Simple Enough – Highland Games Non-Binary Gender Conundrum

There are problems that are difficult to solve – which prisons should those not classing themselves in the traditional male and female slots be put? There are other problems based upon that same underlying point about gender recognition which are rather easier to solve. Such as this concern about non-binary competitors in the Highland Games.

The prison one, well, we’ve dealt with that recently:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] We’ve thus a problem here, a real one, one that can’t be wished away nor just smoothed over. Whatever we think about gender bending the current mores are that what people say they are is what people are. Birth, DNA and even genitalia be damned. And yet we’ve also this inconvenient fact that prison does exist, people will be sentenced to it and we do indeed think it a good idea that there be a separation of sexual bits and desires when we do so. Sticking male genitalia – whatever the gender attached to them – into a female prison isn’t going to work out all that well, nor the other way around, female into a male prison. And yet how can we, given current mores, not assign the jugged to the prison of their gender? [/perfectpullquote]

But what about this one, the Highland Games?

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Scotland’s Highland games are considering how to encourage competitors with a ‘non-binary’ gender following demands that traditional men-only events should not receive public funding. Ian Grieve, secretary of the Scottish Highland Games Association (SHGA), told the Telegraph the issue of how to include competitors who do not consider themselves men or women was “under active discussion.” He said this and the inclusion of transgender competitors have been added to the agenda “for further discussion” at the organisation’s meeting next month. The development emerged after he emailed the SHGA’s committee members about longstanding calls to allow more women to compete in events. [/perfectpullquote]

This isn’t even going to be a problem anyway. For the only sporting problem we’ve got over gender is whether to allow those with the stranger, faster, male physique to compete in women’s events. We really are a sexually dimorphic species and that male musculature is going to win out in Citius, Altius, Fortius, sorry, it just is. Florence Joyner Griffiths won the 100 metres at the Olympics, yes she did, in a time that would have placed her fourth in the Bronx High School track meet among boys. That was with the following wind that the drugs that killed her added too.

So, women entering male events, doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s men entering women’s we do need to guard against for if we don’t then there won’t be women’s events any more.

Anyway, not that this is a problem anyway. They’re all wearing skirts already, aren’t they?