Boys and girls are different.
I describe what I observed.
Americans are sorting out how to deal with gender. It has been made a political wedge issue by the increased visibility of people in gender transition. GOP thought leaders have a position: Boys are boys; girls are girls. That positions people who are something in between as somehow freakish or criminal.
It is a powerful wedge issue because gender transition is new and it makes some people uncomfortable. Inter-racial marriage was also new and discomforting for many people 60 years ago. Attitudes changed as people saw inter-racial couples. I expect something similar will take place with gender transition, but for now the issue is still unsettling for many Americans, including Democrats.
Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge common in university settings of feminist and gender studies. The theory asserts that characteristics thought to be immutable and biological--including sex--are in fact largely products of human definition and interpretation. Orthodox thought in the universities leans in that direction and Democratic officeholders are reluctant to voice disagreement. Social constructionism contrasts with essentialism, which asserts that characteristics are significantly influenced by biology.
I had two personal experiences over Easter weekend. On Friday I attended the track meet I referenced last week. I paid particular attention to the 3,000 meter run for both young men and women. The photos are the lineups at the starting line.
I didn't see theory. I saw athletes. The young men are bigger, stronger, and faster than the young women. The winning young man ran it it 8 minutes, 51 seconds. The winning female ran it in just over 10 minutes.
On Sunday I attended an Easter picnic attended by a group of educated, prosperous people of liberal progressive attitudes. I chatted with a four-year-old son of one of the guests. I asked him if he wanted to hear a story. Yes!, he said.. I started the story saying that he was with his pre-school classmates when there was a loud knock on the classroom door. I said there was a great big monster named Snake at the door, and Snake looked mean. Here he interrupted me. "I ran to the door and kicked the monster right in the nose!"
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| Age four: Dillon and a story-time friend |
That didn't surprise me. It was exactly how my son Dillon took over the direction of stories back when I told him stories when he was age four. Dillon wanted stories of confrontation. I attempted to de-weaponize my stories. I attempted to steer the stories toward peaceful resolutions. It was wasted effort. If I paused a moment when imagining some direction a story might take, Dillon would interrupt to declare he would grab some weapon, most memorably a chain saw. Had Dillon ever even seen a chain saw operate at age four? I don't think so.
A dozen years ago I told stories to a four-year-old daughter. She also interrupted to lead the stories when I hesitated. She was interested in relationships between characters. Who was the big sister, the little sister, who was kind, who was mean, what motivated the thug or monster or external threat? She wanted trickery to foil danger. She liked using sticky duct tape to restrain threats, not smash them in the nose.
I realize I am generalizing from a sample of three. My story experience isn't science. This isn't a controlled experiment. Still it has the powerful impact of lived experience of noticing what took place in front of me. Boys and girls wanted different stories. My inclination is to conclude I am not seeing social construction. I am seeing something essential. Males are different from females.
My observations this past weekend make me concerned that Democrats are blinded by an ideology that is contradicted by practical reality. Maybe differences among people are not primarily social constructions. At least, they don't seem such, as I reflect on my observations. It is bad politics to try to get people to deny what they observe with their own eyes.
18 comments:
I once sold a Swiss pregnancy-planning product that helped couples give themselves a better chance of getting the baby-gender of choice. It worked by informing the couple of the prospective mother's ovulation cycle; the timing of the release of her eggs, ready for impregnation. If they wanted a girl, they had intercourse early in the cycle; if a boy, late in the cycle. Why? Because even at the cellular level, male sperm sprint aggressively ahead in a rush and they soon poop out; but female sperm swim steadier, reserving energy and therefore lasting longer and remaining viable as the later-cycle-arriving eggs show up, ready to be sperminated. Even then, there's a boy-v-girl behavioral difference! The data seemed to back up what every mother knows....
Each of us have both, most more one than the other. But that can change...
Check out video games that boys and girls like to play. You will find a clear choice of games that boys like to smash and destroy. Generally video games were of little interest to girls until video game companies realized they were missing a huge market. It seems girls liked to play video games too, but the ones they chose were “constructive” building cities, finding friends to help complete the game and video games that could involve other girls at the same time, relationship building. MRI brain scans show clear differences in thought processing. And yes there are rare cases where a person learns to feel uncomfortable in their own gender too. They are the exception.
I worked at both male and female correctional centers (prisons) for 30 years. A prison I worked in went from being an all male prison to an all female prison. Afterward many staff transferred out of the female correctional center to a male correctional center. Both are difficult environments to work in, but many staff viewed the women’s prison as more difficult for staff even though the women's facility was by far less violent. The main reason given by staff who were transferring out of the female facility to a male one was the women inmates talk too much. Facilitating therapy groups for mentally ill female inmates versus mentally ill male inmates is WAY easier. One of my jokes among staff was that women are different than men. No kidding.
Anyone who is confused can take a DNA test.
It is definitely NOT the same as falling in love with and marrying someone from a other race. We are talking about unfair advantages in sports. The sports that girls and women have had to fight for in the first place.
On March 3, 2022, NPR reported that the Governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds (I think), signed a law banning biological boys and men from competing in female sports. Amen to that!!!
Interestingly, transgender boys and men are NOT banned from competing in Male sports because they are biological females and therefore do not have an unfair advantage.
Sanity and common sense in Iowa. This is how it should be everywhere.
Transgender people and their allies are more than welcome to have their own sporting events. There are sporting events for other special groups/populations, such as Special Olympics, Veterans and Seniors. Not a problem. There already are community LGBT teams in some places.
