The president of the NCAA told Congress a few months ago that literally “less than 10” trans athletes competed in college athletics last year.
That “less than 10” number – from among the more than 500,000 college athletes competing in D1, D2 and D3 in the 2023-2024 academic sports year – is whatever number more than zero than 1975 UVA alum Bill Murray is willing to accept.
“Geeze, Chris. Normally like your take on sports issues, but you are way off here,” Murray commented on our Facebook page on a thread attached to our July 24 story, “Miyares signs on to MAGA letter pushing NCAA to strip trans athletes of records.”
ICYMI
As the headline suggests, the reporting highlighted the latest from our MAGA attorney general, Jason Miyares, who, like other MAGA political trolls, wants you to think that among the more important issues facing us as a nation is the injustice that was done to Riley Gaines, who tragically finished in a tie for fifth with Lia Thomas in a race at the 2022 NCAA national championship swim meet.
This poor, unfortunate soul, Riley Gaines, daughter of two D1 athletes, barely had a chance to make it with that hardscrabble background, has been reduced to having to use her moderate good looks to shill the anti-trans cause on Fox News to try to eek out a living since.
Murray is, clearly, #TeamRiley.
“So, you are saying it’s OK for biological men to compete with women?” Murray wrote.
This will be fun, because I like playing the whataboutism game, so, let’s make a go at it:
Whatabout the fairness of people graced with biologically wider shoulders, longer arms, longer legs, higher VO2 max competing with, you know, the rest of us?
Michael Phelps had to work hard, sure, but, man, he was blessed by nature relative to the rest of us in terms of what he had to work with.
Maybe we need to ban people with biological height and wingspan advantages from basketball.
For example there, I’m as good a midrange jump shooter as Kevin Durant, but I topped out at 6’1”.
People with 20/15 or better eyesight make better hitters in baseball than people like me with a 20/100 right eye.
Which get us to:
Does anybody really think Lia Thomas and other trans athletes transition because they think they can compete better against women than they can men?
I know, dumb question, because I used the word anybody there.
“I imagine that the reason that the weirdo who runs this blog favors men in dresses punching women in their sports leagues and creeping on them in their locker rooms must be because he himself fantasized about wearing a dress and beating high school girls in their sports leagues,” a guy named Brian Robbins commented on the Facebook thread.
This Robbins guy, adorably, posted a photo of his family in Sunday church attire to his Facebook page, to highlight how Christian a dude he is.
I can only imagine how the Jesus fellow who preached “love your neighbor” feels about having a guy who posted something like the following on Facebook for the world to see on his team:
“We truly need Nuremberg-style trials for the transgender fad to severely punish the worst offenders and leaders, and to tell future generations about the depraved evil that occurred.”
For that matter, I’m wondering how our new Bill Murray friend feels about being on the same team as the likes of Brian Robbins.
Murray guy lists himself on his LinkedIn profile as a volunteer with Piedmont CASA, which is an organization I’m very familiar with, because I served as a board member for the CASA non-profit here over here in the Valley.
The acronym CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates; the organization trains volunteers to serve as advocates for children in juvenile court in abuse and neglect cases.
The highest rate of child abuse and neglect is experienced by, you guessed it, trans kids.
I was drawn to volunteering for CASA because I was abused as a kid, and there was nobody around then to advocate for me.
MAGA Christians who use religion to justify marginalizing others have long since zapped the belief in god out of me, but I do remember from Sunday school the lesson of Matthew 25:40:
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
One day, the anti-trans Nazis will get it, that the likes of Jason Miyares aren’t concerned about trans athletes in sports, that what they’re really after is, punching down at an entire population of people who have a hard time fighting back, and that the side you should want to be on isn’t that of the bully punching down.
Until then, I guess my job is to be the bad guy who gets to live rent-free in their heads.
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Chris Graham
