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Olympic Equity Inspired by Title IX
New Zealand has a powerlifter on their Olympic team named Laurel Hubbard (pictured at right). She used to be a male powerlifter, but transitioned to a woman, and is now a female powerlifter. Apparently using drugs, but not surgery. Although I hope you’ll forgive me for making little effort to get the details. I’d rather not think about such things. Regardless, as you might imagine, female competitors who happen to be women are not amused. They know they can’t say much without sounding like they’re discriminating against a protected class, but they’re not happy. They get one chance in their life to win a medal, and they would prefer to attempt that by competing against 0ther women.
How to resolve this issue without offending anyone? That’s a toughie, although I have a suggestion. Just follow the guidance of Title IX – a law that sought to establish gender equity in sports. It required that there be an equal number of athletic scholarships for men and women. Ok, makes sense. So let’s require that there be an equal number of male-to-female transgenders as there are female-to-male transgenders competing.
‘Laurel’ can join the female powerlifting team as soon as someone who used to be a woman qualifies for the male powerlifting team. As long they maintain balance – equity! – then no one can complain. Problem fixed. No conflict. Simple. Gosh, I’m smart.
This is bonkers.
Published in General
Doc, your solution still leaves men with reduced testosterone (though still with big muscles and power) competing against normal women.
What in the hell is this world coming to?
Well yes, you are very smart. But nothing is simple.seriously doubt that you fixed the problem, ended the conflict, and did so with an utterly simple solution. It is the left you are dealing with. Problems are created out of thin air, conflict is everywhere, and nothing is simple.
I think this issue of men competing as women is, more than anything else, why the so-called “trans” movement is a bridge too far, and why it will ultimately bring about the first significant reversal of major cultural progressive policy in my lifetime.
Of course, I’m an optimist.
Looking at that power lifter, one suspects zhe took some extra testosterone during zher days as a male power lifter.
“How to resolve this issue without offending anyone? That’s a toughie…”. No it’s not. Just enforce the same rules that the Olympics enforced for decades. They used to look for Barr bodies (a sign of the inactivate X chromosome in a female) in cheek swabbings of suspect “female” athletes. Female athletes have lost medals when discovered to be genetic males with androgen insensitivity. The case of Ewa Klobukowska is especially sad, but at least she got her medals back.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing-olympians#:~:text=The%20test%20results%20were%20never%20made%20public%2C%20but,male%20imposter%2C%20and%20stripped%20her%20of%20her%20medals.
No, it doesn’t. Because no woman could qualify for the men’s power lifting team. Which means there would be no men on the women’s power lifting team. Equity.
But as cdor pointed out above, logic and reason are unlikely to be helpful in resolving this situation. Or, really, any debate with the left.
Will anyone watch the dog and pony show when the dogs and ponies are just furries living their truth?
From male power lifting (lots of drugs), to chemical sex changes (even more drugs).
Wow.
Just imagine the substances that have flowed through that human’s bloodstream. If he feels a little strange, it’s no wonder…
I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record on this point, but I’m going to say it again.
The very existence of women’s sports is a violation of the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sex. If non-discrimination on the basis of sex is truly a valid moral principle, then men should not be excluded from any event.
Our current rule seems to be that you can’t discriminate on the basis of sex, unless it benefits women, in which case you must. The hypocrisy of this rule should be evident to everyone, but this does not appear to be the case. I find this curious.
As a man who believes that discrimination on the basis of sex is both appropriate and necessary, and that such discrimination should favor the fairer sex, I see no hypocrisy in women-only sports.
“Equity” means equal outcomes. Thus all athletes will need to be hobbled to point they are no stronger/faster/agile than non-athletes. The perfectly woke Olympics would have mediocre persons showing identical and unremarkable performances. Everyone gets a Bronze, since nobody deserves gold or silver. Also, the “athletes” do not compete on behalf of a country, but on behalf of their intersectional identity.
Would you also eliminate weight and age classes for sports?
China and Russia didn’t invest billions in their doping programs to let something like this affect them. Thankfully, Hubbard is sufficiently old to not actually be a threat to them.
