The Objective Truth in Sports

In the halls of academia, professors study the changing philosophical ideas from the past and analyze their affect on current thinking. As philosophy has shifted from rationalism to modernism to post-modernism, philosophers now consider our society to be post-truth. Post-truth describes a society that doesn’t just think truth cannot be known, but that truth does not exist at all. Sometimes it seems as though philosophical discussions are just academic exercises, bearing no impact on the real world. However, this concept of post-truth is wreaking havoc on society. When people think truth does not exist at all, then reality can be whatever you make it.

While truth has been questioned since Satan tempted Eve in the garden, it has taken a bizarre turn in our culture today. No longer are just philosophical and theological truths being questioned, but physical objective truths are being questioned. If truth does not exist, then people can make truth to be whatever they want – even with respect to physical, tangible things. In other words, how you feel about something overrides the actual truth about it.

Prior to this “post-truth” mindset, a person may feel more feminine or more masculine, but there was still a physical reality of one’s biological gender – a physical, objective truth. Now, the way a person feels can actually supersede the physical reality of the gender they are.

If all truth is to be questioned, as a post-truth society posits, then it follows that these physical realities are going to be questioned as well. If a biological male feels like he should be a female, he can now disregard the reality of his physical characteristics and declare himself to be a female. While an individual is free to believe that about himself, it doesn’t make it truth. His ideas about his gender do not change the physical reality of his gender, yet our society is now forced into playing along with ignoring these physical objective truths – the consequence of being “post-truth.”

While we can discuss this on a philosophical level, it starts to have practical impacts as well. Interestingly, this collision between feelings and reality is playing out in the arena of sports. As a former college female athlete, I have a lot of concern with this particular issue. When I was a child, there weren’t many youth girls’ leagues like they have now. So I made the choice to play in youth boys’ leagues so that I could have the opportunity to play sports. As a result, I definitely agreed with many of the feminist ideas that the same opportunities should be provided for female athletes as are provided for male athletes. I lived in an area where without Title IX requiring equal funding for women’s sports, I would not have had any athletic opportunity at my high school. I believed to my core that I should be allowed to attempt any athletic endeavor I wanted, regardless of my gender.

However, as my athletic attempts often took me into a men’s league (which I did play in post-college), I was choosing to play with the possible disadvantage as a woman playing with men. The gender disadvantage fell on me, not on my opponents. Likewise, when my 11-year-old son chooses to play basketball with the high school students, he is the one choosing to play with the disadvantage based on his size and age. The disadvantage is not forced on the competition by him choosing to play in a different age division than his own.

In order to see it that way though, we have to accept another truth that society has been denying for decades: men and women are different. When the feminist movement declared that men and women are equal in biology, not just in opportunity, it busted open the door for the transgendered movement that we see now.

For one to say that it is unfair for men to compete against women in athletics, one must acknowledge that men are created differently from women. It is the whole purpose in God creating two genders in the first place. As Jesus states in Matthew 19:4, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” God made two separate, distinct genders for a reason. And He didn’t have to. He could have made this whole reproductive thing work however He wanted. But God chose to make two different genders because each gender brings something to the table that the other is unable to provide.

In the case of athletics, in general, men are taller, faster, and stronger than women (something I didn’t like to admit for a long time). That doesn’t mean all men are taller, faster, and stronger than all women, but typically that is the case. That is why there is a different height net for men’s volleyball and women’s volleyball, another way that I was definitely choosing the disadvantage to play volleyball in a men’s league on a men’s height net.

However, if a man chooses to play in a women’s league, he is choosing to force all his competition into a disadvantage by playing in a league different from his gender. In volleyball, he not only is most likely taller than the average female player, but he is also playing on a lower net, increasing even further his advantage. Yet a transgendered male was permitted to play in a women’s volleyball league. This biological male hit the ball into the female opponent’s face causing “severe head and neck injuries, resulting in long-term concussion symptoms.”

That would be comparable to allowing a teenager to play in my son’s the 5^th grade basketball league, instead of the other way around. He would be choosing to play outside of his age classification and put all his competition in the disadvantage. It would be no shocker then when he leads the league in blocked shots and rebounds. And in that situation, we would question the motives of that teenager to want to beat a group of younger, shorter, and less experienced basketball players.

Yet there are biological males swimming against female athletes, dominating the field and crushing records previously set by females. When Lia Thomas came on the scene, for three seasons Lia competed for the men’s swim team. Then Lia decided to transition to a female, began to compete against female swimmers, and as a result, finished 38 seconds ahead of the second-place female competitor. Meanwhile, the US competitive swimming’s governing body is trying to decide whether a biological male athlete has an unfair advantage against females. Clearly they do.

Recently, a transgendered, biological male cyclist defeated female cyclists in the Tour of Gila in the US, beating the second-place female competitor by only 21 seconds. While at one time, the rules of athletic competitions prohibited female athletes from taking testosterone to gain a competitive advantage; now the rules allow biological males to compete against female athletes.

These biological males are choosing to play outside of the reality of their gender based on their feelings about their gender, and, as a result, they are forcing all their competition to be at a disadvantage. Naturally, these males (because they are males regardless of their feelings about it) are smashing through female records and placing on podiums. Instead of embracing this for the idea of inclusivity, we ought to be appalled. There are outcries and protests for equity for transgendered, but what about the equity of the female athlete? Can you imagine spending your life training and perfecting your athletic skill only to be bested by someone who isn’t even biologically a female? 

Again, it would be comparable to high school baseball players training and preparing for their state competition, only to face a Major League pitcher for the championship game. But maybe the Major League player felt like he was still 18 years old. Does that, in fact, make him an 18-year-old? Of course not.

Thankfully many female athletes have had enough of this – they are refusing to stand on the podium with biological males, and they are speaking out against it, even in the face of aggressive unbelief of those who deny reality. When Riley Gaines spoke out against the inclusion of men in women’s sports, she was physically assaulted – by a biological male. Gaines said, “I was physically assaulted by one person. I was struck twice, both times hitting my shoulder with the second strike grazing my face. The rest of the protestors just ambushed and cornered me before I was able to move out with the help of campus police.”

There is intense violent backlash against those who dare to speak the objective truth that there is a reality of gender. Some girls may have interests in what is typically considered “boy” things. Some boys may have interests in what is typically considered “girl” things. Some people may feel more feminine or more masculine. None of those interests and feelings, however, change the physical reality of one’s gender. The reality is, men are different from women; there are things men can do that women can’t – and vice versa. And if a man feels like he is a woman, it doesn’t change the reality that he is a man.

But I want to ask, where are the feminists now? Where are the protests for women’s rights and equality? Where are those who fought so hard for Title IX? All of that is meaningless now as we open the doors to biological males competing against biological females. Transgendered athletes are absolutely destroying women’s sports, all so our society can embrace the idea that truth does not exist. Ideas most definitely have consequences. We are reaping what we have sown. By destroying the concept of objective truth, we have destroyed our own sanity and reason.