Back in the late 90’s, Lance Armstrong was accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs. No one could prove he was cheating but that didn’t seem to matter. Eventually, his seven titles for winning the Tour de France were stripped. Lance was punished even though he self-identified as someone NOT taking drugs. Sure, he later admitted he did take drugs. But at the time of his victories, he was identifying as a non-drug user.
I’ve often wondered why we don’t have sports leagues for people taking performance-enhancing drugs. Instead of banning juicers from competition, we should create leagues where they can compete against each other. We all know that it isn’t fair to make non-juicers compete against chemically-enhanced humans so creating separate competitions for them just makes sense.
That will work for chemical enhancements but what about people who have mechanical enhancements? With advancements in technology, it isn’t too hard to imagine that pretty soon disabled people will have their missing-or-non-functioning body parts replaced with a prosthetic that works better than the real thing. When that happens, should we allow them to compete against non-enhanced people?
This is already here. Back in 2012, Oscar Pistorius (a.k.a. “The Blade Runner”), a double-amputee, competed in the Olympics. There was a lot of publicity and everyone was happy that a disabled person could compete at that level. As it turns out, Oscar didn’t win because he’s a much better homicidal maniac than he is a runner.
But what would have happened if he had won? I’ll tell you what would have happened. The runners competing against him would have pitched a hissy fit. They would have claimed that his mechanical enhancements gave him an unfair advantage over his competitors.
We’re already at the point where we should be considering this. For me at least, the solution is obvious: Create separate competitions for mechanically-enhanced people.
We already sort of have this. The Paralympics has tons of people who compete using some sort of prosthetic or another. But the prosthetics currently available aren’t better than the real body part so it’s not quite the same thing. When prosthetics become mechanical enhancements, that’s when we’ll need separate competitions for bionic people and run-of-the-mill disabled people.
Here’s another example: The world record for running a marathon is just over two hours. The world record for finishing a marathon in a wheelchair is about 40 minutes less than that. Would we let a wheelchair marathoner compete against a runner simply because he identified as able-bodied? Of course not. Because doing so would be ridiculous.
Anyone with even a single functioning frontal lobe can see that there’s a difference between men and women. Men are generally stronger than women and can, by default, run faster, jump higher and lift heavier things.
So, why on earth would we allow men to compete against women?
As I said the other day, you can cut off the dangly bits and add some jiggly parts but that won’t turn a man into a woman. Just because someone identifies as a woman doesn’t make him less of a man. OK. OK. If he identifies as a woman, he wasn’t much of a man in the first place. But cutting off his dangly bits won’t turn him into a woman by any stretch of the imagination.
We don’t make non-doping athletes compete against dopers, we don’t make runners compete against wheelchair marathoners and, as soon as an able-bodied person loses to a mechanically-enhanced person, we won’t let that happen anymore either.
So, why are biological females being forced to compete against males with gender dysmorphia? Because the people allowing it to happen are insane.
The solution is obvious. Let’s give them a place of their own to compete. We’ll create two leagues, one for medically-altered men and the other for medically-altered women. Separate competitions (with their own associated records) would be held for all age groups and all skill levels. The events can be live streamed and both people who want to watch them will have the opportunity to do so.
If transgender people want to compete, I say fine. Let them compete. Against each other.
This is nothing new. We already have the Paralympics for physically-disabled people and the Special Olympics for mentally-disabled people. I’m merely proposing we create a specific type of Special Olympics. One just for the people who believe they’re something they’re not.
