to begin worrying about the Biden administration when it’s held sway for only a bit more than a day. I voted for Joe and Kamala and approve of many of their policies. I teared up at the Inauguration and was hugely relieved when the Great Miscreant was helicoptered over the Potomac yesterday. But we still have to call out the new administration if it violates standards we oppose, and, during the flurry of policies to come in the next several months, now is the time to suss out whether Biden really is a centrist, or will cave in to the Woke wing of the Democratic Party.
As I’ve said, one thing I worry about is the exacerbation rather than the diminution of Wokeism under Biden—something that seems very likely to me. (And do I really have to affirm that Trumpism is way worse than Wokeism? You can have Biden without extreme Wokeism, you know, and you don’t need to remain silent just because he’s a Democrat.)
At any rate, when I saw the tweet below from Abigail Shrier, oft-excoriated author of the book Irreversible Damage, a book about too-rapid promulgation of sex-change operations in young children, I got worried. Is Biden really advocating accepting biological males who claim that they’re women—and haven’t had any medical intervention to transition—into women’s sports, scholarships, and so on? We’ve discussed the sports issue here, as well as Connecticut’s rule that any male who identifies as female can participate in women’s sports without further ado (much less hormonal supplements and/or surgery). The results were predictable: males, with their greater strength and muscle mass, clean up. I don’t think any reader here thinks that “unaltered” biological men who identify as women should, by virtue of that identity alone, be able to join women’s sports teams.
Yet that’s what Shrier says Biden’s executive order does: “eviscerates women’s sports”, as well as women’s scholarships and so on:
On day 1, Biden unilaterally eviscerates women's sports. Any educational institution that receives federal funding must admit biologically-male athletes to women's teams, women's scholarships, etc.
A new glass ceiling was just placed over girls.https://t.co/cGWZqDpxl8
— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) January 21, 2021
You can read the order below, as I did; it’s short (click on the screenshot).
When I initially saw that it seemed to be about Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I thought Shrier must be wrong. Title VII is about employment and workplace discrimination, not discrimination by colleges in scholarships, sports, and so on. Those things are the purview of Title IX. which mandates no sex discrimination in education or activities for educational institutions that get Federal funds. So why is Shrier so exercised?
It may be because of this statement from the order (my emphasis):
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love. Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes. People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination. All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.
These principles are reflected in the Constitution, which promises equal protection of the laws. These principles are also enshrined in our Nation’s anti-discrimination laws, among them Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.). In Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), the Supreme Court held that Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination “because of . . . sex” covers discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Under Bostock‘s reasoning, laws that prohibit sex discrimination — including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as amended (20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.), the Fair Housing Act, as amended (42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq.), and section 412 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (8 U.S.C. 1522), along with their respective implementing regulations — prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, so long as the laws do not contain sufficient indications to the contrary.
Notice that Biden folds Title IX into Title VIII, and explicitly mentions school sports. Now I don’t give a rat’s patootie about restrooms (we have unisex restrooms in my department), but locker rooms are a bit more problematic, since some women don’t want a person with male plumbing watching them in the buff. Still, that can be and has been dealt with in various ways. And of course the thrust of Title IX is good: stop discriminating on the basis of sex or gender. But participation in school sports is the rub—and the exception.
If Biden is saying here—and despite Shrier’s claim, it’s not completely clear—that men who identify as women have carte blanche (and legal rights) to enroll in women’s sports teams, then Shrier is right: this has the potential to eviscerate women’s sports. I won’t go into the biological differences between the sexes that, even with hormone treatment, make this “right” problematic, but I’ll call your attention to this order as a red flag. So far nothing has happened, and Shrier’s feared outcome may require either legislation or intervention of the courts, not an executive order.
