Should women's sports even exist? What purpose do they serve, anyway?
On why modern elite sports are just another source and symptom of vice-signaling.
I intentionally chose to troll with the title of this piece; it tends to be a good filtering mechanism for those who take themselves too seriously. Or are disinterested in genuine inquiry. Or are degenerate themselves.
But, truly, I’m asking a real question. The question is not so much “should women’s sports exist?” but “they clearly already don’t exist, so why does the charade continue?” And, actually, the real question is: should modern elite sports exist at all?
Elite is not a descriptive term, here, because it does not refer to individuals of elite character and competence are duking it out honorably in an arena; just another instance of “progressivism hollowing out [something sacred] and wearing it as a skin suit” as our friend Auron MacIntyre loves to repeat.
Thus, if you truly the understand the nature of the question being asked, the answer is a resounding “no”! I shall prove to you why.
Lia Thomas and a timeline full of “shock & outrage”™
Part of why I’m writing this is because often times – too many times – something weird or gross happens, and every famous social media personality freaks out. They try to explain the grotesque occurrence they are witnessing, but in a crippling horror, completely miss the forest for the trees.
The latest incident is Penn State swimmer & transwoman (i.e., man) Lia Thomas breaking a school record for the 500m freestyle and winning a gold medal. Everyone not insane knows why this is an absurd situation, and the Twitter aristocracy has taken full part in decrying the circus.
Some of the takes are more nuanced or moderated then others:
But, the absolute worst takes exemplify a helpless ridicule of “why isn’t anything being done?!” combined with an impotent appeal that “something must be done!”; y’know, the same type of screeching that progressives themselves make to corporate HR departments when they experience a micro-aggression:
Bizarre, indeed. Why aren’t women standing up together in solidarity to condemn this debauchery? Surely there are plenty of GIRLBOSS™ attorneys at Big Law Firm X chomping at the bit to file a Title IX federal suit to rescue their sisters? Where are the fathers and coaches stepping up to rescue their daughters, now damsels-in-distress, against an encroachment of eunuchs into locker rooms?
Let me ask you are a more important question, dear reader: why should anyone be expending any energy to preserve the heaping mound of trash that is 21st century mass-produced, mass-broadcasted, mass-consumed professional athletics?
The heaping mound of trash that is 21st century athletics
“Really,” you ask? “I’m really saying that all professional sports in the current era are political refuse? And I’m not just a nerdy incel who’s triggered at people who accomplish more than me?”
First of all, yes.
Second of all, Lia Thomas and her (his? their? xer? its?) story are not isolated. Transwomen aren’t just swimming their way to new records. They are bashing their opponents’ skulls in. They are deadlifting their way to dominance, imitating the aesthetics of a Mongolian Steppe warrior shoving boulders across the battlefield.
However, third, let’s take a step back from women-with-penises, because that’s really just one of many symptoms currently afflicting the dumpster fire that is elite-level sports.
Super Bowl LVI just finished. Along with its usual cohort of nearly nude cheerleaders and 40-something shirtless male fans with beer bellies and tattoos, it prominently featured “End Racism” signs in both endzones, and a white rapper kneeling to support Black Lives Matter. If you’re wondering how this affected the Superbowl’s viewership, worry not, because it generated $435M in advertising revenue, including a pitch for Amazon’s reboot of LOTR that looks like it was produced / animated by a 3-year-old with intellectual disabilities.
The ongoing 2022 Winter Olympics are being held in Beijing. For now, let’s ignore the fact that the games are being held in a country actively committing genocide against religious minorities. Even beyond that, the whole procession is a real doozy, featuring:
An Olympic village with flooded residential areas and dirty training rooms.
Athletes with COVID-19 being isolated without internet access and served food that looks more appropriate for a brood of pigs.
A skater who renounced her USA citizenship to compete for China, and still failed spectacularly. (I’ve heard of women being disloyal, but this is a whole new level).
The Olympics being a venue of dysfunction and excrement is not a new phenomenon, either. Just observe what happened after Rio hosted the games in 2016.
Can you tell me honestly, dear reader, that someone normal, looking at such a state of affairs, should decide that modern athletics is a sacrosanct institution – one of transcendent value – and that girls all throughout Western civilization must throw themselves over the fence to preserve it? Even if you said, “Yes!” you can see from Zhu Yi’s behavior that they are not going to do it.
Am I saying we should just cancel sports? Not exactly, though I am not opposed to cancel culture (especially if the correct things or people are gulaged cancelled). If we’re going to Make Sports Great Again™, then we need to RETVRN to re-arranging them around higher virtues before getting enraged that they are sliding into depravity.
Only sportsmanship founded on demonstrating true virtue means anything worthwhile
Organized physical competition serves a foundational role in a thriving human society. However, it was initially developed to prepare young men for physical combat, serve as an addendum to moral education, or designate a potential suitor as a worthy of marriage. Showing up at an international tournament was a way represent your tribe and deliver unto them Divine victory and blessings.
