A Letter to Sally Jenkins About Her Article on San Jose State Transgender Controversy
Jenkins writes about "volleyball 'saviors' missing the point of sports", but she misses how her feminist-inspired gender bias prevents her from seeing the truth about transgender athletes
Dear Ms. Jenkins,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about your recent article in The Washington Post, In transgender fight, volleyball ‘saviors’ miss the point of sports, and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
As a brief introduction, I’m a lifelong reader of the Post who nevertheless has long noticed the paper’s anti-male gender bias, provable by its decades-long imbalanced coverage of domestic violence1 and made undeniable by its 2018 publication of the op-ed Why can't we hate men? Since then, I’ve been sending open letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate this feminist-inspired bias.
Your article is, unfortunately, another example of, if not outright bias, then at least of an unbalanced, feminist-inspired perspective, combined with a seemingly willful ignorance of the science behind the issue of transgender women athletes competing against women assigned female at birth. You wrote:
“I don’t know who is right in the scientific dispute over whether athletes who were assigned male at birth have lingering advantages from nanomoles of testosterone,2 or disadvantages from their suppression…”
To any objective observer there is no scientific dispute: there are obvious and provable differences between men and women that give transwomen athletes undeniable advantages in sport.
Sport is meaningless without fair competition. Some people say that if a man transitions into a woman this eliminates all the male performance advantage they had as a man. Science does not support that claim. Male puberty locks in many changes to the male body that simply cannot be reversed. – Dr. Emma Hilton, Fair Play for Women
The Undeniable Differences Between Men and Women
Although feminists have long claimed that “gender is a cultural construct”, the controversy about transwomen athletes (i.e. males by birth) unfairly competing against biological women has laughably illuminated the sheer idiocy of this decades-old feminist claim, a claim that served as the genesis of the entire transgender movement.
It’s undeniable: men are stronger, faster, and by a wide margin, fully out-compete women in sports.
A page from the Fair Play for Women website aptly summarizes these facts:
“Reproductive anatomy aside, the physical differences between males and females were already apparent when our ancestors emerged from the trees, and now, in modern sports, we can measure them precisely. Males can run faster, jump longer, throw further and lift heavier than females. They outperform females by 10% on the running track to 30% when throwing various balls.
So big is the gap, there are 9000 males between 100m world record holders Usain Bolt and FloJo.
So early does the gap emerge, the current female 100m Olympic champion, Elaine Thompson, is slower than the 14 year old schoolboy record holder.
So unassailable the gap has proven to be, virtually all elite sports have a protected female category, to allow females to compete fairly against those with the same female potential, and to win, and, OK, to make a little money maybe”
That men are so overwhelmingly stronger, faster, and athletically more capable than women not only provides the answer to “who is right” in the science that you choose to deny, it’s ultimately the reason why the US Women’s Soccer Team was nominally paid less than the men’s team (although they in fact actually made more than the men!3 )
Ms. Jenkins, please allow me to provide a (perhaps far-fetched) analogy to illustrate why transwomen athletes should be barred from competing as women in athletic competition.
Imagine, if you will, that Superman decided to play professional football for the NFL. With his superhuman speed and strength, he could literally serve as a one-man football team, easily and soundly defeating every other team, and winning every Superbowl … forever?
Should the NFL be forced to allow this Krypton-born “transhuman” to play?
Based on the experience of just a few born-as-women athletes, the answer should be crystal clear:
Olympic boxer Angela Carini, who lasted just 46 seconds, dropping to her knees in pain in a bout against transwoman Algerian opponent Imane Khelif.4
Boxer Tamikka Brents, beaten by transwoman Fallon Fox in the first round of their match. In addition to a damaged orbital bone that required seven staples, Brents received a concussion. In a post-fight interview Brents said, “I've never felt so overpowered ever in my life.”
17-year-old high school volleyball player Payton McNabb was almost killed by a volleyball spiked by a transgender competitor. She suffered a concussion, a neck injury and two black eyes.
The answer is, and must be, “HELL NO!”
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
Publisher of "Letters to The Washington Post" Substack
This observation was confirmed by a February 2023 report by The Coalition to End Domestic Violence that described a 10-Year Suppression of the Truth on Domestic Violence by the Washington Post.
For you to write “nanomoles of testosterone” — where a nanomole represents a billionth of a chemical unit of measurement — also reflects your bias, as it strongly suggests that you’re trying to minimize the effects of testosterone on human bodies. A more objective writer would likely have told readers that men have, on average, between 13 and 18 times more testosterone than women. (source).
I know that on more than one occasion you’ve written about the USWNT’s “unfair” treatment, but on this count, too, your position is more proof of your feminist-inspired bias. You really should read this post, or watch this YouTube video, or read this article that ends with this conclusion: “But don’t let Megan Rapinoe fool you: A victim of sex discrimination, she is not.”
There is confusion over whether Khelif is transwoman or is intersex, but he was previously barred from women’s events