Red-state legislators have moved quickly on two issues. One is abortion. They are taking away from young women the power to decide whether to stop a pregnancy, even a very early one or one that is a result of rape. Red states are making it illegal to offer abortion information to young women or for those young women to travel to acquire an abortion. The other issue is youth sports. Red state legislatures are passing laws to stop trans girls from competing in girls' sports. They claim to be protecting girls.
Jack Mullen brings an athlete's perspective to the issue. He was a standout high school athlete. Now, well into his 70s, he stays active playing sports. We are hearing from politicians and opinionated commentators and we are hearing from Riley Gaines, a swimmer who competes at the collegiate elite level against trans swimmer Lia Thomas, but we are not hearing much from high school athletes themselves. The fuss over the trans girls in high school athletics has been a top down issue, not a bottoms up one. It serves the purpose of the legislators--but what about the girls?
Jack Mullen isn't a girl and he isn't young anymore, but he is in better touch with the competitive spirit of young female athletes than most observers. Red-state legislation is condescending and misplaced.
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Guest Post by Jack Mullen
There is no easier punching bag these days than transgender youth, especially with the growing resentment concerning boys, transitioning to trans girls, playing women’s sports. With wages up, unemployment low, inflation taming, many in the nation have decided that what is eating away with America’s soul: Trans youth. How could anything be so unfair as trans girls playing sports against our sweet little daughters and granddaughters.
I never expected this resentment to reach the level expressed by Bill Maher and his guest, Piers Morgan, on Maher’s HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Maher and Morgan see young girls as damsels in distress. These two gentlemen became apoplectic with just the mention of young girls competing against trans girls. Maher thinks much of the gain that Title IX achieved beginning in 1972, putting women’s sports on equal basis with men's sports is lost. He claimed women's sports is now being undermined by trans girls. And if it were not for his British accent, I would have thought Maher’s guest was a Tennessee state legislator. Morgan lost his British cool as he aimed his ire towards those who would dare allow trans girls to participate in women's sports. Morgan and Maher never allowed the third guest, Congresswoman Katie Porter, a chance to rebut.
If men like Bill Maher and Piers Morgan are so worried about young girls not being able to compete, I wonder if they ever tried standing toe to toe with a female athlete. I have.
As Peter Sage is wont to spice up his guest post with photos, he often uses the below photo of me when I laced them up at Medford High. Ever since high school, I have continued playing pick-up basketball games, mainly because I preferred basketball over golf, a sport I considered to be a little too bourgeoise for my taste.
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| Mullen, 1965, jumping to catch a pass from Bill "Earthquake" Enyart, a fellow high school senior. |
I recall a certain pick-up game when I lived in San Francisco. Sharon worked at the front desk at a new gym on the campus of the University of California, San Francisco. She showed up and decided to guard me on one of our weekend games. Being a hot-shot male, I thought, good deal! I can loaf a little on defense and not go all-out on offense. Maybe take one or two easy shots. On my team’s first possession, I waited for the rebound when suddenly Sharon slipped in front of me, stuck out her rear end, and sent me to kingdom come.
“OK, Sharon, game on!”As I was guarding her and had my head turned, Sharon backed doored me, received a pass. I thought I could recover enough to stop her at the basket. I did get to the basket, but Sharon went underneath and blindly threw in a reverse layup.
After the customary post-game fist-bump, I asked Sharon where she played college basketball.
“I did not play in college”.
“Ok, then, where did you play in high school?”
“I played high school in San Mateo, but never was a starter.”
Later that summer, at a family reunion in Medford, we had a pick-up basketball game. My niece Dinah, who played at Medford High, kept perfectly positioning herself for rebounds and bumping her poor 16-year-old son farther away from the basket than even Sharon had knocked me.
I recant these stories to say young girls are not the damsel in distress that the chivalrous Piers Morgans, Bill Mahers, and so many White male brethren worry about.
Hey! Piers and Bill, young girls can hold their own against men and boys. I put my money on the idea that they can hold their own against trans girls as well.