Within Vedic lore, the Svayamvara often took the form of an archery competition. Famously, Lord Rama was identified as prime spousal material because only he was able to string Shiva’s bow, and therefore, win the heart of princess Sita from King Janaki. I’m not here to sell you on the eternal truth of Hindu fairytales, but it’s important to pay attention to why and how such theology comes about, the metaphysics it points to, and why it’s relevant now. Indian Bronson has done a fabulous job explaining it on Alex Kaschuta’s Subversive podcast and J.C. Bennett’s EXIT podcast.
All the ancients knew how developing one’s body is integral to developing one’s intellect and one’s character, and how producing excellence through zealous competition promotes social cohesion. Nevertheless, this same wisdom teaches that taking athleticism too seriously or too far – namely winning for the sake of winning – is corrupting to the soul.
Have you noticed how a lifelong devotion to physical exercise, to the exclusion of anything else, produces a certain type of mind? Just as neglect of it produces another? Excessive emphasis on athletics produces an excessively uncivilized type, while a purely literary training leaves men indecently soft.
– Plato, Republic
In other words, when you see modern athletics for what it is, it starts to resemble a looking glass for collective narcissistic preening, no different than spectacles at the Colosseum in the late Roman Empire in which humans were sacrificed to quench the blood-thirst of a deteriorating citizenry. This type of sporting is both a reflection of society unraveling, and a vehicle through which unraveling is accelerated.
Novak Djokovic as Lord Rama
Recently, Novak Djokovic was barred from participating in the Australian open. He was detained and deported by the Australian government for refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine. I won’t cover that whole saga, but it’s important to observe a couple key facts.
Coincidentally, Djokovic is a devout Serbian Orthodox Christian. He’s proud to be a man of God, and he takes earnest his duty to fulfill his earthly purpose. I’m not one to assume other's people’s intentions, but I think it’s safe so say Djokovic views his athletic ambition as an extension of his religious commitment.
In other words, he is a sportsman of the truest caliber.
That is, someone who trains beyond the allure of a shiny prize. The plate of gold is merely a symbol of real pursuits: to give a performance worthy of worship, to bring glory to his homeland and his Church, and to attain to the heights of history in the name of the Heavenly Father.
If Novak Djokovic is being banned from participating in an international tournament, of what value is the tournament in the first place?
I’m not saying that we should reformulate sports to be an exclusively priestly endeavor. It wouldn’t hurt to start tying it back to some spiritual principles, though. Specifically, a set of values that makes physical achievement about more than just a more sophisticated form of self-pleasuring.
Otherwise, you begin to get things like this: a gay man breaking a Marathon world record while wearing a suit.
Certainly, Rex has accomplished something rather impressive – something that I wouldn’t be able to do – and I’m not hating on him for that. But, what exactly he is proving? That he can be sweaty in a suit-and-tie and still look sexy for his boyfriend? That you can count on him to run to the office at midnight if there is a dire emergency? That you can rely on your Equinox membership to deliver to you the power bottom you’ve always dreamed of? This isn’t exactly Pheidippides running back to Athens to declare victory in battle.
Or you get vegan bodybuilders. What is compelling about someone whose diet is the equivalent of sawdust filled with micronutrients, and looks like layer of muscle stretched over a spaghetti slop of veins?
Look, you can choose to be enamored by vegans who resemble Frankenstein, or chubby transwomen who look like steppe warriors, or homosexual twinks with MBAs that set world records. They are not the heroic archetypes that will land in the eternal pages of history, though.
Which takes us back to our original premise.
Basically, most people should be willing to let women’s sports implode without lifting a finger.
I’m a big fan of women who dedicate themselves to mastering any craft. Martina Navratilova was a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and heroine to many girls who grew up to be wonderful women, including my mom. By the way, she’s another person who was cancelled for being a TERF, i.e., thinking women should compete with, y’know, other women – the kind without ding-dongs. Talk about asking women to stand up for what is right, sacrificing their public image in the process.
At some point, you have to understand trying to save obscene from itself is just not worth it. Sorry, but sports have to be organized around principles that are more purposeful than making advertisers billionaires, and encouraging athletes to form Instagram-mediated cults-of-personalities. Especially if you expect young girls (and their chaperones) to sacrifice themselves on the front lines to do the saving.
I had many female classmates in college who found that playing in the big leagues was a fantastic way to make friends, learn teamwork, and build community, even if they weren’t at the top of their game. Those life lessons are can still be developed in amateur and casual leagues. They will increasingly not be developed in D1 or professional leagues.
In conclusion: girls, don’t trip over yourself trying to rescue a perversion. Neither should you take your ball home and throw a tantrum, but instead find a more wholesome court to play on, a spiritually refreshing pool to swim in, a more devotional set of weights to squat with. Leave the repugnant corpse of hyper-financialized, hyper-optimized modern elite sports to degenerate into the soil, where it can rest, permanently. You’ll be happier and healthier for it.