July 20, 2022
The University of Pennsylvania recently nominated Lia Thomas, a now infamous transgender swimmer, as NCAA “Woman of the Year”. Lia who, while competing as a male swimmer was only “an also ran” but, as a female competing with women, won every competition she entered. Her season record only underscored with finality the well-documented physical advantages of long-term exposure to testosterone.
The NCAA (National College Athletic Association) Woman of the Year award was created in 1991 to honor graduating female athletes who have demonstrated outstanding qualities in their sport, and academic achievement. Lia certainly did stand out in her competition, and had a winning season. Given the rules, the award had to go to her.
However, as expected the announcement engendered a public outcry. The award and the public disapproval it generated illustrates how fixated we have recently become regarding: gender, sex-orientation, “Woke” as well as equity, diversity, and inclusion matters. Then too the rules leave us hide-bound and impotent in our response due to their conflicting imperatives.
The U/Penn award revolves around questions of gender, which was once strictly an anatomical and chromosomal matter. Today, “gender”divorced from human anatomy, allosomal chromosomes, biology, physiology, or organic chemistry, has in some quarters, been reduced to only “how one feels”. If Lia “feels” like a “she” and convinces herself she “should be a woman”, she has an option of being pumped up with female hormones. As a competitive swimmer, after only several months of pre-competition female hormone therapy, the NCAA and Title XI rules make it clear —impractical as they are— that if she “feels” like a woman she can compete as a “female”.
These “rules” leave most of us in conflict and confusion. Although NCAA outlaws the use of other athletic performance enhancing drugs, chemicals and hormones, it ignores hormonal treatments for transgender athletes. A male athlete injecting physiologically active chemicals to enhance performance would be cast out of competition and perhaps even sanctioned for poor sportsmanship. Yet they permit a swimmer with a life long exposure to testosterone to compete as a female after only several months of hormone replacement therapy.
These frought, difficult decisions must have had the NCAA U/Penn awards committee biting their nails down to stubs. The committee finally succumbed to public pressure from certain quarters. Their decision ignored the accomplishments of U/Penn biologically female swimmers (who were at a anatomical and physiological disadvantage) and supported a transgender swimmer for the award.
But outside of the Ivy League “progressive bubble” other, perhaps more practical and science based responses seem to hold sway. Take the case of the New Jersey Corrections Department. Not far away, and on nearly the same day as the 2022 Woman of the Year announcement, the New Jersey, state correctional system was forced to respond to another transgender situation. They faced a problem at an all-female correctional institution, where a (formerly male ) transgender inmate managed to successfully impregnate two female inmates. Officials were faced with continuing to imprison the transgender female who persisted in impregnating biologically female inmates, or face biological reality and move the offending inmate elsewhere.
After some delay (two pregnancies) the “culprit” was duly transferred to a “male only” correctional wing of the institution. In this case the NJ correctional system acted to protect its female inmate population. Faced with the actual consequences of biology in action—as well as the extra medical expenses and costly care for its now pregnant female inmates—the officials were forced to act—and did so in a fair and logical way.
Does this clarify the problem for some? In New Jersey, biology counts more than just how a person “feels”. Not so in neighboring Pennsylvania. There, though the consequences in the Lia Thomas award resulted in —no “baby bumps”, and there were no glaringly obvious consequences of “biology in action”—at least to the officials, who were faced only with a embarrassingly successful transgender swimmer competing with females.
Thus in one case, New Jersey officials were forced to respect and respond to raw biological exigencies. In the other, officials could remain oblivious to lack of fairness, emotional pain, and damage to careers, as well as the future athletic performances of the female athletes they passed up.
Isn’t it time to treat everyone with equality and dignity, both minority and majority? Is it not time to return to “science” which governs our biological lives? And when we do let us underscore the fact that “feelings” are subjective and changeable and should be not be weighed as equal with actual anatomy, allosomal chromosomes, and hormonal physiology.
Ask those two pregnant inmates…...
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