Caitlyn Jenner’s new look opened up a lot of discussion over the past few news cycles, and brought about some relevant questions.
Like this one: How would Bruce Jenner have fared in the 1976 Summer Olympic Games had he already undergone sex reassignment surgery and competed against the women?
Jenner is 65 years old, which is unfortunate from the standpoint that she is well past her physical prime, and there is no way of knowing now how she might have performed against the elite female athletes of her day.
But I’m going out on a limb to say that, had Jenner competed in the women’s heptathlon that year instead of the men’s decathlon, she would have won the gold medal there, too.
This is based solely on a hunch – that, plus her physical composition compared to the rest of the field. A larger frame, quicker reactions, and greater lung capacity, muscle mass and bone density would have made Jenner the big favorite.
Or was that one a little obvious?
It wasn’t obvious to the tennis federation that allowed transgendered Renee Richards to compete in, and draw prize money from, the women’s tour back in the late 1970s.
Later in life, Richards, now 80 years old, renounced her success on the court against other women, to the extent of acknowledging that her original genetic makeup gave her an unfair advantage against the women she played.
But first prize for full-on idiocy goes to the Mixed Martial Arts governing body, which has allowed transgendered competitor Fallon Fox to fight other women.
Check out the domestic violence files for a view of how men fare in physical confrontations against women. Men “win” almost all of these battles, for the same reasons that Caitlyn Jenner would have blown away the field in the ’76 women’s heptathlon: bigger, faster, stronger – you know, the traits that were so helpful to cavemen persuading women back to their place after their Plan A pickup rap fell short.
Fallon Fox’s most recent opponent, Tamika Brents, suffered a broken orbital bone and required seven staples in the head after the beating administered by Fox.
Could anyone seriously not have seen this coming, and is it going to take a death inside the “cage” before anyone running that show gets the message?
“Her grip was different,” Brents said. “Fighting against women, I can usually move around in the clinch. I couldn’t move around with her at all.
“I’ve fought a lot of women, and I’ve never felt that kind of strength. I’m an abnormally strong female in my own right. I can’t say for sure whether it’s because she was born a man, because I’m not a doctor.”
And I’m not a neurologist, but I know that if she really can’t work out the difference, she might have taken too many knocks on the head.
The reasons for why a man would wish to live his life as a woman are sundry, complicated, and his own. When one of the reasons is so that in the new life as a woman she may physically pound other women’s faces into hamburger is when sensible lines have to be drawn.
Gender equality, tolerance and inclusion are admirable aspects of society today. Putting a woman in mortal danger to accommodate political correctness is beyond wrong; it is insane.
In matchups of raw athletic completion, elite male athletes will outstrip elite female athletes 100 times out of 100. Those who would disagree, or decry the unfairness of that fact can take it up with the Cosmic Engineer who drew up the whole deal in the first place.
