My Stance On Transgender Athletes

 My philosophy on life has always been, "as long as you're not hurting someone else, do as you please." 

During my college years and up through my mid twenties, I identified as a liberal. 

Around the age of 26, I realized that I was more of a centrist and I've identified as a moderate ever since. However because I am so passionate about civil and social issues, and on a lot of them I lean left most still think of me as liberal. 

I am a total body sovereignist when it comes to drug usage. That surprises many people because I'm not a drug user. I never have been. I don't smoke and I drink less per year than some people do in  a weekend. 

I've attended two gay weddings in my life, one of them I was even in. I fully support gays adopting. I even once marched in a gay parade.

I've always been supportive of the transgender community as well. Ashley and I knew a guy who had been excommunicated from his family and had no place to go. We gave him a cheap place to stay to help him out. 

6 months later back on the feet with a good job and an ability to get a place. He walked into our home John and she left our home June Serenity. We still associate and support June to this day.

With that said though the current issue of transgender women in female sports has caused me to have any liberal status that was ever given to me completely revoked. 

I cannot support transgender women competing against biological women because it all goes back to the philosophy that I've had from the very beginning. 

"As long as it doesn't hurt someone else." 

Well I believe this is hurting someone else. I believe that women's rights are in jeopardy. When you look at the history of the challenges and tribulations that women have had to go through to even have a right to participate in sports, you realize how difficult the road has been. 

Find women that graduated high school before 1968 in the state of Iowa for example. Ask them if they played sports. They will tell you that they didn't. You want to know why? They weren't allowed to. While all of the boys in their class got to play football, play basketball, wrestle, run track, play golf and play baseball, there were no sports for girls. 

As a Collegiate wrestling historian, I've made it my business to know as much about Title IX as I can. A lot of people don't realize how needed Title IX was at one time.  We take for granted now that we have so many opportunities for women in sports at the high school and college level. It wasn't always like that. The roads had to be paved, and the barriers in those roads were very real. Think of some of your favorite female athletes. I imagine a lot of them are your daughters, your nieces, your friends. A little over 50 years ago, they would not have even been allowed to participate. 

About 20 years ago I did a study comparing male Olympic athletes to female Olympic athletes in the sport of weightlifting. Similar weight classes. Here are the results of what I found making comparisons. Women who finished gold, silver or bronze, would not have medaled against any of the men. Men who finished very low against other men, would have medaled if they had entered the women's division. We're talking men that finished 25th, that would have won a gold medal in the women's division. 

In my own personal life, I was once in a bracket with Liz Sanders of Newton. If you know anything about my wrestling background, calling me a mediocre wrestler is being very kind. Liz had won all sorts of tournaments and awards in women's wrestling. There weren't the tournaments and opportunities back then, like there are today, but she still won some pretty big tournaments including some on a national scale. 

I pinned Liz in 25 seconds. She finished in last place that day. 

I did articles where I spoke with various female wrestlers. Some of them did have success against guys, but there were also a lot of them that were state champions in the girls division, who struggled against the guys. 

So many of the issues in today's society are polarizing topics, that I like to refer to as lose-lose situations. The world wants you to lose friends and gain enemies I guess. 

This is one of those issues. 

Fairness is something that is extremely important to me. I value being fair. It is of the highest priority to me. 

This weighs heavy on my mind because it seems to me no matter where you stand on this issue you're being very unfair to someone. 

If you are all for transgender women competing against biological women, I feel that you are being unfair to biological women & you are a major setback to all of the progress that has been made. 

Then again, I question if it is unfair to transgender women to tell them that they cannot compete against biological women. 

If Society were trying to keep transgender women from competing at all, then I think we would have an issue. If we were trying to prevent their participation completely, then we would have an issue. 

But I don't think it's wrong to say that transgender women shouldn't be allowed to compete against biological women. 

Studies have shown and proven that biological males have significant advantages in strength, stamina, endurance and agility.  This puts a transgendered woman at an advantage over a biological woman. 

I understand and empathize that transgender women may feel hurt by being told that they should be competing against people of equal standing, i.e. biological male athletes. 

Yet again, I asked myself who is hurt more? Who suffers more as a result? Biological women against transgendered women? Or transgendered women against biological males? 

In a perfect world we would have four categories. Biological men, biological women, transgender women and transgender men. Athletics would be set up to be fair and benefit all involved. 

Well, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where tough choices have to be made. We live in a world where not everyone is going to end up happy with the choices that are made. We live in a world where someone's going to leave feeling that they got the short end of the stick. 

There's a good chance because so many of my friends who would read this are staunchly liberal, that you might disagree with me. 

That's fine but in the same token, ask yourself if you feel that any decision would be fully fair to everyone involved. 

This issue really comes down to transgender rights Vs women's rights. 

If you have to stand somewhere, and you have to make a decision, then I have made mine. This is where I stand.