There are other Bidenesque red flags as well, but none so worrisome that I need mention them now. I do predict, however, as I did yesterday, that the election of Biden is not the end of Wokeism but an acceleration of it. Those of us who consider ourselves liberals and who voted for Biden because of his decency, his ardent (but ill-fated) desire to reconcile Republicans and Democrats, his center-Leftism, and most of his legislative aims, may be in for a few years of cognitive dissonance. Joe is a decent man, but if you buck the Woke you get called all kinds of names. Joe may be more pliable than we think.
It is a potential problem. As for me, I’m more disturbed by all the religious horse manure being shoveled during the civil ceremony yesterday. Cousin Joe’s an active purveyor of that, despite his general decency.
Yes, I worry about that, too, and put up my worries on Facebook yesterday.
Biden seems to be staking the claim to being truly devout, in contrast to the fake religion espoused by Trump. I guess true religion is better than fake religion but it is clear we’re not going to make any progress getting rid of religion with Biden. It is also clear that religious people are a constituency that no politician will be able to ignore in our lifetimes. Until more voters regard religion as a bad thing, no one will be able to run on an atheist platform.
I have noticed that in recent years religion has made a big comeback in the general societal zeitgeist. There are of course those that have always been devout, but in recent years many believers that have never been particularly devout have been inspired to at least pretend to be, often behaving like what I would typically refer to as religious nut-jobs. Regardless of whether or not they even go to church on any regular basis, suddenly they are loudly proclaiming belief in the nuttiest religious prophecies coming out of places like Qanon. You wouldn’t believe the shit I hear out of people right here in my office. People that have never before shown any particular religious devotion or interest before.
The thing that really cracks me up about all this? This trend has been instigated by a completely irreligious man that, if the desert dogmas are to be taken seriously, should spontaneously burst into flames whenever the word ‘God’ comes out of his mouth. I am, of course, talking about Trump. These people should be ashamed to have allowed themselves to be conned by such a conspicuous carny.
To my knowledge, Trump is the first president that made a direct appeal to religious people, saying very clearly “If you are Christian, you should vote for me.” and “The Dems will destroy your religion.” Other presidents, Biden included, mostly portray their religiosity as guiding their lives and/or decision making. They are obviously aware of religious people as a voting bloc with their own hot-button issues but feel they need to maintain at least the appearance of keeping religion out of government and maintaining appeal to all faiths, not just their own.
I share your concerns. There certainly are moderate approaches to some of the myriad issues facing the administration, and hopefully they will not acquiesce to the demands of the woke. This applies to many issues from immigration to the environment to gun control.
If the proposed changes are implemented, then I predict a Republican take over of the House and Senate.
The nature of wokism is that it sucks in people that are genuinely well-meaning and take them places they wouldn’t necessarily get to otherwise. Of course decent people don’t want to discriminate against people, and want everyone to have the same rights and opportunities. Some well-targeted attacks at that decency (“You’re a bad person because you don’t accept my gender expression!”) and it’s pretty easy to get decent people on board with things like allowing non-transitioned, self-declared women to compete in women’s sports.
In my experience it’s either this, or the exact opposite and it completely drives people to be anti-woke. And I think that’s why the woke hammer reasoned disagreement (e.g. Rowling) so hard. They are battling for the hearts and minds of those decent people. If they give any quarter, and allow that there is nuance, they fear they will lose the decent and reasonable majority.
We’ve already had his statement about Covid-related relief: “Our priority will be Black, Latino, Asian and Native American owned small businesses, women-owned businesses, …”. This is Woke-speak. If he really wants to unify the country, was it really sense to leave out only white men?
Is there any evidence that Asian businesses have been affected more badly than white ones? Asian Americans generally have higher incomes than whites. Is there any evidence that women-owned businesses have been worse affected?
The evidence in the UK seems to be that black and Asian people are more at risk from COVID19, at least. That suggests to me that, all other factors being equal, the black person should be in front of me in the queue for a vaccine.
In the UK “Asian” generally means Pakistani/Bangladesh origin, and those communities seem more at risk owing to being poorer (more-crowded accommodation etc). In the US, “Asians” are more usually East Asian (Chinese etc), and their income is generally higher than that of whites.
