I was a lousy athlete, but I never wanted to play against a girl to make myself look better.
I was a chubby, sometimes fat kid. I was always both big and tall for my age, which led to me be kind of a lumbering force on whatever field or court I was on. Coordination was not my strong suit.
I tried, and tried hard. I was a slightly below average baseball player and a lousy basketball player (although my height and size made me handy for intimidating the opposition). On the diamond, I learned quickly that I had to be a long ball hitter, since there was no way I could beat a thrown ball to the base by running.
The less said about my two-hour football career the better. Teams were decided by size, not age. I was almost ejected from tryouts, since I wanted to hit the bigger boys back, harder than they hit me, and in a manner different than those proscribed on the gridiron. But that’s a column for another day.
Regular sports just weren’t for me, but one day someone stuck a gun in my hand and taught me the joys of wingshooting. Someone else taught me to track animals. I often preferred being a solitary kid, anyway, so hunting and fishing were more my style than conventional sports.
I wasn’t good at regular sports, so I had to deal with the disappointment and drive on. It wasn’t always easy, but that’s life. Even though I was a lousy athlete, even when I tried my best, I never had to play against a girl to prove myself.
There was a girl on my youth baseball team; we were at the age that we weren’t sure about girls on any level, much less playing ball. Turned out she was a heckuva instinctive infielder, and could send a fastball back down a pitcher’s throat with enough power to burn the stitches. She was an aggressive baserunner, too. We ended up being proud to have her with us, but then again, I think baseball at that level can be played by boys and girls, side by side, with no call for confusion.
I have a great-niece who is a bit of a tomboy, and a restless athlete. She’s tried cheerleading as well as other sports, but she loves playing youth football. She is still all-girl. She doesn’t think she’s a boy. She’s just tough, tougher than some of the boys, from what I’m told.
I think it is a travesty to allow males to compete in women’s sports. We men are built differently, even as boys. Putting boys in girls’ sports is like dropping a Camaro in the monster truck lineup at a mudpit, or putting a big-tired four-by-four on the starting line at the local dragstrip.
You can say the Camaro is a truck all you want, or swear on a stack of Bibles that the truck is a dragster, but that doesn’t make it true. And it’s foolishness to ask the owners of the mudbog or racetrack to change the rules on your account.
These days we are expected to bow down at the feet of anyone who identifies as a gender or sex other than that assigned by their DNA and confirmed by their anatomy. And those same confused folks sometimes expect special treatment — such as being allowed to play sports with the opposite sex — while insisting they just want to be treated like anyone else. Anyone who disagrees is a bad, bad person. I reckon I am just plain bad.
I won’t earn a lot of friends by saying this, but I strongly suspect quite a bit of the “self-identifying” stuff going on nowadays is due to marketing. It seems like a cool way to stand out in a crowd for some kids; others just want to rebel, as teens and young people always have. Some is a ridiculous sense of media-fomented and society-imprinted guilt. Some is mental illness. Some is (laugh if you will) demonic influence.
I think much of this is driven by the talking heads and style mavens who aren’t happy when they aren’t in the spotlight. It’s then reinforced by those in the education field who are frightened of the mob, who are themselves frightened of standing up for the truth. And when a curious child asks the wrong/right question, a little girl is a bit tomboyish, or a boy wants a Barbie bride for his GI Joe, well, we’re evil if we don’t start teaching little kids about alternate sexualities before they are well and truly pottytrained. Those who claim to be our superiors insist kids must be taught about making a choice before they even have a real understanding that boys and girls are different, and why they were made that way.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Popular society and the desperate, degenerate media will feed trends which society demands be followed, because the cool people in society say something in the media, which the media insists is gospel because the media is just repeating what the cool people said.
If you don’t agree – well, you’re homophobic, and subject to being digitally assaulted, doxed, and placed on the virtual gallows with all the other intolerant evildoers until you are screamed into submission.
So we end up with boys who can’t compete against other boys suddenly deciding they are girls, and setting new world records in women’s sports.
Even without all the logistical problems – such as girls not being comfortable sharing a locker room or showers with a boy, no matter how he identifies, or the poorly parented, perverted, pubescent predators who put on a skirt so they can rape girls in bathrooms – this is flat-out wrong.
It’s not fair to the female athletes who train harder than their equals for a male to come in and win. Competitive sports are supposed to be about heart, work and above all, fair play.
There’s nothing fair about having males participate in female sports, once kids have progressed into adolescence. I don’t care if some poor fellow is not as fast, nimble or strong as his teammates. It should make him strive harder, and failing that, he should find another outlet. He shouldn’t be allowed to run or lift or swim or play against girls just because he decides he is a girl. There’s nothing fair about allowing a boy or girl to decide they are the opposite sex, when they aren’t old enough to consistently wear matching socks.
It should be criminal to shove sexual identity down the throats of children, athletes or otherwise. Kids have enough problems to deal with, just growing up. They need time as kids to learn decision-making skills that help them as grownups, even if they occasionally fail.
If someone wants to decide they are “different,” that is their right as a thinking adult. I won’t endorse, condone or support their choice, and I will pray for them, but that doesn’t mean I hate said individual. I just won’t excuse said individual’s behavior because of his/her poor decision.
If you want to drive a sports car into a mudbog because you think it’s a four-wheel-drive truck, that’s your right. But I ain’t going to applaud your courage for choosing the wrong race to run.
