Boys in girls' races
"Boys don't belong on girls' sports teams" is about the most noncontroversial assertion imaginable. Yet in a country where unpopular positions are invariably rewarded because someone, somewhere, is always quick to equate fighting the social tide with righteousness and courage, it is.
There is no need to pedantically explore the differences between being biologically intersexed and choosing to conduct oneself as a member of the opposite gender, or between formally transitioning from male to female and choosing to conduct oneself as a member of the female gender. I understand that some people experience an undeniable conflict between the sex of the body they were given and the one their minds are compelled to identify with. Neither of these issues justifies boys competing in girls' races.
As this article notes, the top six in each event from each of the six New England states are eligible to race in the New England Indoor Championships today. As the story also describes, two of the top six in the girls' 55-meter dash at the Connecticut State Indoor Championships were boys.
The Connecticut girl who is upset that she was in effect bumped from sixth to eighth place in the 55, thereby missing the New Englands and a chance to compete in front of college coaches on a sizable stage, has an obvious and undeniable point. But even if she had simply opined it was unfair for girls to be racing against boys in what is nominally a girls' sports competition, she still would have made a righteous statement.
No one is asked to just grin and bear it if forced to run against known, out-in-the-open dopers in a championship meet. This is scarcely different. Even if only a tiny fraction of high-school boys elect to compete as girls, the impact on girls' track will remain substantial. Times, heights and distances that are middling at best for boys, like a 4:55 mile or a 54-second 400 meters, are suddenly at or near the top of any state's performance lists when the competitor is labeled a girl. Anyone who opposes the use of banned drugs but rallies behind this nonsense is in the throes of serious ethical confusion.
Ironically, although strangers to this blog would be inclined to pigeonhole the above as a conservative rant, any consistent feminist would presumably agree with it. Mediocre males finagling their way into women's competitions so they can win could be perhaps construed as the ultimate example of the often nebulous patriarchy in action. This is not an appropriate forum for social-justice dramas to play out. I say this as someone who, at this point, would sooner see any Republican U.S. Senator waterboarded and urinated on for days on end than re-elected.
The fact that 17 states have no easy recourse for dealing with this situation reflects the fact that, just as the authors of U.S. Constitution didn't anticipate a startlingly brain-dead avaricious sociopath being elected to the presidency, the people who make up rules for scholastic sports never foresaw a controversy like this erupting, understandably so. This, however, is not license to simply ignore it now.
Whatever the case, it's wrong. It's not difficult to imagine simple, if intrusive, solutions. Hopefully, regulations begin to move in this direction. This is easy for me to say, but I wish the girls in these races would start protesting for real, as in refusing en bloc to even show up for meets like the New Englands until spineless officials decide to take steps to rectify an absurd situation.