And, if what matters is how poor the community is, then business relief and vaccinations should be targeted based on that, not on ethnicity.
Incidentally, the webpage of the Los Angeles Review of Books has a “Most Read” sidebar. Number one is “The Constitutional Conflationists: On Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage” and the Dangerous Absurdity of Anti-Trans Trolls,” by Sarah Fonseca. The subtitle: “Sarah Fonseca on how Abigail Shrier’s trolling interpretation of the United States Constitution threatens to put millions of kids’ lives in jeopardy….”
I haven’t read the article — https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-constitutional-conflationists-on-abigail-shriers-irreversible-damage-and-the-dangerous-absurdity-of-anti-trans-trolls/ — or Shrier’s book, so I’d be interested in hearing from those who have.
After I read Abigail Shrier’s book I understood better why some people voted for Trump (i.e., against the kind of ‘wokeness’ in this review).
I think it’s a bit early to get exercised (pun intended). There’s a big long journey between policy pronouncement and on-the-ground implementation, with many an unexpected twist likely in between.
Doesn’t the trans individual have it worse? After all, they’re the ‘odd person out’ in the locker room. Thirty cis girls and one trans girl in a locker room, who exactly has to worry about being the target of unwanted stares and attention by who? Likewise for a trans boy in a locker room with 30 cis boys – I really don’t think the people under severe psychological stress in that situation are the cis boys.
Even if you’re a shy cis person, there’s no ‘privacy parity’ going on here – you likely have lots of locker rows not containing trans individuals, if being near such a person is uncomfortable to you. But they likely have zero locker rows not containing cis individuals.
One recent case filed on behalf of a trans child against a school district came down to basically the argument that the child could not truly feel like they were being treated as a girl unless they got to experience regularly showering with the “natural” girls.
Your argument seems to take for granted the idea that the trans child is a completely normal boy or girl, except that they were born into the wrong body. As if the person was born with a genital deformation. But the person with that deformation is almost certainly more likely to avoid being naked around others.
But this is not what is happening, at least in the case of boy to girl trans kids.
Boys and girls are very different as far as comfort with their own and other’s nudity is concerned, especially during puberty. Those of us who grew up in cultures where nudity was not unusual have seen this behavior consistently.
Is it really about “who has it worse”? Shouldn’t the comfort of all be taken into consideration or are cis women just to suck it up as always because someone else feels uncomfortable?
Sometimes when driving, I find myself behind another driver, and they just keep stopping and letting people in front of them. Not just a few, but so many that a huge line of exasperated drivers forms behind them.
The driver who keeps stopping does not think about all those stuck behind them. They are intoxicated by their own wonderfulness, and completely focused on each of those drivers they stop for, and getting an endorphin rush as they wave or smile.
They are not going to be considering whether they are likely causing traffic jams or accidents. They are not giving any thought to the people stuck behind them who could have been home already.
I wonder whether it is some sort of pathology that makes them think this way. They are not toddlers, and should be able to see, even predict, both the positive and negative results of their actions. But they will not see the negative.
There are certainly trans activists who absolutely do not care about how their policies impact the regular girls. Others go along so they won’t get purged. But there seems to be a middle group whose support makes enforcement of such policies possible. They are just not going to think about the girls who might be negatively impacted.
If you try to ask them about those aspects, they come back with “because shut up!”.
Max, I read you analogy with some sadness. Many NZ towns straddle highways, and for locals to get around my father would often allow a space to open for cars to join mainstream from a side road. He called this ‘making a space for the locals’, and trained us to think likewise whilst driving. To him it was a matter of courtesy. And of course we felt good about it: I still do 60 years later. I am in agreement with the general tenor of your comment, however.
If a bunch of biological males begin enrolling in and dominating women’s sports, it will be addressed. See Australian rugby for an example.
