Of all the stupid arguments in all the digital corners of all areas of political discourse, I had to come across this one.
Columnist at The Washington Post, Sally Jenkins recently published an op-ed in which she argues in favor of forcing female athletes to compete against biological males, referencing the current controversy over San Jose University’s soccer team as an example.
In the piece, Jenkins proceeds to give arguments that are so braindead that I actually lost five IQ points just from reading them. In fact, I suspect God punished me by having me come across such abject stupidity.
The author starts by arguing that “Competition is never equal, and it is only sort of, approximately, occasionally fair.” She states that sports don’t “tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually, and psychologically, and the first thing it tells us is not to be victims.”
You’re already seeing where she’s going with this, aren’t you? But wait, it gets even dumber!
Jenkins writes:
“Physical gifts are distributed unequally, and so are advantages. There are lots of differentials in sports, maybe none bigger than money — the money to pay for coaching and lessons, money to train, money to eat properly so your body develops.”
Jenkins then turns her attention to the San Jose fiasco, in which several female athletes have filed a lawsuit against the university’s women’s volleyball team for having a trans-identified male on its team. She criticizes the lawsuit for framing the matter in exaggerated and alarmist terms. “The word ‘harm’ is used 12 times in the suit, ‘injury’ 15 times, ‘safety’ 35 times, ‘concerns’ 37 times, and ‘protection’ more than 50 times,” she writes.
The author then claims that the way the lawsuit is written “make[s] female athletes out to be fretful weaklings” and argues that “The starting point in this controversy should be that women have agency and power.”
When it comes to the science, Jenkin’s points are similarly idiotic.
“Spoiler: I don’t know who is right in the scientific dispute over whether athletes who were assigned male at birth have lingering advantages from nanomoles of testosterone, or disadvantages from their suppression.”
The author takes issue with the fact that the lawsuit does not argue that men have physical advantages over women but is only “just a litany of suggestions that wilting women are endangered.”
For starters, yes, it is true that not all athletes are equal in their abilities. LeBron James could easily defeat me in a one-on-one matchup on the basketball court with his eyes closed. But this is due not only to his height but also his experience and training. There are tremendous physical differences between men and women, a fact that has been proven over and over again. In general, women lack the strength and speed of men, which creates an unfair advantage when forced to compete against them.
Moreover, even within sports that are segregated by sex, there are still equalizers. Jenkins' arguments would be akin to arguing against having weight classes in combat sports like boxing, mixed martial arts, and wrestling.
There are also categories for age when it comes to children’s sports. I wonder if Jenkins would support seven-year-old football players being forced to compete against 17-year-olds? After all, by her logic (or lack thereof), if we argued against this, we would only be portraying the younger category as victims, would we not?
Jenkins’ article is full of logical inconsistencies that she likely did not consider when she sat down at her computer to write that garbage dumpster of an op-ed. This is the level of intellect we are dealing with among those who want to force female athletes to compete against men, folks.
The reason why men’s and women’s sports are separated is because men do have clear physical advantages over women, which makes the competition unfair. It also places female athletes in dangerous situations. There have been several reports of female athletes being injured because they had to face off against men, a fact that Jenkins and her ilk routinely ignore because it is inconvenient.
Moreover, couldn’t we also turn Jenkins’ logic against her? Why is she portraying trans-identified men as victims just because they don’t want to compete against other people who were born male? Shouldn’t they just be able to tough it out? Why don’t they have to suck it up and deal with it?
However, I will throw Jenkins a bone: At least she didn’t just claim those opposing biological males in women’s sports are transphobic. But the quality of her arguments illustrates precisely why most on her side of the issue resort to this tactic: Because there are no decent arguments for their position.
