The sanctification of Nikki Hiltz's "nonbinary" status is only one of many reasons pro running is in the toilet

Hiltz could grow a handlebar mustache at this point and her fans wouldn't blink

The most obviously inane of the many unattractive aspects of professional running is the emergence and especially the sanctification of the sham identity “nonbinary.”

This notion’s proponents—small in number, but magnificently ignorant, loud, and censorious in practice—cannot explain what “nonbinary” means any better than anyone can draw a square circle. That’s because claiming to be “nonbinary”—i.e., a bipedal primate born with no genitals or genitals only others can see—is no different than claiming to have been given instructions by God or the neighbors’ Labrador retriever.

This is a private and hence non-falsifiable revelation and contains no debatable or even definable content. Someone claiming to be a hobbit or a warlock or a sorceress is making no more sense than someone claiming to be “nonbinary”—but also no less. It’s as impossible to argue against the concept of “nonbinary” (or warlockhood) as it is to support it.

Which is the entire point: This is one more aspect of Wokism being used as a wrecking ball, or in Wokish parlance, “problematizing” or “disrupting” or “dismantling” systems. It’s one more way—along with “transwomen are women,” “Get the shots and stay home to protect others,” and “PoC can’t be racist”—to force people of sound mind to obey a blatantly idiotic directive.

Do advocates for such rank buncombe really expect normies to think something that was invented only in recent years is an integral component of who thousands if not millions of people are, a kind of secular “soul” and simply beyond criticism? To treat as absolutely sacred a joke that even most sixth-graders would—in a sane world, anyway—find not only silly but uncreative and unentertaining?

No, they don’t. But they know they have perverse cultural momentum and corporate cash on their side; perhaps unbeknownst to them, they also have unbridled narcissism and weak intellects on their side as well. They are practically deities! And so these nimrods are confident—with good reason—that anyone who antagonizes or even questions this goofy circus will quickly be excluded and, if possible, punished. All for pointing out the exceptionally obvious.

I don’t know how well I have stressed this point before, but I don’t care if someone wants to sculpt a fantasy or at least unverifiable reality for themselves that eases the pain of being alive. If someone believes she is going to Heaven someday or will suddenly start running sub-14:00 5Ks after years at the 19:00 level, or is going to win the lottery soon, great.

That is, as long as they don’t demand that others adopt the same delusion or unprovable idea. At least not when these abjectly nonsensical demands work, as so many of them do in the rasterized and deprogrammed shitscape that has come to define everyday citizen life.

The moment rules are put in place around such an idea, the idea becomes deeply problematic: At that point, it is clear that “nonbinary” is just one more word that can be deployed as excuse for canceling people, scamming, whining, and carrying on like a toddler who got into the methamphetamine-laced table sugar again.

And that’s where the people and entities in charge of publicizing track and field are right now: Not only pretending “nonbinary” exists but proposing it as the most sacred concept imaginable, not to be criticized or even innocently mishandled by television broadcasters.

Nikki Hiltz is an American 1,500-meter runner and lesbian who realized a few years ago, early in her grifting journey and before the advent of apocalyptic Wokism, that merely being gay wasn’t going to cut it. After all, everyone knows women’s sports would be about half of what they are today without a grand historical splash of lesbians, from full-on turbodykes to the modestly butch, having served as athletes and coaches—many of them in eras in which they couldn’t be open about their sexuality (often a formality, but still). Lesbians tend to approach sports like men do; they primarily want to win, often badly, and are unconcerned with how this looks to anyone else.

Hiltz decided in the spring of 2021 to be transgender and “nonbinary.” At the time, I “credited” her with being kooky enough to believe this; she probably was, but now she’s undoubtedly more focused on how much she can enrich herself with this display.

Running from the Facts: "Muttering into a bullhorn" edition

That a “nonbinary” person cannot be a lesbian is one of many jarring contradictions that has never entered the minds of corporate information merchants. Look closely at what you see when you click on this link and keep it in mind whenever you see Nikki Hiltz complain that trans and “nonbinary” people are marginalized and mistreated. (Hiltz will also never be suspended for doping even if she’s caught doping. In fact, she could wash up at USA Outdoors this summer with a goatee—I’d advise complementing this with a porkpie hat—and everyone would pretend she just got out of bed that morning looking like that.)

Hiltz recently won the 1,500 meters at the USATF Indoor National Championships, as poorly attended for whatever reason by top Americans in 2023 as it usually is (maybe USA Indoors always being in Albuquerque at 5,000’ discourages athletes intent on running fast times).

This set off a competition among running’s PR dingbats to prove how strongly they were on board with Hiltz’s evangelizing from La-La-Land.

Apparently, Chavez believes in the concept of a closeted nonbinary person. Why on Earth he thinks anyone would stay in that closet when anyone emerging from it is basically handed a Rolex and a Bentley is beyond me, but Chris Chavez has never said anything intelligent as long as he’s been in distance-running’s piss-water version of the public eye.