Joe Biden had one job, to see off Trump. Joe has done that and so the remaining time of his Presidency is likely to enrage many on the right and disappoint various sections of the left competing for action or recognition. It will be tough for him and those around him to claw back some of the ‘unity’ he spoke of.
The pedantic part of my brain says that the right to compete in school sports does not imply the right to compete in women’s sports. The trans women (especially those that have not taken any medical treatment to transition) could compete with the other males.
However, I know how the woke and the trans activists will take this, and I think it will be bad news for women’s sports. But I think it’s going to have to happen. Merely arguing the obvious: that it will destroy competitive sports for biological females is just going to get you shouted down as transphobic. People need to be shown – with real examples – how regressive it is to allow males to compete in women’s sports.
This is typically how things happen, alas. You need to get a genuinely enraged constituency that sees its valid opportunities being legally chopped away before you get a counter-movement emerging that turns on its tormentors. When enough super-talented young women athletes are denied medals, or even places on teams, as a result of advantaged trans competitors, there will be a ferocious reaction that will make the current disputes seem like Cambridge debates. The gains of feminism seem to have to be refought-for in every generation, and this issue seems likely to be the current generation’s avatar of that battle.
On the topic of “why have separate men’s and women’s restrooms?”, the answer is one word: urinals.
Penis-having people (PHPs) can use urinals; non-penis-having people (NPHPs) cannot (I mean, maybe we could in a pinch, but it would be awkward and messy). A urinal takes up less room than a stall, and hence it makes sense for a PHP restroom to include several urinals + one or two stalls rather than stalls only. In contrast, urinals in a NPHP restroom would be a waste of space.
My conclusion is that to be LGBTQ-inclusive, we should rename men’s and women’s restrooms PHP and NPHP, respectively, symbolized by a tasteful icon of a penis and of a crossed-out penis. Cis men, pre-op trans women, penis-having genderfluid and nonbinary people, come one, come all to the PHP restroom!
They should just not have urinals. I don’t think men really want to use them anyway because how comfortable can that be? I have to say though that public rest rooms men can go into can make women uncomfortable. I know that’s not supposed to be said but it’s true because harassers going to harass and there are more of them than you would think. But again, women aren’t supposed to be allowed to feel safe in contrary to what Biden says in the quote in the OP because if they come in conflict with another person’s feelings, they take a back seat. It has always been this way & it seems like things are not going to change.
On the contrary, urinals are quick to use, especially if you are wearing clothing that will be difficult to remove (workwear that may be heavy, or dirty, or take a long time to undo and do up) or you want to spit as well. Plus usually men don’t require to use toilet paper after urinating if they can just shake the drops off. (TMI?)
However an unofficial urinal-use etiquette is in place. You don’t occupy a urinal next to another man if a more distant one is free. You keep your eyes facing forward. You don’t say anything unless you are peeing with a good friend.
Now if you want to read a newspaper sitting down is more appropriate.
With a small enough, intensely interesting book and needing to go badly enough, …..
Without having taken a survey, it seems also to be the case that the bladder will empty maybe 20% more from a standing position. After a disposal of solid bodily waste, I’ll generally get some more pee out standing (but not in any sense outstanding pee). The more the better, especially just before sleep. But of course that is not an argument for the urinal.
Notice how cleverly I avoided my usual word “shit”. Once it is protected by quote marks, who could possibly object?
I don’t like urinals. I’ve no problem with peeing next to other people. My problem is that piss gets sprayed everywhere. In any public bathroom that sees a lot of use there is piss all over the place around the urinals. You end up having to stand in it. Many are so poorly designed that no matter where you aim you get splatter on your hands and cloths. I find urinals disgusting.
But, you are correct in that they are quick. And they do take up less space. I actually prefer to sit down to pee and do that at home. But in public bathrooms I’ll use the urinal as the lesser of two evils.
” I don’t think men really want to use them anyway “. Have you any evidence for saying that? I must say as a male I have never heard that. I do agree however, as another poster points out, there are well observed protocols concerning use of urinals.
