Stupefying Effects
Scrolling through X, formerly Twitter, two items caught my eye. The first, from the publication laughingly referred to as Scientific American, where we are told, in no uncertain terms:
I’ll give you a minute to process that. Let it roll around your mind. And do note the loaded, rather question-begging word inequity.
The second item, some terribly modern sporting news:
A trans-identified male student seized the title of "Fastest Sophomore Girl" at a cross country championship in Maine this past weekend.
Soren Stark-Chessa, who beat the female racers by 90 seconds, previously ranked 172nd in the Freshman Boys category.https://t.co/xiwRuPJI2J
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) October 23, 2023
In videos of the race, several spectators can be heard shouting, not without cause, “Way to cheat, bro.”
In sports that are dependent on skills other than speed, endurance, and raw power – say, archery or shooting – the difference in peak male and female performance may be negligible. But where such things are decisive – as in most sports – to not concede the obvious requires a feat of ideological contortion – a kind of learned stupidity.
And as seen by the inclusion and near-inevitable triumph of Mr Stark-Chessa, our “Fastest Sophomore Girl,” pretending at an Olympic level is very much in fashion.
As performance coach Steve Magness notes here,
None of this is meant to disparage the phenomenal women athletes at the top of their game. But if we stopped dividing sport by sex, elite women’s sport as we know it could cease to exist.
And cheating, as seen above, would presumably become an applauded norm. Or a heckled farce. I suppose it could go either way:
Professional martial artists Jayden Alexander and Ansleigh Wilk said that they were made to fight against a male with no prior warning… “When I saw him, I was so shocked I didn’t know how to respond.”
But hey, pride.
It turns out that those inherent biological differences are quite important. In terms of elite sprinting and endurance running, they result in a male advantage of around ten or twelve percent. Ditto cycling, swimming, high-jumping, skating, and many other sports, where performance differences by sex range from around five percent to, in long-jumping, around twenty.
For elite male and female weightlifters – in the same weight class – the difference in performance is around thirty percent. It’s also worth noting that men have greater grip strength than similarly trained women, about sixty percent more, and have vastly greater punching ability – more than double.
As Mr Magness adds here,
But as we’ve seen – and seen quite vividly – we mustn’t expect too much from the current, scrupulously woke, editor-in-chief of Scientific American.
Updated via the comments.
*Bangs head on desk*
Computer says no.
So they think it’s unfair that men and women aren’t the same? Er, what?
Ah, but The Patriarchy™ made Mr Stark-Chessa run faster, you see. It makes all men run faster, apparently.
Wheee.
Note that the very first, supposedly damning example of this alleged phenomenon is, as pointed out repeatedly in replies by athletes and trainers, a fundamental misunderstanding of endurance-running pace-setters. Among the words used are “ideological capture,” and “embarrassingly bad.”
Unless, of course, the thing preventing women from running as fast as men is merely, as claimed, a lack of male pace-setters, who should be there as pace-setters because they can run faster than female pace-setters. I’ll give you another minute to process that one too.
But as we’ve seen, at the new, improved Scientific American, reality and logic must take second place to certain, rather modish political preferences.
It does rather give the impression that differences in male and female athletic performance, which are a consequence of men and women being physically different – i.e., of being men and women – are something to be corrected. To be done away with. As if it were ideologically offensive. Again, the wording is quite loaded and not, it has to be said, in a particularly scientific way.
But hey, this is where we are now. Wokeness ascendant. Please adjust your files and lifestyles accordingly.
And when his stint is done, he goes back to being a male, Because, you know, any identity is fluid.
If men have no biological advantage, why does it matter what sex the pacesetter is?
[ Slides bowl of peanuts along bar to EmC. ]
You may want to pick out the chipped teeth and bottle tops.
Sadly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, the claim isn’t explored or supported. It just hangs there, weirdly, in the air.
Presumably, the assumption is that female pace-setters, being slower and having less endurance than male pace-setters, don’t help female athletes prove that they’re physically equal to men. Which you might think would have already been demonstrated by the pace-setters, who are themselves professional athletes. And likewise, the confidence of female athletes will somehow be boosted by having male athletes beat them, over and over again.
That does seem to be the… er, logic.
And by similar reasoning, that lean and toned woman, all five foot four and 120 pounds of her, could steamroller through that hefty male linebacker, all six foot four and 250 pounds of him, if only “society” and “bias” weren’t holding her back.
Well to be fair, it’s a similar stupid concept to “utopia” being automatically revealed if only capitalism were removed.
Going to need a drink first. Fill ‘er up, barkeep.
[ Fetches gin, chilli paste. ]
…a feat of ideological contortion – a kind of learned stupidity.
While we are on the subject, we have to wonder whether our runner above has had his strapless turned into a t-penis yet.
Given the damage done to society by AWFLs I have very very little sympathy that this precinct of !Empowerment is being trampled.
Until the gals themselves object I will laugh this off.
It is also not trivial to trace the young male rage at !Empowerment that threads through these stories. Why else would they do it? … Mommy Issues.
As noted here many times, the cheerleaders for the kind of unsporting behaviour seen above – and other, more serious transgressions – are to a very large extent progressive women. The AWFLs – affluent, white, female liberals – do seem pleased to inhibit normal corrective consequences.
