The adage that there are no biological women/trans men competing in men's sports isn't quite true because there seems to be a number of them out there. But we don't hear much about it because they don't often win their events. Unless you follow Racewalking. But if you're a biological woman who has physiological disadvantages competing against men, team sports can dilute those because there's no I in Team. I didn't find too many women-to-men athletes competing as individuals in men's sports, but there are a lot of men to women competing in women's sports like fencing, track, field, and swimming. In those, they are cleaning up. 

And it can begin early, like in middle school, when you're a boy competing as a girl and you enter the girls' shot put competition. You can blow away the rest of the pack by a good three feet with your toss. Especially when a half dozen female competitors refuse to compete against you and drop out and your odds get even better. But what's worth noting here is that at 13, a boy's testosterone production plant is beginning to work three shifts. Not so for the ladies.

This is like running your car on Sunoco 260 GT (100 octane) in a race against a guy who fuels up with water (no octane). The administrators of that school should be ashamed of themselves, but in fact, they are probably marinating in a pot of self-identifying virtue. A few days ago, the latest story was of a biological male beating out a field of biological females in the 200-meter race at an event in Pennsylvania. Luce Allen is kind of a bruiser, clearly larger and stronger than the females, and though it doesn't look like Allen won by much, you'll notice that he began cooling jets when it was evident he was going to win. In a previous statement to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, a lawyer read a statement from Allen that said:

...forcing transgender individuals to compete against those who share a biological gender will hurt their development. "If you remove the ability of trans people to compete with a team that corresponds with their gender, then you’ll strip them of their opportunity to develop as people,” Allen said, via the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Trans athletes, like any other high school athlete, are just kids who want to compete.”

Allen's mother, Sarah Hansen, claimed that having her child compete against boys would be cruel because “My child is a female in her heart and soul, and according to her medical labs...not a male who wants to play against girls, not a predator who wants to find a way into the female locker room, and not a male who isn’t good enough to be a boy. She is a girl.”

So, a couple of things are wrong here. Allen said forcing trans people to compete with a team that corresponds to their gender will remove their ability to develop as people. But I thought gender was fluid? Allen says here that gender is the same as sex. Maybe he is just confused, I don't know. The mother says that her child is a female in heart and soul, but in my heart and soul I am a fighter pilot. In reality, I am not a fighter pilot. I am just Walter Mitty. And "medical labs?" I don't know of any medical labs that will demonstrate you're a real girl if you're a biological male. I think Ms. Hansen is confused.

Anyway, with all of this talk about cruelty and stripping away the ability for an adolescent to develop, I have to ask the question, "Where do these two things come into play for the female competitors of such biological men?" If you were a female athlete who trained and worked hard every day to become competitive in your sport, and you consistently got beaten by men, would that be more than disappointing? Sure. Especially if those unequal rules were upheld and enforced by the adults in the school administration. They might as well tie your ankles together and then tell you to go run your race. I guess I'd call that cruel. 

How about taking away an adolescent's ability to develop? Well, I guess you'd need to say that part of a kiddo's development should revolve around healthy self-esteem and an understanding of justice. These are two things that are really important to well-balanced adults in a civil society. If you train and work hard but can never win your event because the deck is stacked in favor of the opposite sex, will you still feel good about yourself? Will you become self-actualized? Or will you become discouraged and give up? Is giving up a key component of learning to become successful? No, probably not.

What about justice? If you're learning about fair play, equality (not equity) and right vs wrong, do you learn these things when the people you're supposed to trust (school administrators, coaches, teachers) hold you back by putting their thumbs on the scale? No, probably not. If anything, I think it's fair to say that promoting one individual's self-esteem by wrecking those of others is probably cruel. And it's also what we used to call "selfish." But today, selfishness is a good thing because when we are selfish, we are simply "advocating for ourselves." 

And when we advocate for ourselves at the expense of others, we build a social farm. And it's a good farm. It's an Animal Farm.