“Fairness” and the Lia Thomas effect

I’ve been avoiding this subject because I don’t want to bring any pain to my (two) trans women friends.

But reality overpowers kindness, I’m afraid.

Let’s start with a simple fact. In physical sports, we don’t allow adults to compete against children. We don’t allow men to compete against women. 

Does this need to be explained? It should not be, but I will: Gender, age, weight and other barriers are erected to eliminate overwhelming physical advantage, which would be unfair.

Trans women — meaning biological men who have transitioned to women, or wish to — should be allowed to compete with biological women in chess, Formula One racing or Parcheesi.

But not in swimming, track, wrestling, basketball, or any sport in which the stronger, larger physique of the male they were born as gives them an advantage.

It is a comment on the world today that this is something that even needs to be discussed. It is an indicator of how obsessed some people have become with the misplaced notion of “equity.” And if you don’t agree with the fiction, you run the risk of being cancelled as a “hater” or “transphobe.”

Some people believe men can give birth. Or pretend to believe that to virtue signal, but what you learned in school was correct: Men can’t give birth, no matter how hard they try. To pretend otherwise tortures language or science. Birth requires a uterus. Men don’t have a uterus, a.k.a. womb, which nourishes the fetus before birth. Men also do not have ovaries. 

If a woman transitions to a man, and gives birth, sorry — she is still a biological woman. There is no way a biological man can give birth, although a recent Time magazine allowed an essayist to print this lie: “It’s (mostly) women who do the hard work of pregnancy and childbirth.” No, not “mostly.” Exclusively. 

I am not obliged to accept that which is contrary to fact. If you say all Macedonians are intellectually inferior, I will not accept that any more than I will accept a single person using the pronoun “they.” That used to be called multiple personality disorder. (Now It is called dissociative identity disorder.) A single person is not a “they.”

What brings me here is the continuing saga of trans woman Penn swimmer Lia Thomas, who recently was interviewed by Sports Illustrated. 

For three years, Thomas competed as a male on the swim team, then decided he was a she — I am using the appropriate pronoun as he/she presented to the world — when she joined the female swimming team and immediately started smashing records.

Does that make you twitch, just a little?

SI writes, “In her first season swimming for the Penn women’s team after three seasons competing against men, Thomas has set pool, school, and Ivy League records and has become the nation’s top collegiate swimmer. She’s viewed as a favorite to win the 100-yard, 200-yard, and 500-yard freestyle events at the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships that begin in Atlanta on March 16. There’s potential for Thomas to break collegiate records held by Olympians Katie Ledecky and Missy Franklin when she takes to the pool later this month.”

SI doesn’t say that she was mediocre when competing against men. 

The same stellar outcome might be true for other male swimmers, but we don’t allow males to compete against female swimmers, except when they decide to identify as women. These are facts. I am not questioning Thomas’ sincerity. I will say she shows a shocking absence of awareness when she says with apparent innocence, “I’m a woman. Just like anybody else on the team.” 

No. Nobody else on the team was born with a penis, which Thomas may or may not still have. That has not been disclosed. And we are not allowed to ask. Not to mention larger lungs and bigger muscles.

Writing on Facebook, a friend of mine, a Penn alum — and uber liberal — shrugged this off with a really amazing rationale.

When Thomas wins, she knocks the woman who would have won into second place, and the second place winner to third and knocks the third woman off the podium.

So really, he wrote, a maximum of three women are negatively affected. So what’s the big deal with a little injustice? (To women?)

I guarantee if a single Black voter anywhere in America was denied access to the voting booth, he would be apoplectic.

And competition is not all about “winning,” he says, somewhat naively. It should be striving for a personal best.

OK, how about if we record Thomas’ personal best, but don’t allow her on the podium, as the Olympic committee did with Russian ice skater Kamila Valieva?

The argument ultimately gets down to fairness. 

Let’s be fair to Thomas and let her compete, some say.

I agree.

But is it fair for her to compete against biological women?

Someone came up with this idea, to protect female athletes: Have one category for biolgical female athletes, the other category for male and anyone else.

This would put Thomas into a category where she is competing against athletes with the same birth equipment, and other non-binary people.

A quick search on the Net showed twice as many trans women competing against biological women as trans men competing against biological males. 

Ask yourself why. Give it a think and you’ll soon see the latter don’t have a built-in advantage.

A quick aside. The first time I ever heard of a person with gender dysphoria, the scientific term for a feeling of wrong gender assignment, was Christine Jorgensen in the ‘50s. (I suspect “dysphoria” will be cancelled because it makes it sounds too much like a “disorder.”)

Well, that was a sensation. A male GI from the Bronx having surgery in Denmark — how European! — to remove his sexual apparatus and become female.

That was odd, discussed for a while and forgotten.

Surely  a one-off.

Until tennis player Renee Richards (born Richard Raskind in Queens, N.Y.)  in the ‘70s.

OK, that’s two. (There could have been more that were kept secret.)

Two generations later, it seemed the dam had burst.

In 2009, the former Chastity Bono — Sonny and Cher’s daughter — announced she had transitioned to male.

Followed a few years later by Bruce morphing into Caitlyn Jenner. 

An Olympian male turned female, Jenner opposes trans women in women’s sports because it is “unfair.”

I’ll let her have the final word.