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PoliticsThe Town VoiceBalanced 

 

Movie Gender Roles

 

by Arlon Staywell
RICHMOND    April 2023   Recently transgender people have gone so far as to compete in sports as their "fantasy" gender (not the gender they were born).  Especially troubling to Republicans are the born males who are only fantasy females yet competing in sports designed for born females.

It does seem to defeat the whole purpose of having different sports for different born genders.  Why not quit calling it "women's" track and field and just call it (plain) track and field?  It makes no sense to call it "women's" track and field if some contestants are only fantasy females with born male bodies.  Why pretend you're trying to be fair?  Either be fair or don't.  Is there at long last a job for Donald Trump?

Other political tasks for Donald Trump have not gone well.

He did not control the budget and instead raised the national debt as much as Obama.

If anyone thought he would overturn Kitzmiller v. Dover, they were proved wrong.  As much as his base was politically inclined to overturn it, they failed the biology and mathematics required to overturn it.  Other Republican candidates for or against Trump are still remarkably silent on the issue.

While most "religious" people indeed oppose abortion, they have given the matter enough thought to realize it is not a problem well managed by government.  There remains too much unresolved.  Should there be exceptions for rape?  What claims of rape should be valid and when?  When does life begin?  How long can it take for a women to realize she is pregnant?  When the government tries to ban abortion it can open a torrent of litigious nightmares.  Banning abortion in the early to middle stages of pregnancy can be beyond the purview of government.  Banning abortion in the late stages of pregnancy was partially succeeding even with Roe v. Wade in place.  So banning abortion is not getting the Republicans much good press while they stumble over the details.  Truly religious people will continue to offer help to pregnant women in an effort to politely persuade them not to abort.

The effort to gain popular support by making toilets more gender specific has failed because the problem Republicans complained about is obviously best solved by making toilets private, not by whatever machinations of policies they had in mind.  That way males can avoid being bothered by other males too, and females can avoid being bothered by other females.

The pattern to observe here is that the Trump base has rules they never thought through.

Why didn't they overturn Kitzmiller v. Dover?  They did not think through the biology and mathematics.

Why are they not unified on the specifics of banning abortion?  They did not think through the litigious complications.

Why do they not simply advocate for private toilets?  They did not think through the problem as they saw it.

Why didn't they control government spending?  Despite claims of being "religious" they are as materialistic as anyone else.

Having thus totally failed at everything Trump tried, we now see their "true" purpose, to make athletic competitions fair.  Who can wait for Trump to save the world now?

Historically, the athletic competitions known as the "Olympics" were proffered as an alternative to war.  It was suggested wars be suspended while the world came together to see who can run the fastest.  They were scientific, those Greeks.  Those were the beginnings of science at least, much remained to develop in science.  However, even then and still in modern times, sports competitions did and do not settle much difference over national territory, private property or policy.  They are still "games."  They are much like the "games" at family gatherings where "football" might include female players.  Lately more adventurous folks add gambling more or less huge sums, but that is called gambling. The question then becomes whether banning men playing women in athletics should be applied to movies as well, and whether women should be allowed to play male roles in movies.  Movies can be very serious pass times.  Remember that before you discard Donald Trump.

Another good question is who is stomping on women's rights the worst?  Is it the Republicans who just canceled women's 14th amendment rights in Dobbs?  Or is it the Democrats who won't let women have their own games?

As it turns out, the Democrats are also notoriously short on thinking things through.  Everyone claims to "do their research" and "critically analyze" policies and claims, but then they leave that to someone else and it almost never gets done.  Or if it does get done, they fight against it so they can cling to their blindly accepted attitudes, such as seen in their Fine Art of Data Presentation.

Women's 14th amendment rights need to be restored, if at first state by state constitutions.  The thing to understand about "equal rights" is that it is not exactly the same thing as "equality."  In its attempts to establish "equality" government often depends on quotas.  That doesn't always work well because it actually limits choices, forcing a one-size-fits-all on everyone (like transgender sports).  The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) failed because too many people assumed incorrectly that quotas would be necessary to establish equality.  Women would have to join the military in "equal" numbers to men, and fathers would have to get child custody in "equal" numbers to mothers. The solution is to specifically reject such quotas as a method of enforcement.  14th amendment rights have a long history of being enforced without quotas.  Of course it isn't a simple matter guaranteeing equal rights, but it is possible.  Quotas are far too simple.

The problem sensible people have with accepting transgenders is the disrespect it shows for the concept of the traditional family where parents are assumed to be best suited to raise their own biological children, and the state is too far removed from the site to offer better advice.  Of course in those very rare cases where parents get involved in evil or perhaps die in accidents, it can be necessary for society to step in to offer what help it is able.  However it can be highly important that the exceptions do not become the rules.  Trump's marriage difficulties (deserved or not) have made him a pitiful representative of the sort values needed.  Many Democrats have much more stable and traditional marriages than Trump has.  Run that race.