“Female Bodies are Just as Strong, Fast, and Capable as Male Bodies.” Discuss .(Any Class Members Who Do Not Agree in their Essay will be Failed, Shamed, Expelled, and Prosecuted!) By Mrs. Abigail Knight (Florida)
Andrea Widburg's article in American Thinker
critiques two individuals—Pennsylvania State Senator Lindsey Williams and Ars Technica science editor John Timmer—for what she sees as politically motivated distortions of reality, despite their credentials. Below, I'll analyze her critique of Williams' claims specifically, focusing on their coherence, evidence, and underlying assumptions, supporting her argument against the feminists.
Widburg targets Williams' assertion that "female bodies are just as strong, fast, and capable as male bodies," made in defence of men competing in women's sports. Widburg frames this as a "Leftist" bending of reality, arguing that sports data starkly contradicts Williams' claim. She cites Usain Bolt's 100-metre dash record (9.58 seconds) versus Florence Griffith-Joyner's (10.49 seconds), noting that Griffith-Joyner's time wouldn't rank her among the top male runners until the 8,118th position. She also points to weightlifting, where women's records are, on average, 30 percent lower than men's, to argue that biological differences in strength and speed are undeniable.
Widburg's use of concrete examples, like sprint times and weightlifting records, grounds her rebuttal in observable data. Athletic performance is a measurable domain, and the disparities she highlights align with widely accepted physiological differences between male and female bodies, such as muscle mass, testosterone levels, and skeletal structure. These differences are well-documented in sports science and explain why competitive sports are typically sex-segregated. By showing that Griffith-Joyner, an exceptional female athlete, wouldn't crack the top tier of male runners, Widburg effectively illustrates the gap, undermining Williams' blanket claim of equal capability.
Her point about competitive fairness also resonates: if men and women were truly equal in physical capacity, there'd be no need for separate categories, yet the data shows otherwise. Widburg's sarcastic nod to "broken, pathetic, surgically and chemically altered men" competing against women, underscores her view that only in such cases do outcomes "even out," which she sees as an aberration, not proof of equality.
Widburg ties Williams' statement to a Leftist tendency to prioritise politics over reality, using her as a foil for credentialed elites gone astray. The sports data backs her up on the narrow point of physical differences, making Williams' claim shaky if taken literally.
Widburg's critique of Williams is sharp and data-driven, landing solid blows against the claim of physical parity between sexes in sports. It's persuasive if you accept her framing: that Williams denies basic biology for political ends, which is the thing for Leftists, in whatever country they lie.
"A leftist characteristic is the willingness to bend reality to political ends—and nobody does it better than the credentialed class. Indeed, the more credentialed, the better at bending. Two examples will suffice: The first is a PolySci major insisting that women are every bit as fast and strong as men, which could be laughed off by saying she's not a science major. However, the second example is a man with a Ph.D. in "Molecular and Cell Biology" denying that race exists.
Democrat Pennsylvania State Sen. Lindsey Williams got a PolySci degree from Dickinson College and then a law degree from Duquesne University School of Law. Ms. Williams defended men in women's sports by insisting that "female bodies are just as strong, fast, and capable as male bodies."
Uh, no, they aren't. In the men's 100-meter dash, the fastest man is Usain Bolt, at 9.58 seconds. The fastest woman is Florence Griffith-Joyner, at 10.49 seconds. That's less than a second's difference, which would seem to make Williams' point. That is, until you realize that, in the full list of men's 100-meter races, it's not until you reach Amos Omolo, ranked at 8,118, with a speed of 10.50, that Florence Griffith-Joyner could beat a man.
The same pattern appears in weightlifting, which is a pretty good measure of strength. The women's records are, on average, 30% lower than the men's. The reason they don't compete together is that the best women don't even come close to the best men.
In sports, things even out (and only rarely) only when you have broken, pathetic, surgically and chemically altered men who want desperately to compete against women to validate their sexual confusion. The opposite, though, is usually true, whether in weightlifting, running, swimming, biking, or any other sport.
That's reality.
Ms. Williams lives in the world of politically driven lunacy.
But again, Williams is a PolySci major and a lawyer. We expect better from those with a Ph.D. in actual science, right? Wrong. Enter John Timmer, the science editor at Ars Technica, an online publication that, as the "Technica" in the title indicates, has a strong focus on technology and science.
According to his bio, Timmer "has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley." Sure, both those institutions are bat-fecal-matter crazy when it comes to hard-left politics, but he's a scientist! That should mean something. Sadly, it turns out that it doesn't.
Before I get into what Timmer has to say, we need to agree that race has real characteristics that can be measured at the genetic level and tied to subgroups of the overarching human race. It's very true that, unlike sex, which is binary (XX or XY), race can be blended and, indeed, has been blended since time immemorial as humans procreate and create new variations of human characteristics. Nevertheless, there are genetic markers for people whose origins are deep in sub-Saharan Africa (black), Asia (Asian), Northern Europe (white), etc., whether those markers are tied to heavily melanated skin, epicanthic eye folds, light blue eyes, or other characteristics.
Indeed, the markers can tell us very specifically the regions from which these people came. For example, my genetic markers (all of which I've deleted from 23andMe) show that my known family history is entirely accurate: I'm mostly three-quarters Ashkenazi Jew and mostly one-quarter Northern European.
So, race is real and measurable, although humans can cook (and have cooked) these ingredients into endless permutations. But Timmer, caught up in Columbia- and Berkeley-induced wokeness, cannot acknowledge this reality despite his credentials.
What outraged Timmer is that Trump issued an executive order mandating that the Smithsonian stop using taxpayer money and assets to claim that America is the most racist, sexist, and homophobic country in the world. This order is a good thing. At American Thinker, we've often commented on the Smithsonian's use of taxpayer funds to push its radical left politicization of American history and culture.
So, generally, Timmer is upset that taxpayers shouldn't have to fund America-hatred. His specific outrage is that "in the process of airing the administration's grievances, the document specifically calls out a Smithsonian display for accurately describing our current scientific understanding of race." After first lambasting America as racist, sexist, and transphobic, Timmer continues,
But buried within the list of issues is a reference to a display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The display, the executive order complains, "claims that 'sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism' and promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct." That wording is denounced as an example of "divisive, race-centered ideology." But the Smithsonian's text is entirely accurate. (Emphasis mine.)
To prove that race isn't real but is a "social construct," Timmer turns to another political document, a report from the National Academies of Science during Biden's administration:
In humans, race is a socially constructed designation, a misleading and harmful surrogate for population genetic differences, and has a long history of being incorrectly identified as the major genetic reason for phenotypic differences between groups.
Triumphantly, Timmer exclaims, "So, indeed, race is not a biological reality but rather a social construct."
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, human beings' willingness to procreate outside of clear racial divisions means there will always be blurred lines (again, unlike the actual sex binary in which Timmer clearly does not believe). Nevertheless, given that race can be measured at the genetic level, it's real. What is a social construct is the fact that we've assigned values to race as opposed to culture. However, to conflate genetics (even when occasionally blurry) with cultural values and norms is an idea so stupid that only the most credentialed could embrace it."
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