The Transgender Athlete

In a decision made on December 18, 2022, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a panel of three judges ruled that four cisgender high school girls had no standing in challenging the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Association's policy which allows transgender athletes to compete in sports according to their gender identity. The basis for the decision was Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.

In other words, if you're a boy and you want to compete against girls and win, progressive liberalism is your ticket to success. I sincerely hope that this case is headed to the Supreme Court. Title IX was passed by Congress in 1972 as a measure to protect women, but it is being perverted to promote a political agenda. Here is an excerpt from the website history.com:

"...despite its broad aims and applications, Title IX is most famous for its impact on expanding opportunities for women and girls in sports. In 1972, there were just over 300,000 women and girls playing college and high school sports in the United States. Female athletes received 2 percent of college athletic budgets, while athletic scholarships for women were virtually nonexistent.

"By 2012, the 40th anniversary of Title IX’s passage, the number of girls participating in high school sports nationwide had risen tenfold, to more than 3 million. More than 190,000 women were competing in intercollegiate sports—six times as many as in 1972. By 2016, one in every five girls in the United States played sports, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. Before passage of Title IX, that number had been one in 27."

This article is not about bashing anyone who woke up one day and felt like a woman trapped in a man's body or a man trapped in a woman's body. Society is a long way from understanding, from a scientific perspective, the development of the brain in relation to gender dysphoria. My personal belief has always been that people are born with a sexual preference that may not necessarily correlate to their gender, and no more can be done to change that than one could ethnicity. However, as I've written before, changing the plumbing does not change the biology. People are born either male or female; either you carry the sperm to fertilize the egg, or you carry the egg. No amount of surgery will change that. Men cannot bear children and women cannot impregnate anyone, and someone born as a boy has a distinct physical advantage over someone born as a girl.

But in the politically perverse arena of the left, not only can boys be girls and girls be boys, some organizations promote as many as 72 gender "identities" depending on mood, and conveniently subject to change on a whim; it even allows for a person to be a man and a woman simultaneously! It is insanity. Allowing a boy to compete as a girl is just an offshoot of the overall madness.

Here is how international athletic bodies are handling the transgender issue: the World Boxing Council in 2023 will have a category for transgender fighters. The WBC adopted an "at birth" rule, which means that male transgenders can only fight against other male transgenders. Why the restriction? Safety. Imagine a male transgender boxer fighting a female boxer. The WBC recognizes the potential for physical harm because of the superior strength of a person born male. The "at birth" rule was actually used first by World Rugby, which adopted a sex-based eligibility policy in 2020 for the safety of female rugby players. The policy was picked up by the Rugby Football Union Council and International Rugby League this year.

Too bad the "learned" justices in our judicial system are incapable of the same application of common sense. Title IX was never intended to allow boys who "identify" as girls to compete against girls. It is ridiculous. Male transgender athletes have the right to compete, but in their own league or against other men, if they choose. The most prominent case which has gained national attention is the University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who in three years as a swimmer on the men's team was not even close to being competitive, but upon switching to the female team began dominating and setting team and NCAA records. Go figure.

This far-left liberal progressive nonsense is focused on the less than one percent* of the population that is transgender and ignores the basic rights of the fifty percent of the population that is female. Women's rights have been set back fifty years. As an anonymous UPenn female swimmer said, "Women are now third-class citizens."

Deciding who can compete athletically in a given arena should be based only on biology and not on "feelings." Otherwise we do a great disservice to sports in general and female athletes in particular.

Semper Fi.

*Depending on which study is utilized, the transgender population is less than 1% worldwide or as high as 2% in the USA. But I'm skeptical regarding the stats because they include 13-17 year-olds and let's be honest. At that age, hormones are raging and there is no way a person can positively state that they are of a certain sexual persuasion. Only the left would utilize vulnerable children to promote a political agenda.