If anyone doubts me, just ask the girls who compete in sports if they are afraid of playing against trans girls. Go ahead! Ask them! Let them speak for themselves. They have as much a right to participate in this discussion as do the distraught Messers. Morgan and Maher and their ilk
There are gyms in most state legislatures and in the House of Representatives. In Washington, young Congressmen love to play ball at noon. If allowed, the likes of a Sharon could teach them a thing or two about women competing in sports. How I would love to see the looks on those congressional prophets-of- doom faces after a Sharon knocks them around like I had been in that UCSF gym. I dare say most female athletes would love to see it too.
18 comments:
Saving young damsels who aren’t in distress is the new Republican White Man’s Burden, along with saving young white kids from the discomfort of learning about repression of minorities in the U.S. They’re more concerned about which bathroom kids are using than they are about how many of them are being mowed down with assault weapons.
Really??? Coming from an entitled, privileged white DUDE !
Another DUDE who thinks he is the spokesmouth for girls & women. Misogyny strikes again and again and again.
My, somebody, apparently ,at least in her (?) "Real Wonan Mind, is certainly triggered. Goes to show that bigotry is not a specific provenance of only the Republican "real men" like Maher and Piers Morgan, either of whom are not allowed to sully my data stream.
Really??? Obviously you care a lot more about males pretending to be female than about actual, real females.
But that is not surprising because that is how patriarchy works. The men stick together and bully and control the women and children. You must be so proud of yourself in all your natural testosterone glory.
Maher and Morgan Fan: I know that you are triggered, but you could (at least) make an attempt to address the substantive issues involved. Or maybe you really don't know anything about the subject afterall, which is most likely the case. Just another Dude enjoying his male privilege.
Hmmm...I think there is a distinction to be made. Sure there are outstanding female athletes who might best an outstanding male athlete, and vice-versa.
As far as I know, there are few sports leagues that regularly pit biological males and females together on teams.
The typical sports competition has been separate male teams and separate female teams. There's been little calling for professional and amateur sports team to be coed. And yes, for sure there are coed teams and leagues, but in small numbers; just not that many.
The uproar against allowing trans to compete, as well as people who simply identify to be male, female or "X" contrary to their biological sex is justified. especially when it is that superior male athlete who decides to be a female, and again vice-versa.
Where is the actual effort to create new leagues that can accommodate all?
As for claiming this is a Red menace, how about recognizing that this is ginned up to be a political issue, even though there are Rs, Ds, and other political factions that aren't very happy to see the trans-athletes forcing the issue to be dealt with without any alternatives.
Obviously, there is an overlap. Some females are better athletes than some males. But at the top end, males have a significant advantage over females courtesy of testosterone and male puberty.
Lia Thomas was a middling male swim competitor. He transitioned to a female swim competitor and is now winning top honors. That is not fair to female swimmers who have spent their whole lives honing their skills and deserve a chance to demonstrate their excellence.
Trans activists and the far left are so committed to their ideals that they are willing to overlook objective facts like biology. They demand that everyone else do so as well.
Peter mentioned Riley Gaines. If you want to see the mob tactics that trans activists and the far left use against her in their attempt to shut down any discussion that they disagree with, read this.
When the far left is forced by their ideology to take a losing position (like allowing biological males to compete against biological females) they often attempt to shut down discussion by saying, “Don’t look at this, look at that.”
The point, Michael, is that we have real problems that need to be dealth with far more than these far-right wedge issues.
My reaction to the comments in todays blog
Kudos to the R's messaging machine to distract the electorate from their horrible legislative performance against women (abortion), school children (school shootings), anti-democratic authoritarian leanings (Jan 6th), tax give backs to the rich (failure to raise the debt ceiling and also defund the IRS), assault on labor and migrants (refusal to enact comprehensive immigration laws), lack of legislative agenda beyond maintaining power and their assault on national security (across the board cut on military spending) and law enforcement (defund the FBI and Capital Police). Wow! All it takes is a microscopic element of our society to rile men and boys, women and girls, independents and Democrats, whites and blacks, against each other turning the focus away from the pressing issues facing our country. And we're worried about TicTok and China. Wow! We're killing each other over who's right the most wrong. Wake up and think for yourselves. There isn't much time left to fix these big issues.
