Woke Idiocy is My Path to Sporting Glory
Growing up in NZ as a non-sports loving male hasn’t been easy. Apart from an abiding affection for test cricket – which let’s be honest, is less a sport and more a 5-day long philosophical rumination on human life, replete with tragedy, triumph and drinks breaks, inevitably ending in a draw – sport fails to move me. I did play school boy rugby with some enthusiasm for a couple of years until the different maturity rates of the races became apparent and I started being tackled by 100kg Samoan kids with beards. But I never got why adult males took it all so damn seriously – why did they have to yell so much? And why did it have to be at me? Perhaps because when I saw a Samoan kid with a beard charging at me I ran the other way.
Not excelling at sport has closed down for me one of the chief avenues for accumulating status in sports-mad New Zealand. Until now that is.
Thanks to a recent decision by the woke idiots at Sports New Zealand, myself and other athletically-challenged men now have a sure-fire path to sporting glory. All we need do is enrol in a local sports club as a lady. According to the new guiding principles released by the body, Transgender athletes will be able to participate in sport in the gender they identify with, and will not need to “prove or ... justify” their identity. Feeling that you are a lady trapped in a man’s body (even with a dangling appendage between your legs) will be enough. Sports NZ claim that these are only ‘guiding’ principles and they have no power of enforcement, but one can imagine the chilling effect they will have – the first sporting code that bucks them will risk the ‘transphobe’ tag which in modern parlance is a rung below child molester. They also emphasise that their remit only covers community sport, not elite sport which has its own codes. But this is hardly reassuring. World Rugby made a sensible decision and banned transgender women from playing women’s rugby in 2020, but NZ Rugby, according to Stuff ‘has signalled it will allow transgender athletes to play community level rugby’. How long before the ‘elite’ level follows suite? Sports NZ fails to consider this flow-on effect. All elite players begin playing at the community level, including hundreds of thousands of children across the country. How many young girls will be put off from their Black Fern’s ambitions by being regularly pummelled by young boys pretending to be girls in the opposing front row?
What may be disastrous for the young aspiring female athlete is a boon for the aging male has-been. Me in other words. All I need do is pick a sport. The example to follow here is the British rapper Zuby. In 2019 he broke the British women’s record for both dead-lifting and bench-press while identifying (briefly, just to prove his point) as a woman. He’s 32 and in good shape but hardly the behemoth that usually take weight-lifting titles. So the key here is to choose some sport that male strength and aggression gives an innate advantage. Which is all of them really. But I’ve decided to go one step further and focus on an area where women are noticeably deficient: driving. My timing is excellent here as Formula 1 has recently announced an all-female driving series due to start next year. I’ve already started doing timed laps of my local Pak ‘n Save car park but I imagine just getting into second gear and taking the first corner successfully will secure me a win.
I foresee only two possible flaws in my plan. The first is that other frustrated under-achieving males may follow my lead and sign up for the all-female Formula 1. Ones that can drive better than I can. It will then be a matter of switching sports and upping the ante on the self-identification. Enrolling in under-12 soccer identifying as an eleven year-old boy for example or competing in the Special Olympics pole-vault, identifying as a triple-amputee.
The second possible fly in the ointment is, when faced with an influx of men claiming to be women in a belated quest for sporting success, the sporting codes start adopting some sort of standard by which genuinely committed trans-athletes can be separated from the mere tourists. I’m fine if I just have to pop on a dress and some lippy but what if they demand a testosterone level test or proof I’m having hormone treatment? Or heaven forbid they want a full physical exam to see whether I’ve had the strength of my convictions and had my old fella removed?
Then I guess I’ll have a choice.
Just how far will I go in my pursuit of sporting glory?