No other than a few males telling me they hate them but I wasn’t making an evidenced claim just merely saying “I don’t think” not “Men definitely don’t like them”.
They are efficient, and reasonably sanitary. You need not touch anything not part of your own body.
The actual biological process takes about the same time for men and women. The reason that women often have to wait in long lines is securing the stall door, checking for cleanliness, possible deployment of a paper seat guard, and arrangement of clothing. After the act itself, these actions need to be done in reverse, followed by thorough hand washing.
The male using a urinal has maybe five seconds of preparation before, and rearrangement after. Hand washing is done by civilized men, but they have not likely come into contact with biological materials left by others.
“paper seat guard” ,aka “Ass Gasket”
Urinals are not particularly sanitary. You may not notice it in a low use well maintained bathroom, but piss gets everywhere. In a heavily used bathroom you’ll be standing in it when you use the urinal.
I suppose they are sanitary in the sense that you don’t have to touch them as you do with a toilet. But the miasma of atomized piss that gets on your hands, clothes, walls and collects into puddles on the floor around heavily used public urinals is not sanitary.
Well, yes, but how is that worse than a stall in comparison? Especially that in my experience most men do not sit down even when they use a stall to take a piss and the seat is easily get messed up in the process.
It depends. If we are talking about my house, I’d never install a urinal. A toilet is much better in every way. I can use a toilet without splattering. I can’t use a urinal without splattering.
In public restrooms I don’t like either option. I was merely countering the claims that urinals are more sanitary than toilets. In public bathrooms nothing is particularly sanitary because of volume and because too many people are slobs.
The actual biological process may take the same amount of time for men and women, but I think the frequency of women’s visits to the restroom is higher than the frequency for males .
I think the main reason for the different lengths of time taken by the sexes relates less to the actual act of excretion and more to the aftermath. Most males and females wash their hands but whereas a man will then immediately depart the bathroom, a woman, confronted with a mirror, will feel compelled to redo her entire makeup and hair.
And your gender is male, I take it. Actually, we’re talking about the length of time women spend in the stall as opposed to men at the urinal. Spending time after at the sink/mirror (if done any all) doesn’t affect the queue for the stalls, which is the main issue in women’s bathrooms and why we appear to take so long if we say we’re just popping off to use it.
You may have no idea what a disgusting mess toilet seats are often left in in women’s toilets. People come out of the stall smiling after leaving a urine-spattered seat for the next customer. There’s a special circle of hell reserved for them.
In public bathrooms (say in the mall) there are usually double entrance doors. Therefore it is only when the user exits the bathroom (and not just the cubicle) that it will be apparent that a cubicle is free.
Not in any women’s bathroom I’ve been in —- the queue forms inside and then goes out through the main door to the outside.
I’m a PHP and I prefer urinals to toilets – quicker to get in and out, and no need to touch anything except one’s own bits.
I think issues regarding transgender folk and restrooms arise when government entities enact so-called bathroom bills requiring people to use the public restroom designated for the sex that appears on their birth certificate.
If a government entity chooses to deal with this issue instead by having single non-sex-designated public restrooms, the solution would seem to be to build such single restrooms double the size of individual-sex restrooms and having the number of stalls that a women’s room would ordinarily have plus the number of stalls a men’s room would ordinarily have plus the number of urinals the men’s room would ordinarily have.
Let people use the restroom of their choosing or have a single non-sex-designated restroom — either solution obviates special labeling or penis icons.
Yes, we have that at my work. All gender washrooms, individual washrooms and single gender washrooms.
Well I’m a PHP and I don’t mind sitting. In fact, I can’t stand urinals.
I was thinking you can pee in a toilet while standing. In fact I’ve seen men doing that in women’s washrooms claiming they went into the wrong one but they left the door open while they peed so…..pervy or just oblivious? Hard to tell.
> you can pee in a toilet while standing.
This is very convenient, but also likely to leave a mess if the PHP does not aim well.
