It was a fine spectacle last week when a mighty throng of high school and middle school girls, accompanied by their long-suffering parents, descended upon the Assembly Education Committee in Nevada, pleading for what ought to be the most self-evident right in the world–the right for women to compete against women in their sporting events. But, alas, such simple logic is not so simple to those who fancy themselves the improvers of society–nor to those who look at a straight line and declare it a circle.
The object of the day’s grand petitioning was AB 240, a bill with the shocking audacity to assert that biological males ought not to compete in women’s sports—a principle so sound that only a politician could find fault with it. Sixteen Republican legislators stood in favor, which in the strange arithmetic of modern politics means it needs opposing with all the might of those who find reason a troublesome burden.
Chairwoman Selena Torres-Fossett, a Democrat by trade and an educator by profession–though one wonders whether she prefers ignorance to knowledge–was unmoved. She said with the confidence of a lady who knows, “Nevada voters were not talking to me about this.”
Instead, they were worried about housing, prescription costs, and the price of a loaf of bread. No doubt they are—but perhaps that is because common folk assume certain things, such as the separation of male and female sports, are too obvious to require discussion.
The lieutenant governor of Nevada, Stavros Anthony, had a different notion. Being a man of sense, he thought it wise to form a task force to preserve what is left of women’s sports before the whole enterprise gets reduced to an absurd exhibition of well-trained men sweeping up every trophy.
It did not sit well with Madame Torres-Fossett, who, rather than admitting the lieutenant governor had a point, took it upon herself to scold him for not concerning himself with matters more fitting to his station—like tourism, roads, and anything, presumably, that does not interfere with her notions of progress.
Meanwhile, the esteemed Nevadans for Equal Rights Committee, whose devotion to ‘equality’ evidently means ensuring that women’s sports remain open to men, filed an ethics complaint against Anthony, accusing him of misusing state resources for his crusade. One wonders how much state time and money got wasted ensuring that a man’s right to dominate women’s volleyball got preserved.
The catalyst for all this commotion? A single forfeit last fall, when the University of Nevada, Reno’s women’s volleyball team took one look at their opponent’s lineup, saw a player whose physique resembled something one might expect on a cattle drive rather than a sorority house, and decided that they were not in the business of humoring nonsense.
Their refusal to play against San Jose State’s team, which featured a transgender athlete, sent the issue soaring into the political stratosphere.
In a moment of rare clarity, former President Trump took pen to paper last month and signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports altogether.
It, of course, was met with outrage by those who maintain that the best way to ensure ‘fairness’ is to erase every distinction that ever existed.
Torres-Fossett, who by this point had become positively weary of the topic, lamented that coaches might soon be required to verify the ‘feminine-enough’ qualities of their athletes—which would be laughable if it weren’t precisely the situation that policies like hers have created. But worry not, for in the world of the enlightened, the only thing necessary to be declared a woman is to say so, and if reality objects–reality’s got to be overruled.
And so, the bill sits in limbo, awaiting the day when either reason prevails, or we all agree to close our eyes and pretend the fella with broad shoulders and five o’clock shadow is supposed to be the champion of women’s athletics all along. It’s a new era of progress, indeed.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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