Women’s athletes aren’t delicate, and they don’t need saving

[Jessica_Rose]

Women's athletes aren't delicate, and they don't need saving

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/women-s-athletes-aren-t-delicate-and-they-don-t-need-saving/ar-AA1uQGGV?ocid=windirect&cvid=3bf28fcb56f64091a6ade745c8152027&ei=30

Story by Sally Jenkins (27 Nov 2024)

Competition is never equal, and it is only sort of, approximately, occasionally fair. The best we can ask is that it be meaningful, that it teach us something about ourselves. This is the context in which transgender athletes enter into sport, and the people who would reduce this self-seeking to an unfair "them" against "us" are missing the point entirely: Sport doesn't tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually, and psychologically, and the first thing it tells us is not to be victims. So it's a step backward for so many women athletes to cry frailty in the debate over trans participation.

The starting point in this controversy should be that women have agency and power. But the lawsuit is a recitation of tears and fears about someone who played NCAA volleyball for three years, without incident, until her gender identity was called into question this fall. At which point the legal equivalent of shrieking at spiders began. The word "harm" is used 12 times in the suit, "injury" 15 times, "safety" 35 times, "concerns" 37 times, and "protection" more than 50 times.

U.S. District Judge S. Kato Krews was unmoved. Quoting another judge's ruling in a similar emergency-relief case, he wrote, "I decline to manufacture a sense of urgency that is not supported by plaintiff's own conduct." His ruling was upheld on appeal Tuesday...