As someone who cleaned bathrooms in her youth, I can tell you there seems to be poor aim no matter what the vessel.
“Penis-having people (PHPs) can…”
As opposed to penis halving ones—the name Bobbit, IIRC ……
And if you are a woman who says she’s uncomfortable with the locker room in some situations then you will be called a transphobe Karen. The only option women have is to not frequent these places which means being pushed out. So it goes, as it always has.
Is there enough information to really know yet if women’s sports are being ruined? There have been a couple fiascos, I know, where a trans woman elite athlete cleans up, but how serious is it really?
I have a feeling you are right, Jerry. I’m a bit spooked too.
One red flag is how we keep hearing his government is committed to producing “equity” rather than “equality.”
Lots of pixels have been spilled here on the liabilities of that approach.
This could mean that almost every tranny will be able to get a free ride at a US university through an athletic scholarship (note that this is a high-IQ group).
The resulting boost in social prominence (aided by more activism?) might matter more than the women’s athletic competitions participated in. These could be subject to increasing mockery by the general public, especially if the more prominent universities compete for the naturally gifted trannies that allow them to win medals.
Why would trannies be a high IQ group?
> Why would trannies be a high IQ group?
It is noticeable that they are overrepresented in the tech industry. And far more of them are highly accomplished (like Lynn Conway, Jennifer Pritzker or Deirdre McCloskey) than odds would predict.
Interesting. The only one I know is a friend’s brother -> sister who is a doctor. Didn’t transition until 60ish. Still married to his/her wife.
I don’t think there is any reason to believe that gender orientation has anything to do with intelligence. I have a trans child who is an absolutely stellar student in a very difficult university engineering program, who continues to earn academic scholarships.
I know a lot of other parents of trans kids, and there is no correlation with parents income, politics, or the child’s intelligence. The only pattern I can find is that it seems to sometimes affect kids in existing social groups simultaneously.
You can think of transgender people what you want. But, calling such a person a tranny is equivalent to using the N word to refer to an African-African. As Wikipedia put it: “Tranny (or trannie) is a derogatory term for a transgender, transsexual, transvestite, or cross-dressing person, and often considered to be a slur. During the early 2010s, there was confusion and debate over whether the term was a pejorative, or was still considered acceptable, or a reappropriated term of unity and pride. In 2017, the word was banned by several major media stylebooks and considered hate speech by Facebook.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranny
I agree. I didn’t see that comment, but henceforth the word “tranny” will not be tolerated on this website. (I don’t remember seeing it here before.)
I will use a different word in the future.
There was a time when tranny was used exclusively for one’s transmission.
Pocket radio when I was a teenager.
🙂
In that case, let’s simply use the word “queer” to cover the whole LGBT-etc. spectrum. It insults everyone equally, and therefore waters down the “derogatory” effect to nearly nothing.
I believe that lots of gays don’t consider “queer” an insult. There are, after all “queer studies” in universities. So your statement is your opinion, not that of gays.
I hope that Biden soon denounces the recent violence in Portland and Seattle. He renounced violence on the left and the right during the campaign, and as President, needs to do it again.
Let’s not start busting up the furniture here just yet, give Malarkey Grandad a chance..
Two observations:
1-2% of humanity are diagnosable psychopaths and will game ANY system (like some men in women’s sports and change rooms). People don’t consider that statistic when, say, voting for the last president – the psychopathy factor. “How can this system be gamed?” – and yet we can’t psycho-proof everything. We need better radar for these things.
Also, we are WAAAY too hung up on nudity and plumbing.
Just my $0.02,
Also – I like d*gs and I vote AND I drink. All at once! So that’s that, then!
D.A.
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
I am a Middle School teacher. We have a small school but any given year we have 2-3 transgender students. We had a student Female to Male a few years back who loved basketball. The district said he had to chose boys or girls. He chose boys and was an excellent team player. Not only was he the best ball handler the students completely accepted him. During my small experience transgender from Male to Female are not as sports oriented. Transgender students have a high suicide rate. It is directly correlated to how much support and acceptance they have. In our small world of middle school if that means picking a sport hell yes we will let them play.
