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Sports See other Sports Articles Title: The Last Hurdle in Sports I turned on the TV and saw a new reality show with an intriguing premise: How big of a head start does a white woman need to outrun a black man? While skinny women frantically raced toward the finish line, a muscular black youth sportingly spotted them a 30-meter lead, then accelerated effortlessly and overtook all but the most desperately striding Russian woman. But this turned out to be the Olympic 800-meter race for women, even though the silver medalist, South Africa’s Caster Semenya, is built like an LSU cornerback. The Olympics have always had problems figuring out who should be eligible for women’s events because men invented practically every sport—except rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming—as some kind of test of manliness. Thus, the Nazis entered the rather homely Dora Ratjen in the women’s high jump in the Berlin Olympics. Dora went on to set the women’s world record in 1938 before an Emperor’s New Clothes moment in which a train conductor objected that he was just a man in a dress, persuading Dora to change his name to Heinrich. Other early women’s track stars were what might be called self-starters. The most famous was the boyish Babe Didrikson, heroine of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. “In this century, who has ever gotten ahead by demanding fair play for the majority?” The other women on the US team found riding the train to California with Babe an ordeal because she bragged indefatigably. But the male sportswriters in LA loved her and made her a star. (In the conventional narrative, men conspire to keep women from playing sports, but history reveals that a lot of masculine ingenuity has been devoted to persuading women to try the sports that men love.) In her mid-20s a few years after her Olympic triumphs, Babe suddenly grew breasts, married professional wrestler George Zaharias, and became the first great woman pro in the more genteel sport of golf. In the 1936 women’s 100-meter dash, the six-foot-tall Helen Stephens edged out the square-jawed Stella Walsh, the 1932 gold medalist. Walsh retaliated by accusing Stephens of being a man in drag. (Hitler was so smitten by Stephens that he invited the Amazonian American to accompany him on a dirty weekend.) Decades later, an autopsy revealed that Walsh was hermaphroditic. The Cold War inspired countries to work harder to make competing in the Olympics fashionable among women. In particular, female African-American runners tended to be less butch relative to their menfolk. It was still tempting, however, to win women’s medals the old-fashioned way. The Soviet Union’s formidable Press sisters won five gold medals, retiring just weeks before sex-verification testing was instituted in 1966. The fall of the Berlin Wall reduced countries’ motivation to demand sex testing of their opponents, and the practice fell into abeyance until the victory at the 2009 World Championships by the 18-year-old Semenya. The women forced to run against Semenya complained that the youth is obviously more male than female. Unsurprisingly, according to newspaper investigations, medical scans observed undescended testicles instead of ovaries. As is common in women’s spectator sports, however, a fury of popular jingoistic feminism ensued. The report was permanently hushed up after South African sports officials played the race card, with Leonard Chuene of the RSA track association demanding, “Who are white people to question the makeup of an African girl?” (Ironically, Chuene employed Ekkart Arbeit, the East German throwing coach notorious for assigning steroids to shot-putter Heidi Krieger, who is now known as Andreas Krieger.) The basis of women’s sports is segregation by sex, a Plessy v. Ferguson-style separate-but-equal system. Therefore, women 800-meter runners argue that Semenya cheats them out of their rightful rewards. For example, Semenya’s participation in the Olympics cost third-place finisher Ekaterina Poistogova of Russia a silver medal and denied fourth-place finisher Pamela Jelimo of Kenya any medal. But who cares about majority rights? Even women’s rights are a fairly old-shoe cause compared to the ascendant LGBTQIA crusade. Elite global opinion has thus rallied to Semenya’s right to the privileges of womanhood on the newfound principle that the world must accept the claim of anybody to be any sex. What if the heavyweight boxing champion Klitschko brothers, Vitali and Wladimir, tire of fighting men and decide to enter women’s boxing in the 2016 Olympics? Should they be allowed to pummel women merely by declaring themselves the Klitschko sisters? The Klitschko brothers would no doubt consider that unmanly and dishonorable. If you suggested it to them, they might hit you, and that could hurt. Progressive moral preening is made plausible only by the survival of the majority’s old-fashioned morals. Indeed, the Semenya cause is hardly about establishing principles. Instead, it’s the latest way to assert one’s sophistication over the unenlightened. It’s all part of the war on homophobia…or stereotypes…or maybe apartheid. The elite rationalizations aren’t logical, but the mood music is irresistible: Minoritarianism has been a winning hand for so long that everybody knows you won’t get in trouble pushing even this reductio ad absurdum. In this century, who has ever gotten ahead by demanding fair play for the majority? Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights. http://takimag.com/article/the_last_hurdle_in_sports_steve_sailer/print#ixzz23kw28mQ9 Poster Comment: I pay little to sports and so it never occurred to me a lot of female athletes are actually hermaphrodites. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Turtle, 4 (#0)
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them ~ Thomas Jefferson
A relief to see that.
I sense a disturbance in the farce. Much gnashing will ensue.
She looked like she could have turned around and won all over again. Amazing.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them ~ Thomas Jefferson
You're forcing me to have unpure thoughts, Loddy. Thank you. |
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