Hubbard will probably barely break the top 10.
It can’t be done. Therefore, the question is, “Whom do we offend?”
If you want to be fair to real women, especially the tens of thousands of female athletes, you have to offend the male-to-female athlete. Instead, the left wants to offend the tens of thousands of real women for a few dozen male athletes with mental conditions . . .
Interesting line from the article, quoting New Zealand Olympic Committee chief executive Kareyn Smith:
“We acknowledge that gender identity in sport is a highly sensitive and complex issue requiring a balance between human rights and fairness on the field of play.”
It’s hard to read that without concluding that Ms. Smith is acknowledging that athletic fairness (“fairness on the field of play”) is being compromised in order to achieve a social goal. And it’s hard to square that with the claim that men competing as women don’t have an inherent advantage.
Two of the most important threats facing our culture today are, in my opinion, the suppression of free expression (with the best of intentions, of course) and the embrace of absurdist identitarianism as exemplified by the “trans” movement.
This article by Bari Weiss and her guest touches on both. I strongly recommend Ms. Weiss for her free newsletter and her excellent podcasts.
The Books are Already Burning
Ah, I see. I didn’t think that through.
Heck yes. What channel is that on?
I think that this is an incorrect analogy. The proper analogy is to race discrimination, which is prohibited and morally disapproved, similar to the prohibition and disapproval of sex discrimination.
I’m not much of a fan of the anti-discrimination laws. If the law prohibits discrimination on the basis of weight, which I do not believe to be the case, then there is no hypocrisy in allowing weight classes. Ditto for age, for the most part, though I think that there is some limited prohibition on age discrimination.
I was an athlete for years. My kids are athletes now.
I don’t recall human rights being an issue in athletics.
Of course, that was before they invented gender identity.
Um, wait a second…no, I still don’t think that human rights is an issue in athletics.
That’s why we love athletics. We’re just playing a game. We’re escaping the issues of the day, to watch a game.
Or, at least, we’re trying…
Not necessarily. In Ireland, athletics were a means of expressing and promoting Irish nationalism. Sports clubs were very political. They still are, to some extent.
Interesting.
In all things, or just in sports, or in sports plus other things? Firefighting? Combat?
We allow children to form their own sports teams rather than have them compete against adults. We don’t allow them to form their own combat units to go out and kill enemies.
In things that really matter, you just want the best people.
In sports, it’s interesting to see equally matched contests. Like girls basketball. Or weight classes in wrestling.
Here’s a possible solution.
Do away with the categories of men’s sports and women’s sports. Replace them with the categories of sports for people with one X and one Y chromosome, and sports for people with two X chromosomes. Just require a cheek swab to determine the category in which an athlete may compete.
Gosh darn it, that’s science! Find the inequity in that!
As broad groups, men and women are different. So the idea of treating men and women the same, as though there were no differences, has always been, and continues to be, doomed. Since the differences between men and women are much larger than the differences between people of different races. that the legal and social power brokers just took principles of non-discrimination from race and applied them to sex was a particularly ill-conceived idea.
When I fenced, I was in the Senior classification. In all the tournaments I was in, there was no “discrimination” based on age or sex. BTW, there’s something sexy about beating a pretty college girl – just sayin’ . . .
Once you get into the upper levels (national, international, olympic), then the classifications kick in.
But that’s too simple.
If we did that, we’d have to find something else to argue and form factions about.
“They know that they can’t say much without sounding like they’re discriminating against a protected class…”
Exactly. If a feminist icon such as Martina Navratilova can’t raise an objection (without being shouted down) what chance do they have?
Knock off that patronizing XY-splaining!
I wonder how big this issue is. I guess if there’s money on the table, there is incentive for men to want to compete in women’s sports.
How did such a marginal issue become so important? It’s hard to fathom why so many men are trying to compete in the women’s sports divisions. It’s not strictly about ability and talent because the men haven’t won anything significant. If I were to compete against kids in some area in which I’ve had a lot of experience, if I won, the win would be meaningless.