Choices about which problems are important and need to be dealt with are in the eye of the beholder. You can’t run a democracy by decreeing from the top what people should care about.
Democracy is supposed to work from the bottom up. I understand that some folks would like to elect a different people. Fortunately, the people have a say in whether that is going to happen.
Our elites decided it would be a good idea to export our industrial capacity to China, to the point where we no longer have the ability to manufacture weapons at the rate required to support a war. No one, including those elites, is in a position to tell me or any other American what we should care about.
Anyone who thinks that girls and women (half the population) should be disregarded, disrespected and endangered to make delusional males happy is a very disturbed misogynist.
Don't listen. We are more than used to it by now.
Anyone with a shred of sense or vestige of conscience cares far more about children being gunned down in our schools than about the far-right’s asinine culture wars, but nobody is telling anybody they have to.
A rare instance I agree with Mr. Trigoboff: shipping our industrial capacity off to China was an awful idea, that regrettably was supported in basically equal measure by both political parties. One of many reasons why despite my strongly liberal views, I'm not a Democrat.
I also agree that you can't run a democracy by decreeing what people should care about. Unfortunately the Republican Qrazies have decided to decree to their rabidly loyal, yet seemingly unthinking followers that trans women are a problem (The Main Problem!) they should be deeply worried about. But consider the fact that trans people account for less than 1% of the population, and of those even less than 1% an even smaller percentage still yet are involved in athletic competitions of any sort. It quickly becomes apparent to anyone taking the time to consider it that the "problem" of "men pretending to be women" so they can dominate high school or collegiate sports is nearly as rare as catching a Jack-A-Lope on the 31st of June. It's not a 100% nonexistent problem, but it might as well be for how (not) often it's occurring.
To Mr. Trigoboff and Anonymous, how do you feel about the Biden administration's proposed rule regarding transgender women not being allowed to compete against assigned at birth women if they've gone through puberty and gained the advantage of testosterone? Seems like a reasonable solution to end the (again vanishingly rare) case of a Lia Thomas.
Anyone with a shred of sense or vestige of conscience cares far more about children being gunned down in our schools than about the far-right’s asinine culture wars, but nobody’s telling anybody they have to.
You make a good point, yet I have some mixed feelings about this issue. As a martial arts instructor, I know biological females can be tough and often have a higher pain tolerance that biological males. I had an assistant instructor, a woman note even five feet tall, who was opening up the dojo one day and a big guy came in. He asked her with a huge dollop of condescenion what she could teach him. She started to explain the elements of taekwon-do, but he insisted that a little woman could teach him how to defens himself. Eventually, the conversation went on to the point that she invited him on the mat. He took off his shoes and went out there and she challenged him to take hre to the ground. He lumbered in and suddenly was flat on his back. He got up and went in harder, and she threw him harder. After that, he conceded she could teach him something.
But that guy hadn't ever done martial arts. I feel that in martial arts, including wrestling, there can be real risks to women--and there have been serious injuries caused by trans women in MMA matches. This can be ameliorated by weight classes, but some guy who has had the benefit of two decades of testosterone and then becomes a woman is likely to have a huge strength advantage over a biologcial woman of the same size. Inb most sports, that won't be dangerous, but I think the jury is out as to whether the trans woman as an advantage.
Among the general population, relatively few become competitive in sports. Of the women who do, a miniscule number may be trans. Perhaps they have some advantage and special rules may be called for, but making a federal case out of it is ridiculous. In fact, so-called conservatives with nothing better to offer use such nonsense to try and distract us from the fact that a psychopath remains their undisputed Dear Leader.
There is something to be learned from the likes of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson: Don't let idiots do your thinking for you.
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