Caitlyn Jenner has a new stance on the transgender athlete debate — again.
First a supporter of the concept of biologically male transgender girls playing women’s sports, Jenner came out against it while running for governor of California. The Republican and former Olympic star now has a different opinion: Those who transitioned from male to female young should have the opportunity to compete against girls.
It’s yet another example of Jenner being a social liberal and a reason why Jenner probably won’t have a ton of Republican support. However, it also shows how liberals such as Jenner regularly deny science.
Sports have been segregated by sex for ages for a reason. We all know why: so that girls can also play sports because boys, on average, are bigger and stronger than them. There are many exceptions to the rule and girls who fare well when competing against boys, but they are not extremely common.
The average adult male in the United States is 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 199.8 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while the average adult female is 5 feet, 3.5 inches tall and weighs 170.8 pounds.
Additionally, the average man produces 10 times more testosterone than the average woman, as the Journal of Applied Physiology notes. With those size and testosterone advantages, men also have far more muscle than women. They have, on average, 26.4 more pounds of muscle than women (72.6 pounds versus 46.2 pounds). As a result, men typically have 40% more upper body muscle mass than women and 33% more lower body muscle mass, according to that same study.
If someone looks at that and thinks it’s a better idea if biological males compete against other biological males rather than biological females, that doesn’t make them a bigot. It means they live in reality. No one is saying that transgender girls can’t play sports. Rather, in the rare instances when the issue comes up, they say that those people can compete against other biological males.
Ignoring the science is nothing new for many liberals, either. When it comes to killing an unborn human via abortion, they’ll ignore the biological consensus that life begins at conception. Some liberals oppose nuclear energy despite the fact that it’s safe and the largest form of carbon-free energy in the country. Maybe that anti-science approach from liberals looks like the Food and Drug Administration not approving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine because it doesn’t understand risk management — or fully vaccinated liberals wearing masks to own the conservatives.
Our country is a better place when politics are based in fact, and we won’t get there if people in either major party refuse to accept reality because it doesn’t fit their agenda.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
