Will Gender Identity Ruin Women’s Sports?

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. (Wikipedia)

For fifteen years of my career in education, I coached girls’ sports. At various times and at various Texas high schools, I coached cross-country, volleyball, basketball, track, and tennis. Although I had not set out to coach girls, I took the first position I was offered and thanked God I had a job! Once I got started, I loved (almost) every minute of it.

When I first began (in the 80s), most of the young women I coached were decidedly less athletic than their male counterparts. Over the following years, I watched as they caught up. Granted there are still some small schools with poorly trained and coached athletes, but anyone watching women’s sports these days will find just how athletic the female can be. They are stronger, faster, and more highly skilled than the ladies I coached long ago, and they are a joy to watch.

Because of my love and admiration for female athletes, I have watched in wonder and horror as changes in society have had profound effects on women’s athletics. Title IX changed the face of sports for women. The feminist movement has empowered young women across our country. But now, the transgender movement, and Liberal politicians and their agendas are threatening to destroy all that has been built over the years. Recent legislation threatens to hasten the process. (Here’s a good article about the so-called Equality Act: https://reason.com/2019/05/16/equality-act-vote-in-house/)

Let me say up front, I am not in favor of discrimination. The problem with this act is that by expanding the definition of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity, we are opening a Pandora’s box of epic proportions. (Gender identity is not just a slippery slope, it’s a whole damn mountain crashing down upon us!) I will ignore the tremendous political and societal impact for the time being and focus on just the effect such legislation will have on the future of women’s sports.

First, let’s take a moment to consider a few examples of transgender athletes in the news recently and how they have dominated their female competition. In Connecticut, the state track meet was hijacked by a couple of biological males who dominated the sprints. True female athletes had to be content with third place and down. https://pjmedia.com/trending/again-transgender-athletes-dominate-at-connecticut-girls-track-state-meet/

In Texas, a girl’s state championship in wrestling went to a transgender athlete for the second consecutive year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/02/25/transgender-wrestler-mack-beggs-wins-second-texas-state-girls-championship/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1068441eebec

And who would not be shocked by the devastating knockout suffered by the female athlete who had to face a biological male in the MMA ring? https://bjj-world.com/transgender-mma-fighter-fallon-fox-breaks-skull-of-her-female-opponent/

(As a conservative Christian, I have a definite opinion of the transgender movement. Without going into specifics, I will simply say that I have many problems with their beliefs. I am not trying in any way to impose my beliefs on others, but rather sharing my opinion on the impact on women’s sports. Allowing males, biological or otherwise, to compete against females will never be fair. At the risk of sounding very politically incorrect, there are profound physical differences in males and females. The best female athletes I ever coached could have competed against their male contemporaries, but they were the rare exceptions. The average female athlete will always be at a disadvantage when forced to compete against male athletes, regardless of the labels they wear.)

But the transgender athlete is just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest issue at the moment is that by protecting everyone under the banner of gender identity, many are at the point of seriously considering granting anyone the right to compete based entirely on their own preference. By that logic, any man who chooses to self-identify as a woman will be free to jump onto the track or field or into the ring and dominate the female competitors. Are we seriously willing to allow this to happen? Where are all the feminists who have fought for so many years to protect the rights of women? Have those rights now disappeared in order to satisfy the demands of those who claim gender is fluid and anyone can be anything they want if they just wish it so?

Of course, several well known female athletes including Martina Navratilova have spoken out only to be vilified by the Left. I’m not a big fan of Piers Morgan, but let me share a clip in which he clearly points out the potential problems we can anticipate if we don’t put an end to this nonsense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I75kfAVF64A

In conclusion, I will admit, I don’t have all the answers to the problem. I do have some opinions. The strongest one is simple – let’s do all we can to preserve women’s sports and keep them pure. I don’t really know where all those other non-biological female athletes will have to go to compete, but let’s keep them out of women’s competitions or simply put, those sports will cease to exist. And that would be a tremendous loss.

Representing Your Country Poorly

I confess to not being a real fan of soccer. Still, I will watch the highlights and pull for the American teams when the World Cup and other international competitions roll around. I was truly saddened to read a recent article about the pathetic Megan Rapinoe who has to decided to put herself before team and do her best to make it all about her.

https://sports.yahoo.com/megan-rapinoe-national-anthem-sing-us-soccer-world-cup-211549494.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=1_12

I remember her kneeling for the anthem a few years ago and thinking how stupid it was. If you are playing for the national team, representing your country on the world stage, how can you disrespect your country and it’s anthem and flag? Makes no sense to me. If our country is such an embarrassment to you, find another place to play.