This is aptly called a “wedge issue” because it splits one party: in this case, the Democrats. It splits them because there exists on the far left a radical faction of trans activists who insist there is no such thing as a biological difference between males and females, and that if you say you are a woman, you are a woman in every possible application of that concept.
And so we have the case of Lia Thomas, a swimmer who competed successfully as a male before deciding to transition to being a female. Thomas absolutely dominates women’s swimming thanks to a body built by testosterone,t because Thomas did not transition until after puberty. Thomas’ broad shoulders, slim hips, and male musculature provide what many people (including me) think is an unfair advantage over biological female athletes. That Thomas now has lower testosterone levels does not alter the physical advantages that testosterone caused, courtesy of puberty.
The trans activists are a defining case of woke social justice activism. They go after those who disagree with them with all the usual tactics: social media mobbing, attempts to deplatform, attempts to get people fired from their jobs, etc. they have gone after JK Rowling for insisting there such a thing as biology. They got Meghan Murphy banned for life from Twitter for the same sin.
We have Special Olympics so that people who cannot compete in the regular Olympics will have a place where they can compete. I think we now need another separate competition category for trans women, who have bodies enhanced by testosterone, and who therefore compete very unfairly against biological women.
Democrats need to speak sensibly about this issue lest they be painted as woke fanatics. But they will need to overcome their fear of being called “transphobic” by the actual woke trans fanatics in order to do so.
Homosexuals, lesbians and transvestites have always been with us. As our Puritan heritage became more distant and dilute, we’ve become less preoccupied with other people’s sexual preferences. The concern now is whether the behavior is between consenting adults and causes no harm.
Transgender is a relatively recent development. Don’t like your sex? We’ve got pills for that (not to mention scalpels). In my humble opinion, such medications should be limited to people who have reached the age of majority. It’s absurd that kids too young to legally make their own decisions are being allowed to decide their sex. What a weird world.
I finally agree with Michael Trigoboff. Very well said.
Anonymous,
I always thought that my outreach would eventually bear fruit…. :-)
It's called a wedge issue because it's being used by the republican party, some religious groups and our foreign adversaries to divide Americans and promote hate. Putin would be happy.
How on earth does this matter to most of you? It doesn't, so you're getting suckered.
These competitions are entertainment, mostly by private organizations.
republicans and religious groups have tried for years to force upon us their definitions of when life begins and ends, and have failed.
Now they are trying to force their definition of gender upon us.
There is a condition at birth known as intersex or being born with ambiguous genitalia. A rare disorder, but it exists.
Years ago, a coworker and his wife had a child who was born intersex.
They were provided with options for corrective surgery, and had to make a choice. They chose to make the corrective surgery. I lost touch but they do have one grown son in their public social media persona.
People can excel in many ways - physically, mentally, academically, and probably more. And just as we have a Special Olympics, perhaps we can have other competitions for those who chose to identify differently than what their chromosomes and DNA might indicate.
Just as a quick fact check, the idea that Lia Thomas "absolutely dominates women's swimming" is totally false. She won a single race (the 500m) in her final college swim meet, with a time that was a full 9 seconds slower (an IMMENSE margin in swimming) than Katie Ledecky's world record set in 2017.
In her other events at the same meet in question, Lia did not dominate, win, or even particularly stand out, for example, her time in the 100m ranks as the #55 best of all time for female swimmers, great by MY standards but not dominant by any stretch of the imagination.
Suffice to say, Lia Thomas isn't going to be taking any gold medals from a more deserving woman at the next summer Olympics. She is however being used as a scapegoat by those uncomfortable with the idea of transgender people to pass laws that generally malign and target her and others like her. And again, she is absolutely not the Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky of swimming.
If this isn't making a mountain out of a molehill I don't know what is.
Lia Thomas has won more than one race, and broken records too, according to the New York Times:
In an interview that Sports Illustrated published this month, not long after Thomas won this year’s Ivy League women’s championships in the 100-, 200- and 500-yard freestyle events …
Through Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a lawyer who won three Olympic gold medals in swimming in the 1980s, more than a dozen members of Penn’s team sent an anonymous letter to the university and the Ivy League last month to complain that Thomas had “an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category.” They cited her rapid ascension in the rankings, from high-quality conference swimmer to national title contender, and asserted that her victories and potential to break women’s records were “feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”
link
A quick fact check confirms that what Rafe said is true:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/03/20/lia-thomas-ncaa-swimming-championships-questions/
What Michael said is also true: Lia Thomas had no potential to break women's records as a male athlete.
[The female athletes] cited [Thomas’] rapid ascension in the [female] rankings, from high-quality conference swimmer to national title contender, and asserted that her victories and potential to break women’s records were “feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”
The female athletes were saying that Lia Thomas was never good enough competing as a male athlete to break male swimming records. But when she transitioned to compete as a female athlete, she was now good enough to break female swimming records.
In other words, Thomas went from a middling male athlete to a dominant female athlete, reflecting the unfair advantage testosterone and a male puberty had given her.
Note that this information came from the New York Times, which is not known to be a source of conservative disinformation.
Parents and the child suffer the pain of confusion: the rest of us butt out. Suicide for these children is not an option. Who carries the cross. Not you.
As a biological female, it greatly concerns me. As a woman who cares about the rights, needs and aspirations of other biological females, it matters a lot. Hope that clears up the confusion for some readers.
Girls and women have been fighting for their rights and opportunities, one way or another, probably since the beginning of humankind. We don't need any dudes trampling on our rights and stealing our opportunities.
What is truly sad is that in the year 2022, someone people actually think that girls and women should step aside and let biological boys and men invade female sports. In other words, the biological males are MORE IMPORTANT than the biological females. Male privilege on full display.
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