The differences in build between the sexes are due to the unique demands of human reproduction. No other species has to deliver a baby with such a large head relative to the mother’s size. This means that women’s hips have to be larger than a man’s and shaped differently. These changes cause a large percent of women to be knock-kneed and pigeon toed. Upper body strength is not so important so it is sacrificed in order to be able to carry the fetus.
The differences are even greater than the figures David showed. For example, grip strength increases with age to about 40/45 and then declines BUT the entire curve for men is above the entire curve for women–that is a man age 70 will almost surely have greater grip strength than a woman of any age. The ability to withstand blows and impacts is also pretty non-overlapping which is why women in army basic training tend to get injuries to their hips/legs that are permanently disabling and may even prevent carrying a baby.
In high school Scientific American was one reason I became a scientist. Sadly it is a political rag now.
I was reminded of a video, which I now can’t find, showing teenage girls cheering on another girl to tackle one of the boys in a rugby / American football manner. The results of the attempt were alarming, and the cheering soon stopped.
[ Added: ]
At the time, it struck me as a serious lesson for everyone concerned. The cheering, goading girls had some ‘girl power’ illusions shattered; one foolish girl got an inkling of what it’s like to be hit by a bus; and the equally foolish boy who, I assume, had been goaded into the exercise, was presumably left feeling pretty shit too.
But it would seem we have to relearn the bloody obvious.
I have had 3 different women who did not like some joke I made (and really they misunderstood and took offense) who hit me on the shoulder or in the chest. It was comical really. In one case the woman gave her best shot to my shoulder. Women really should not try to hit a man.
Interesting anatomical fact: the thickest part of the male skull is the forehead, which is where in primitive times he would get smacked with a club.
Years ago, decades ago actually, I noticed that Scientific American was becoming less and less…scientific. When I mentioned this to people, friends, coworkers, etc. they scoffed. How stupid. “Scientific” is right there in the name.
Here’s a thing…wait until they catch on to how those of us in Teh Patriarchy let girls/women gain some degree of relative competitive advantages in sports like swimming until they are about 14, 15, or 16 but then the boys/men absolutely crush them. Ooh, we’re real bastards when we play that game.
Laugh at your eventual expense. Agree on the sympathy factor. Women who fail to speak up and out about this idiocy have zero respect from me. Which reduces the females whom I respect down to about a half dozen or so that I know, Riley Gaines, maybe Nancy Hogshead (and damn it, I think I deserve some credit for getting her to speak up), and my wife. Good thing I’m already married. Maybe.
It does rather give the impression that differences in male and female athletic performance, which are a consequence of men and women being physically different – i.e., of being men and women – are something to be corrected
Now do athletic scholarships.
We’re only here because women used cult-marx lawfare to force universities to redirect funding from men’s sports and scholarships to women’s sports and scholarships.
Sorry, ladies. We didn’t make the new rules. But those are the new rules.
That.
AWFLs – didn’t know that one.
Regarding our “Fastest Sophomore Girl,” this seems to be an intriguing coincidence.
It does rather capture the essence of the thing.
Not to mention, really it’s debunked pseudoscience to even bring it up, the endurance event that women, and women only, have always participated in.
The author, who herself is a female powerlifter, concedes male advantage in her own sport, but is putting a bet that nature designed women in the old days for persistence hunting with the boys and these days for outrunning them over 26 miles and 385 yards of asphalt, if only society wasn’t slowing them down.
The female marathon record was broken last month, taken down from 2:14 to 2:11. Compare with Abebe Bikila’s world records in the Rome and Tokyo Olympics – 2:15 (barefoot), 2:12 (shoe-assisted). So only 60 years behind. Faith Kipyegon smashed the mile record this summer by 5 seconds, taking it from the 1886 to 1933 on the male timeline. In the 100m, women are running times that would have won gold medals up to the 1912 Olympics.
And then the debunkers of racist sexist skull-measuring pseudoscience came for … the participants in a 1960’s anthropological conference.
I’ll just leave this here for no reason whatsoever.
More & more it seems that publication is a true representation of the state of American science.
To be fair, not all of science is corrupted, just anthropology, medicine, climate change, environmental science, toxicology, psychology, sociology …..oh.
*snort*
Is it “society” that’s the 12 inches and “bias” the 130 pounds or the other way ’round?
“She is board certified by the AAP […]”
Weird how they have male and female divisions in chess.
At some point, the women who go out and compete with these imposters have to refuse. Real women athletes unwittingly give these imposters cover. When I heard a complaining female swimmer refer to Thomas as “she”. I had to ask, if you’re willing to refer to him as “she”, what’s the problem? This is what happens when you don’t immediately draw the line. The line moves.
The shock and upset of working a 9-to-5.
Weird how they have male and female divisions in chess.
Well, the female can move eight times as fast as the male…
The comments – “Your feelings are valid.”
The elephant on the room is this: cheating has been normalised over the last few decades. By women.
If a man competing in a women’s event by pretending men and women are indistinguishable is called a cheat (rightly so)
What do you call women who screech about “equity” and demand rewards, prize money etc they haven’t earned or deserved, by pretending men and women are indistinguishable?
It’s just that men tend to have stronger opinions about honour, self respect and honesty, clearly.
The fact that women in general (not just feminists) have gone along with “gender equality” merely shows that women are lacking in those qualities.