I’ve seen for myself that most kids who claim they’re “transgender” don’t actually believe they *are* the opposite sex, or want to *become* the opposite sex, but only want *to be treated like* the opposite sex. The cure for this is to have long talks with the kids about how they want to be treated, and deal with those problems directly.
As for the athletic differences, the solution for that is to *support girls in body-building* — nutrition, exercise, et al — so as to give them the same physical strength as the boys. This is not so strange as it seems. There have been societies in history which gave equal training to male and female children, and wound up with equally strong and athletic men and women. In nature there is really very little sexual dimorphism between male and female humans — or lions, or leopards, or wolves, or other pack-predators. It really is social expectations that make the difference.
I don’t see Biden or any of his cohorts addressing that.
I doubt that you have solid evidence that any society ever gave training to men and women that completely equalized their athletic abilities. Men have a different bone structure and upper body muscle mass that is a genetic difference from the outset. Your statement that “in nature there is really very little sexual dimorphism between male and female humans, I’m sorry to say, is dead wrong: difference in size, strength, height, genitalia, muscle mass, behavior, and so on. Those are genetic differences, not due to “social expectations”.
In fact, I expect you to retract your assertion (both of them, actually) if you are going to be intellectually honest on this site.
Jerry, you got in ahead of me. In sports where physical strength is important, whether at recreational or elite level, men systematically outperform women, other things being equal (e.g. with equivalent training and fitness). In contact sports such as rugby, the presence of trans men in women’s teams would quite certainly be lethal. To pretend otherwise is an extraordinary exercise in self-deceit.
> As for the athletic differences, the solution for that is to *support girls in body-building* — nutrition, exercise, et al — so as to give them the same physical strength as the boys.
Women are not defective men. They probably have fitness goals of their own that don’t involve looking like Schwarzenegger.
> There have been societies in history which gave equal training to male and female children, and wound up with equally strong and athletic men and women.
So far, all societies I heard of which supposedly achieved utopian gender equality are effectively unobservable. Lack of archaeological evidence and gaps in our understanding of foreign cultures make it possible to arrive at outlandish claims that cannot be disproven. For example, we are quite ignorant of Ancient Minoans (sometimes claimed as a feminist culture) in comparison to Ancient Athens (which is usually portrayed as patriarchal). Sensationalism might also contribute to implausible beliefs about women’s history: A woman buried with male weapons (but no battle wounds) doesn’t quite prove that the Valkyries were real, but that’s a good story.
How you might feel about your sexual orientation should be acknowledged and respected, but no amount of training will make women as strong as men. It’s not an opinion but a medical fact.
I think equal consideration and respect should be shown to women who have worked hard to get to the top of their field who find themselves beaten by a male who has transgendered. Where are their rights?
Now that Trumpism has been (hopefully more than just temporarily) defeated, the next project for progressives has to be to deal with Wokeism, which presents a clear and present danger of bringing Trumpism roaring back in 4 years or sooner. If the mid-terms lead to a Republican majority in the House or the Senate (or FSM forbid, both), we will be back to the situation of Obama’s 2nd term where literally nothing useful gets done, only this time the SCOTUS will be on the side of further eroding all the gains in social progress which Trump has set back many decades.
If you voted for Biden without grasping that he is a placeholder for Obama 2.0 and the final destruction of America and Western liberty – and ALL the human, women’s and children’s rights that exist ONLY in the West – frankly, you’re too stupid to be published. I wonder why you are? Anyone thinking Joe is running, or even is aware of his administration and the effect of the massive numbers of Exec Orders (more than the last 5 presidents, combined) is lying to themselves and to their readers.
Dear Ceiling Cat, the termites are out in force today; it must be the pandemic!
And you, sir, are too stupid (and rude) to be allowed to post further on this website. I think you need to go over to Breitbart where you belong.