Three scenarios that would have generated universal derision ten years ago and have now been normalized by force
The onus is fully on the consumers of this crap to reject consuming it
If you’ve been around distance running for at least ten years, try to situate yourself, psychosocially and culturally, at the dawn of 2014. Now imagine these things happening:
A group of online activists initiates a campaign to allow males to compete on female-only sports teams at both the youth and adult levels, justifying this by asserting that no significant physiological differences exist between the sexes.
The American record-holder in the women’s mile publicly abdicates her gender and demands to be called “they” and “them” while continuing to accept all the accolades that accompany being the American record-holder in the women’s mile.
A 300-pound buffoon incapable of covering a single mile in fifteen minutes unfurls a nonstop stream of transparent, even childish lies about the number of races she’s finished and many other things and demands to be recognized as an athlete because she’s black and “disabled,” often supplementing these outbursts with photos of herself defecating, eating, or both.
Anyone with any integrity left will immediately admit that, ten years ago, each of these scenarios would have earned nothing but rightful laughter tinged with morbid curiosity about the motivations underlying these behaviors. In the case of the second scenario, the Letsrun message board would have been lit up with posts demanding to know why this person had not been referred by the members of her inner circle for intensive mental-health counseling.
Yet as each of these scenarios has improbably played out in recent years, the entire script has been flipped. Anyone who correctly points out that no amount of fervent wish-making and demented mass-media output can transform a human male into a human male female is now the bully, the hater, and (hilariously) someone with no business meddling in women’s sports, and is banned on social-media platforms for offering grade-school-level biology lessons. Any observer who takes issue with “nonbinary” Nikki Hiltz’s narcissistic grifting campaign and refuses to buy into the blunt-force shame loses any chance at having or retaining a voice in the sport. And instead of Latoya Shauntay Snell getting nothing but eye-rolls for her Instagram jiggle-fests and a few caustic suggestions to take her bag of diseased antics to disappear, this psychotic fabulist has become a celebrated figure and enjoys sponsorships and free trips to major marathons.
There are many ways to illustrate the dismal power of this ongoing phenomenon, but the utter collapse into mosh-pits of “social justice”-fueled sleaze-mongering of both the New York Road Runners and the Boston Athletic Association is a great place to start. Those organizations deserve to have their signature marathons obliterated by horrific windstorms, year after year, until clear-headed people lose interest in these events like they should have already.
While I accept that all of this is ultimately the result of ESG policies instituted by fuck-knuckles like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to function as social-credit scores for corporations and organizations, this doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t changed my definitions of lying, cheating, or racism. Why would I? These are static concepts a child can learn. I haven’t surrendered my willingness to debate policy changes that are clearly controversial or unwanted by most runners running fans; the people pushing these solecisms and the scammers themselves have, hiding endlessly behind muting and blocking tools.
And I will always know that boys do not under any circumstances belong on girls’ sports teams. Men do not belong on women’s teams, ever. The vicious and demented purple-haired goons arguing to the contrary may to a great extent have gotten their way in practice, but they have accomplished this solely through intimidation, not logic-based persuasion.
I am not the one who has played any kind of role in allowing distance running to become a complete joke. I used to be somewhat sympathetic to the pundits and other entities who appeared to be doing the bare minimum to play along with the ESG requirements, but all of these outfits, firms, and outlets are now all almost equally degraded, and the activity they are covering barely qualifies as a sport anymore.
This is one massive sales pitch to the idiots who buy most of the products made for runners: neurotic, MSNBC-intoxicated higher-earners who non-skeptically or even hypocritically embrace far-left claptrap. And it works, because this is one desperately sick “advanced” society.
As evidence of this sickness, look to how much support these facets of cultural insanity have enjoyed people who barely qualify as runners, yet have been given public platforms anyway. It comes from many pockets: Whiny, plod-along white hysteric-neurotics in Tracksmith gear who crave—and feel legitimately entitled to—public recognition for "racing" marathons at 10-minute pace (mostly women from Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts); pre or peri-menopausal, stealth-misogynistic homebody-harridans, a class of squawkabouts exemplified by “inclusivity” fanatics Alison Wade and Erin Strout; shifty, self-glorifying ultramarathon queens like Camille Herron; and brain-dead clowns of privilege (think the David and Megan Roche cult) who have opined that anyone who understands that males and females are in fact not randomly interchangeable animals is a right-wing MAGA Trumpist.
It seems unbelievable that anyone I’ve known since well before the pathology took root would try to tone-police what I say about any of this. It’s an inglorious and asinine mess of scammers, self-loathing harpies, and liars of all stripes angling for some of the Wokish ESG cash.
And while someone put off by how debased and pro-doping professional running has become might once have looked to the NCAA as a rootworthy option, that environment is also degraded. The freedom of college athletes already on scholarship to earn gobs of money thanks to the recently introduced NIL policy, more and more collegiate runners turning professional well before graduation, and a greater and greater preponderance of superannuated foreign athletes taking up roster spots gives American collegiate running as much of an “amateur” flavor as the Olympic Games.
It’s a macabre production, and I make no apologies for describing it as such. I’m not the one who has seen incentives to act like a retard to fit in and continue earning a living in a sport no longer worth publicizing anyway. Especially when the top American runners are both clearly doping and far, far behind the rest of the (also doped-up) world anyway.
But as most organically macabre productions have undeniably hilarious elements, I’ll continue to seek out and exploit these, because one of the only effective ways to deal with these toxic shifts in everyday life is to guffaw at them and the people who try to police the behavior of us stubborn normies.
Rudely. Just like they have treated the once-respectable (in context) sport of distance running. They may have the stage, but they need to be repeatedly reminded what cavorting and clumsy fools they look like up there.