Not just a matter of self-identification

Many of those who contribute to this organ take pride in the Rust‘s long and healthy record of pointing out both the oddities and absurdities of modern 21st Century “woke”, politically-correct, “Let’s invent new groupings of supposedly disadvantaged put-upon minorities that we can campaign for”, direct “climate change extreme action”-supporting, basic human nature-denying culture and indeed its attendant collective, lemming-like, desperate rush of those in authority over anything and everything around the world to fall over themselves to appear on-side with this general drift towards trashing everything that First World western countries such as the UK have ever stood for and/or achieved in their historical past.

Overnight I spotted a piece on the website of the Daily Mail website on the vexed subject of the authorities’ treatment of elite transgender athletes – or [here to be more accurate and to the point] significantly-good, if not elite standard, male athletes and sportsmen who either at some point come to believe that they “have been born in the wrong-gendered body” or, alternatively, have now opted of their own free will to “identify as female”.

There are huge numbers of implications and complications in either situation – and, of course, the rights of different sets of individuals (including those men – or should I say “people born as male and who formerly identified as such” – who have either changed their gender status and/or have become confused about which gender they might like to be in the future).

Personally – and here I must declare an interest because I face my computer screen this morning as an average, traditionally brought-up, elderly white male – I feel most sorry for those “genuine” women (irrespective of where on the spectrum of sexuality from heterosexual to lesbian they reside) who feel most uncomfortable at the prospect of people who – to all intents and purposes biologically male – having an absolute right e.g. to use “female only” public toilets purely because they have decided to identify as female -or should that be “as something other than male”(?) – but apparently without any examination and/or indeed confirming say-so of any member of the medical profession qualified to pronounce upon such delicate matters.

If I was a woman – and if “push ever came to shove” – I’m pretty certain that I’d also be aghast at the prospect of “having just been about my business” in say a restaurant’s “Ladies” toilet and – whilst just checking and “touching up” my make-up in front of the mirror over the wash basins – suddenly finding myself being joined in that sanctuary by what (to all intents and purposes) looks exactly like a hairy-arsed, fifteen and a half stone, six feet two inch, docker (perhaps, and perhaps not, also wearing an obvious “theatre-style” wig on his head) [cue reference to the old “Carry On” stalwart Bernard Bresslaw when in drag] whom also – it somehow subsequently turns out – is sporting a set of “men’s meat & two veg” in full working order between his legs … especially if his sole (but legally-supported) explanation/justification for being there was that he’d woken up that morning and decided that he was female.

On the same theme, when it comes to elite – or indeed any – sport, how is any “genuinely female” participant going to feel when e.g. a previously male (but now allegedly transgender) athlete strolls out to take a place on the starting-line of a first round heat of the Women’s 1,500 metres track event at the Commonwealth Games?

Surely the competing integrity of every sport or game known to the human race depends upon certain basic principles of equality and fairness?

This is not to deny that “total fairness” is impossible.

For example, if the great mid-20th Century Scottish world flyweight boxing champion Walter McGowan was matched in the ring with the massive sometime world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis there would/could be only ever be one winner.

(Which is why boxing has a series of weight categories).

It’s a fact of life that certain individuals are born with greater genetic sporting or athletic abilities than the bulk of the population – they are natural advantages that nobody can do anything about.

However – and to return to my example of the day.

Here’s a link to the article that I noticed upon the website of the Daily Mail earlier today.

It’s a report by Alyssa Guzman and Sam Baker upon the achievement of Lia Thomas, a 22 year old trangender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States – see here – DAILY MAIL