Earlier this month, Stephanie Turner made the bold move of taking the knee at the outset of a fencing match. She faced a male fencer, 20-year-old Redmond Sullivan, who claimed womanhood and so was allowed to join the women’s competition. In response, USA Fencing, the organization running the Maryland tournament, gave Stephanie the dreaded black card and barred her from competing for a year.
The Old College Try
This clash brought me back to my college days on my university’s fencing team. I took up saber. I wasn’t that good, but enjoyed the sport and was willing to work at it. For the coach’s talk, all of us, both men and women gathered around and took a knee together. Some drills we did together. Sometimes the women would practice with the men. But I’ll tell you something that never happened. The guys never fenced the women in a regular match. Even with my limitations, it was unthinkable for me to go against a woman. It just would have been unfair.
There is an overlap in maleness and femaleness in many secondary sexual traits. I try to make this point often to help people think well about it. Recently in the book, Across the Kitchen Table, pp 97-98, I illustrated it with the distribution curves for lung capacity for swimming:
The women range in lung volume from 83.3 to 105.8 percent of a predicted male lung capacity (TLC), with most women predictably falling in the middle of that range, around 95. The men range from 95.6 to 118.3, with most falling around the middle, 107. But this means that a few women will have a larger lung capacity than a few men, represented by the shaded region on the graph. God made this shaded overlap (95.7 to 105.8) with emotional and personality traits as well as physical traits. He did it so that people can more or less identify with the other gender. In other words, so we can talk to each other.
Overlooking the Overlap
Because of this overlap, people start to imagine that there is no distinction. This is a serious mistake. Stephanie might be up on the woman’s curve while I am down on the man’s curve. But the curves are clearly cleaved. This is why, for example, Will Thomas (ne Lia Thomas) was a mediocre male swimmer, and never made it very far among the guys. But among the women, he is a champion.
USA Fencing said that they were willing to potentially err in punishing Stephanie, as they lacked evidence that men claiming womanhood had any real advantage in the sport. I burst out laughing at this, since it is a statement so obviously wrong in fencing, due to arm length and muscle mass.
People making this mistake about the overlapped but cleaving curves can sometimes lead them to public embarrassments.
Serena’s stumble
1998 marked the height of the Williams boom in women’s tennis. Serena Williams was ranked #1 for 319 weeks of her career. Many now recognize her as the greatest woman tennis player of all time. Serena and her sister Venus Williams (ranked 16), both felt unassailable that year. And then, they both made this same overlap mistake, brashly claiming that no male player outside the top 200 could beat them.
At the Australia Open that year, up stepped Karsten Braasch, a German man who was ranked 203rd in the world. He had just lost in the men’s tennis division and didn’t have anything to do. So, in between cigarettes, he said, “Hey, I’ll, play you.”
An unofficial game took place right there at the Australia Open. First Karsten beat Serena 6-1. Then, back to back, he then disposed of Venus 6-2. The surprised Serena admitted afterward: “I hit shots that would have been winners on the women’s Tour and he got to them easily,”
“Apparently, after the game, Serena and Venus immediately told the press they wanted to challenge a male player again,” Braasch said. “This time they revised the ranking of the man they wanted to face, to 350 in the world…”
But, in Braasch’s opinion, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against anyone inside the top 500…
Whether you are a tennis player or fencer, or just one of us ordinary persons, don’t make the same mistake. Gender gives us specialties: Overlap with clear distinction.