Life is full of choices. In fact it could be argued that life is nothing but a string of choices and the results of those choices leading to yet more… choices. I’m lousy at making decisions, but it’s a reality of life and we all have to live with it. Everyday you make judgment calls and deal with the results, and every time you do you have made a call not to do something else. Should you take the highway home or the side streets? Should you eat a salad for lunch or a cheeseburger? On and on and on. We’ll get to my point in a moment.
So let’s talk about transgenderism, I know it’s a touchy subject so I’ll just go ahead and wade in recklessly to speak my mind. First off, I don’t personally believe you can change your gender. Maybe I’m a jerk, but I just don’t buy it. Here’s the thing though: Who the hell am I? I’m some guy, you shouldn’t care too much about what I think. If you want to put on a dress and call yourself a lady, knock yourself out. No skin off my back. I don’t believe you, but that shouldn’t matter if you are truly committed to your beliefs. I’m sure I believe things that you might think are nonsense, that’s absolutely fine with me. Ain’t liberty grand? Unfortunately, live and let live has a couple limits. The big question that keeps being asked is about whether or not transgender people should be allowed to compete athletically as a member of their chosen gender. Yikes.
No, I don’t think you should be. Sorry, it just isn’t fair. Fairness is an entirely imaginary concept granted, but the spirit of competition demands we at least make an attempt. It is my contention that people who are born biologically male will almost always have a natural advantage over those born biologically female when it comes to things like sports. Men tend to be faster, stronger and all around better at physical tasks. You can believe I’m wrong all you like, but deep down I think everyone knows this is true. There are plenty of things women are better at than men, but arm wrestling will never be one of them. That’s not to say a woman who trained to be great at arm wrestling couldn’t best me, but no matter how hard she trains she’ll never best a man who trains at the same level. This is true in most any sport. Laila Ali could kick my ass five ways of Friday and go home without breaking a sweat, but she’d never be able to do the same with George Foreman. They are both extremely good boxers (or were at least, I don’t know many contemporary boxers) and both devoted massive amounts of time and effort to training, but George would wipe the floor with her. And it would be horribly unfair to Laila, she would lose but not because her skills weren’t up to snuff.
So transgender people are left with a clear choice as far as I can see: Do you want to be a high level athlete or do you want to change your gender? You can’t do both, so you have to choose which one is more important to you. You know the saying “When one door closes a window opens”? Well sadly that cuts both ways. Walking through the door means the window will stay closed, or at least you won’t be there when it opens. The thing is, that isn’t unique to the transgender people of the world. We all make choices, and when we do we cost ourselves something. Sometimes we know what it costs, sometimes we don’t, but the end result is the same. This is the human condition and no amount of complaining or legislating is going to change that. Sure, we can pretend, and in doing so we just watched a man in a skirt take a bunch of medals away from women who have devoted their lives to weightlifting. I’m sure the man in the skirt worked very hard to become as strong as he is, but he started with an unfair advantage and will always have that unfair advantage.
I know this isn’t a popular opinion anymore (it will be again, just wait) but I genuinely don’t care. This is wrong, and I can’t see it any other way. No, I don’t deny the existence of trans people, I just don’t believe them. Women aren’t just men with tits, we are very different from one another and some of those difference cannot be gotten rid of. And thank goodness for it! Can you imagine how dreadfully boring life would be if we were all actually the same? I shudder to think of it, I like femininity and women tend to like masculinity. You can have a mixture of the two, we all do, but at the end of the day averages are what they are. Men tend to be more masculine and women tend to be more feminine, what a concept. There is one thing I’ll agree on though: If you believe that putting on a dress and whooping a bunch of women in a physical contest is any kind of achievement, you definitely aren’t a man.
High Altitude Liberty 