She no doubt has the ability and talent to compete at the top level, but seriously, you put on the red, white, and blue uniform with USA boldly emblazoned on it, and you have the nerve to say you only stand because the cowardly organization passed a rule making you, but you won’t put your hand over your heart or sing that song. What a farce!

She claims she was inspired by Colin Kaepernick and his social justice stance. I call BS on them both. I wish I could be as oppressed as these world famous athletes who have privileges I will never see. If you are sincere in your beliefs, then do something. And I don’t mean some symbolic gesture that shines a spotlight on you and how wonderful and caring a person you are. (At least CK is spending some of his millions on social programs to help underprivileged kids.)

I guess I’m just really tired of all these athletes and celebrities who feel their political opinions should count for more than the rest of us. Maybe they should just shut up and do their jobs. On the other hand, maybe I’m being a bit hypocritical myself. I do believe that athletes and others in the public eye should strive to be (positive) role models. I guess I expect them to show more by their actions and less by their sometimes empty words. Just my opinion.

Anyway, back to our team captain. In addition to her stance on the anthem, I also question her leadership in general. Already our team has drawn criticism for vigorously celebrating meaningless, late goals against comparatively weaker opponents. Celebrations that include our wonderful captain. Back when I coached, I always thought the choice of team captain was crucially important. Who you pick to represent your team as captain says a lot about your team and its members. Maybe we should have picked a better person to represent us, someone who better represents our country. Since we are the USA national team, you know.

In Praise of Small Town Life

We had a parade this weekend in my small town to honor a young lady who recently competed in the television show American Idol. She didn’t win, but she finished in the top five, and more importantly, she represented our community extremely well in all respects. So June 8^th was declared Laci Kaye Booth Day in Livingston, Texas, and we held a parade, and a short concert, and people from our town had the chance to take photos and get autographs, and it was a truly special occasion.

The parade itself took all of maybe ten minutes and I couldn’t help thinking that my city friends would probably have laughed at our expense, but there really is a certain charm to small town life. Things definitely move at a slower pace and that’s okay. Believe or not, some people like it that way. So what if our big parade only spanned seven or eight blocks and we only had to block the town’s single major intersection for five minutes. It was exciting!

I’ve spent the majority of my lifetime living in small towns and for the most part, I have enjoyed it immensely. The older I get, the less patience I have for crowds or traffic or the distances between places I need to be. I still make the occasional trip to the city to shop at Christmas or catch a movie or most importantly, to see my kids, but whenever possible, I stay put and let the small town life engulf me.

My latest book (and the sequel coming soon!), is a collection of tales set in the fictional town of Eastlake, Texas. The stories themselves are mostly true and I affectionately refer to them as my unofficial memoirs. I tell stories about the things that happen (or have happened) in the schools and churches of the average small town. And maybe they convey just a bit of what it feels like to live in those special little places. So here’s to Mathis, and Rockdale, and Pollok, and Lake Worth, and Trinity, and Coldspring, and Onalaska, and Leggett, and Livingston, places where I’ve lived and worked and learned about the small town life.

Read At the Drive-In: Small Town Tales (http://bit.ly/atdrivein) and look for Return to Eastlake: More Small Town Tales coming soon!

The Backyard Pool

I’ve spent the better (or worse) part of the last week trying to get my pool ready for the summer. With way too much shade and way too little direct sunlight hitting the water on a daily basis, I’ve waited to open the pool hoping the afternoon heat will compensate for the overnight drop into the seventies.

When the water temperature is below 80, it can be a real shock to the system! I will generally brave 76 or above. My wife, on the other hand, balks at anything not within a degree or so of the aforementioned 80. (Once I even dared the water at 74 to vacuum the bottom one last time before the end of season closing. I’ll never do that again!)

It’s a short season, but I’m really not much of a swimmer anyway. I will admit that I am more motivated to work in the yard, knowing I can cool off in the pool when I finish. In addition, some of my best novel ideas have come while floating in the pool. Of course, some of those disappeared before I could actually write them down! Ahh, the perils of old age and a faulty memory.

Anyway, I’m still waiting on the tons of chemicals I’ve dumped into the pool to work their magic and miraculously clear the water. All the ones added before closing the pool last fall have once again failed to live up to their promise to keep the water sparkling clean and clear beneath the cover. Instead I pull back the leaf covered tarp and discover water that has varied over the years from mildly green, to deep ocean green, to brown, or in the case of this year, almost black.

After several days, the chemicals have worked well enough to turn the water a cloudy blue which although not very inviting is considerably better than before. So let me go and dip another test strip into the water or perhaps take a sample to the local pool place for a quick analysis. And then, ready or not, I’m going in!