In many ways, this op-ed in The Boston Globe was inevitable. The Left never creates, never conserves anything.
They are human locusts who swarm from location to location, consuming everything in their path and leaving a swath of destruction behind.
For my whole life, and I'm 42 years old, I remember the Left and feminists railing against 'the patriarchy' -- this amorphous, ever-present hierarchy of male-led oppression that sought to keep women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. I never bought into the concept of the patriarchy because I was not raised to hate men.
And while I thank my forebears for some of the wins they got on behalf of womankind, I have to ask now: what was it all for?
What was the purpose of decades of rallies, sit-ins, bra-burnings, and pussy-hats if the same crowd that screamed men were the source and summit of all their problems is now letting delusional, mentally ill men ruin women's sports?
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I am always a fan of holding the Left to its own standards, so if the patriarchy was the problem for the vast majority of my life, how is submitted to an actual patriarchy of men pretending to be women (and saying they're better at it than actual women) not an egregious betrayal of everything that generations of feminists fought for?
And how is it not another stop on the slippery slope to the erasure of women?
In The Boston Globe, David Scharfenberg (who I'll note is a man) has decided the best way to obtain equality is to make sure there are no longer any professional female athletes:
Here's what Scharfenberg writes:
Decades of glory on the soccer field -- our women's national team is a force -- have been matched in recent years by a surge of star power on the basketball court.
The WNBA’s Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have become household names. And college phenom Paige Bueckers looks like she could be next.
For millions of women and girls in America, it’s been a joy. For some, it’s felt like a liberation.
They get the appeal. They’re fans themselves.
But to put women and girls in their own category, the authors insist, is to limit their possibilities.
From a very young age the expectations are lower, the facilities are inferior, the rewards are fewer. And it all carries up to the professional ranks. Last year, the mean salary for WNBA players was $120,000, a mere fraction of what the men earned in the NBA.
Bekker, a health professor at the University of Bath, and Mumford, a philosophy professor at Durham University, both in England, offer up a radical remedy for this inequality: Abolish the gender divide at all levels of sports.
Sound outlandish? They make a more compelling case than you might imagine.
I'm going to stop right there.
There is no case -- compelling or otherwise -- for making sure no woman can ever again participate in sports in any meaningful way.
Scharfenberg notes that our women's national soccer team is a 'force', but he seems to have forgotten that they once lost to a group of 15-year-old boys.
If the objection is pay, what does Scharfenberg think will happen to women who -- by some miracle -- make an all-male team? The reason male athletes get paid more is because they draw more eyes.
They draw more eyes because they are stronger, faster, and physically capable of doing spectacular things on the court. No woman -- not even Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese -- could match Jordan or LeBron for dunks and three-pointers. Men have more muscle mass, bigger frames, and are often taller with longer strides and reach.
There is no amount of training, no amount of practice, no amount of effort a woman can do to make up for these very real biological differences.
Women will just self-exclude from sports. The risk of injury and humiliation is far bigger than anyone's love of the sport.
Those who do try to compete would be in for a rough, disappointing ride.
But the more I thought about this, the more I also came to a horrifying realization: there's no way -- no way -- Leftists would sit idly by and watch women get broken, battered, and beaten on the field of sport. When every Olympic medal winner is a man, they'd start whining about how unfair it was.
And before you say, 'Well, the Left was the one who did away with gendered sports in the first place, what did they expect?' you have to remember this about the Left: their policies never consider the consequences, only how those policies make them feel in pursuit of their political agenda. That agenda shifts more often and more quickly than the wind.
Don't forget that Leftists have overhauled physical fitness tests for fire departments and military units because, while they may try and deny biology, they can't deny reality. Women can't meet the same standards as men, so they lower the standards.
What do you think they'd do to sports -- all sports -- if they got rid of gender divides?
The story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut comes to mind. If you don't know that story, it takes place in a world where everyone is perfectly equal in every way. That equality is obtained through forcing people to wear burdensome devices that ensure anyone who is too smart, too beautiful, or too athletic is knocked down a peg or two. Those who dare to live up to their fullest potential are punished. Harshly.
Doing away with the gender divide in sports means eventually doing away with guys like Jordan, LeBron, Favre, Gretzky, and all the other greats. Because, just like in Vonnegut, the Left will make sure these men are hamstrung in some way to give the women an 'equal playing field.'
Sports as we know it would be over
And maybe that's the ultimate endgame here.