Alison Wade of Fast Women was her usual gleefully clueless and authoritarian self:

This has an incredible amount of stupidity for one paragraph, even for Alison Wade. For one thing, if the possibility even exists that an openly “nonbinary” athlete has already won a national title, then how meaningful can the concept of “nonbinary” be? Wade gets so fired up over anti-women feminism that she often slips up and reveals the fundamental illegitimacy of the label.

For another thing, Wade seems to think being noisy on social media is a prima facie reason to root for someone. In fact, it’s usually a good reason to root against someone. I bet I could find some high-profile female Instagram athletes far better than Hiltz whom Wade wouldn’t like at all.

Those things are just dumb and easy enough to overlook. But the part about her feeling “satisfied” at the announcers’ successful compliance—in addition to advertising that she’s probably never experienced an orgasm—is not. She doesn’t get to order others what to say, and neither does anyone else. And this would be true even if she could make a case for “nonbinary”; that no one can is the very reason for this speech-absolutism.

As with covid, certain laptops, and Ukraine, people have been kicked off platforms not for being wrong, but for properly debunking a corrupt MSM narrative. When people are clearly wrong about something, even censorious fools would rather tear apart a bad argument and humiliate its source than whisk it out of view. Wade knows “nonbinary” is a classic nothingburger and that if too many people point this out, white suburban harridans will lose traction and even more brain cells.

Goucher and Swangard would obviously rather not have to do this, even if Goucher—already great announcer, in my opinion, when allowed to just analyze and say what she’s thinking about what she’s watching—is also a supporter of Wokism-bred social-media antiheroes like Latoya Snell, out of not malice but a wayward desire to impress too many people in her second career (she was a professional runner, now she’s a professional mom, wife and mortgage- or at least property-tax payer).

But let’s say one or both, or any announcer or online pundit, had “screwed up” and called the woman named Nikki Hiltz running for a women’s national title a “her” or a “she.” What are the horrible consequences of this?

Does an “errant” pronoun undo the unique traits of a “nonbinary” person and force them to admit they’re actually either female or male? Does it make them slow down on the track? Does it cause their sponsors to change their minds? Does it undo the magic spell, forcing the “nonbinary” “soul” to shoot out of people’s mouths and into the sky, gone forever like a helium (but not Chinese) balloon?

As I have said before, I don’t care who, male or female, likes to chow a good box versus gobbling a nice veiny knob every now and again; some people prefer both, an awkward attribute to fault. And if someone wants to adopt or create a brand or social-media shtick, however bizarre, I am a free-expression guy and I say go for it. The more jubilantly weird it makes you and everyone around you look, the funnier it is, provided there are no bystander costs.

But if self-absorbed, swindling, or unwell athletes need to work counterfactual oddities into their personas, this needs to happen with concessions, as it does in other areas. Christian athletes have been claiming in live television interviews God is on their side in every sport there is for decades, always after wins and never after losses, and the sports world just absorbs this with without pretending the interviewee would have different responses if someone brought up God after a loss.

If a player wants to believe this, it’s his or her right to say so. But most of the rest of the planet is quietly not buying while watching these interviews. It’s not necessary, and there is no cost to just letting athletes claim to be animated or motivated by whatever they believe empowers them or letting people laugh at this if they want. Announcers could mention that someone identifies as “nonbinary” and still call her a “she” and a “her” during her races because she is a woman running in women’s races. I see it, you see it, we all see it. Hiltz can save the “they” jabber for her slumber parties.

But the Wokish hate laughter, humor, and fun. They really do. They are only “pleased” when they have something to complain about. And they really don’t like it when people invite them to gain a minimal understanding molecular biology, words, and other relevant tools.

And they’re all hypocrites, too—it’s hard not to be when trying to extinguish other opinions while voluntarily spending all day on Twitter. Can you imagine inhabiting the mind of this woman for five minutes? I’m sensing the strong smell of an overfilled kitty-litter box combined with empty, echoing promises to actually start running again. Someday.

None of this is happening from within. NBC Sports is a huge and sickened company, and someone at that company sent down a broadcast directive to emphasize the things Goucher and Swangard needed to do (and did). Whoever’s responsible deserves to be punched in the face, but whoever this is at NBC Sports would merely offer an Alfred E. Neuman grin and blame someone higher in the chain of cultural-insanity enforcement.

Imagine what might happen if the people droning on about the value of difficult conversations had any capacity to engage in difficult conversations instead of avoiding them in every way possible and trying instead to ram idiocy into the mainstream by fiat.

These girls don’t want naked boys in their locker rooms or in the starting blocks next to them. Ask them.

I wish I were not hooked on this sport so I could simply quit paying attention to it. It would be wise if I did. But at least I’m immune, for whatever reason, to worries about other people’s reactions to my excessive doses of reality. It’s no consolation that the rest of society is just as ailing, muzzled, griftacious, demented, and inhospitable to people who happen to be normal (at least when it comes to perceiving the basics of everyday existence) and opinionated. I guess I don’t really see any problem in being ostracized in any way from a rhetorical environment this degraded.