A Natural Inequality Will Bruce

Are men and women physically equal? The scientific and factual answer is a resounding no. According to livestrong.com, men on average are stronger than woman because their bodies are built to hold more muscles mass, and that woman typically produce about 67% of the muscle mass that men do. However, often times these statements, though completely true, are met with cries of sexism.

Let’s get something out of the way, the definitions of gender and sex are becoming more and more different. Traditionally the words were used interchangeably to mean if someone is a boy or girl, however in more modern times the words have come a long way. Gender, is now used to describe how someone identifies themselves, while sex is the biological category that someone is placed in, usually depending on their reproductive organs.

This is where the issue of transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard comes into play. Laurel was born a man and spent many years of her life as a professional male weightlifter with very few major accomplishments. Since then, Laurel underwent hormone treatment because she identifies as a woman. Now Laurel has been competing in female weightlifting competitions and has been doing extremely well, she even broke the female national record in Australia for the clean and jerk.

Anything transgender these days in and of itself is often a touchy subject, but this is an instance where it needs to be discussed. How far are we as a society willing to go to indulge someone's gender identity? In this case Laurel continues to physically be a male and reaps the benefits of being stronger and being able to build more muscle, however because of what she feels she is allowed to compete with women. This is ridiculous, political correctness has gone too far.

Quite honestly, I don’t see the logic here. I think that many people would like to think that men and women are completely physically equal, because that’s what fits their political agenda but, frankly the facts should not be ignored. These are the facts; the olympic world record for the clean, jerk and snatch for men is 473 kg, and in the same event the olympic record for women is 333 kg. In other words, if we look at the women and men who devote almost their entire lives to lifting heavy weights the men lift 142% of what the women lift. So essentially what we are allowing is someone that can potentially lift forty two percent more weight to compete with those who could never reach those heights, it is a simple physical advantage. Does anyone else see a problem here? Laurel, who is physically a man has an extreme advantage over the other women, and it is just flat out not fair.

A claim that is often made about situations like these that involve gender identity, is that we need to respect how they feel. I understand this argument, but we cannot allow this to make the playing field this uneven. Unfortunately, whether people like it or not, sports are separated by sex because it makes the playing field much more even, and the moment that we allow people to play as something other than their biological sex then the playing field is no longer even and fair for all players. This is why it is necessary for Laurel to compete as a male even if that is not how she identifies, because in the end she is a man with XY chromosomes regardless of how she feels.

Credits:

Created with images by greg westfall. - "angie"

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