Should biological males be allowed to compete against women in college sports? The most obvious answer to that question is no. Not if we want a competitive contest.
The strongest Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) team would likely not come within 50 points of the weakest National Basketball Association (NBA) squad in a game of basketball. We will never know for sure the results of any such contest as no such event will ever be put on. But if it were, the chivalrousness of the male athletes would presumably prevent any such slaughter.
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How about a decent college basketball team?
I am not referring to one of the top ones filled with future NBA stars. How would they do against the strongest team from the WNBA? Again, a similar result. Most likely, even a good high school male basketball team would leave these female professionals in the dust.
John McEnroe, former tennis superstar, was once asked how Serena Williams, then the best female tennis player, would rank if she played on the men’s tour. “About 700th,” he said. The questioner was horrified at this answer. “‘Twas rampant sexism,” she replied. So McEnroe asked for her own opinion on this matter. Needless to say, in a huff, she refused to respond.
Matters are just about the same in volleyball, soccer, rugby, and all other such team sports in which both men and women compete. Ditto for individual competitions such as boxing, martial arts, track, swimming, ping-pong, handball, golf, and pretty much every contest known to man. Even chess, not an obvious physical pursuit, shows the same result. Men outcompete women. Case closed. Moreover, in some of these sporting events, males have physically harmed females with their greater power.
In boxing, there are weight classes. Heavyweight, cruiserweight, middleweight, flyweight, etc. Why? The goal, again, is to have a competitive contest. It would be highly problematic in this regard to match a karate expert of 100 pounds with one weighing in at 275. Ditto for swimming and track events by age category. There are separate divisions and awards in these contests every 10 years for small races and every five years for highly populated events. And this is for the same reason. When a 23-year-old beats an 83-year-old in the Boston Marathon, that is only to be expected. It is no contest.
There is only one exception to this general rule: sports that take days to complete and not mere hours. These include very long-distance swimming and running events, such as ultra-marathons. By “ultra,” I do not mean a race of 26.2 miles, which sounds pretty long to most people. In those cases, the top male competitors are knocking at the door of a mere two hours, while women are some 30 minutes behind. In this case, I am talking ultra. Here, the distances are in the several-hundreds-of-miles range or however far a runner can travel in 24 or 48 hours.
In these exceptional cases, and only in these exceptional cases, women come into their own. They are fully competitive with men and often even outdo them. Why?
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This is because females are constructed to bear extreme pain for long periods of time. Sometimes, a birth delivery can take an entire day or even two. Biology makes no similar demand of males. I know, I know, Arnold Schwarzenegger got pregnant in his movie, “Junior.” But I will arbitrarily and unscientifically ignore that bit of evidence against my thesis.
So, yes, let men and women compete in these types of events by all means. But as for allowing competition between them in more ordinary athletic events, let us have a good dose of segregation by gender.
Image of Female Track Athletes at Starting Line by tableatny on Flickr
