[Lightspeed]

It's a reasonable position, for anyone who has grown up where the lens of gender welded to sex is ego-syntonic. The young boy that comes off the field crying isn't even a consideration. They're expected to man up, get back out there, this is the real world sonny! The young girl's tears on the other hand are encouraged, their fragile femininity welcomed, desired. Shame for the weak boy or strong girl is just right and proper. Very difficult for us old folk to see the problem in this at all, that these are lessons that are as significant as our more lofty ideals.

In part the aggressive nature of many of our sports reflects the aggressive nature of our culture. Aggression is to be encouraged amongst those most able to wield their power, the weak shown their vulnerability. The strong get what they want, the weak get fucked. We teach this early. The idea that there's strength found in diversity is lost.

But what's happening is more and more are growing up where the distortions of this lens are obvious and problematic. It's an imposition, oppression that surely cannot stand if our society is free as we're lead to believe.

It's not something we can go back on. Bills like Gabbard's are a vain attempt to maintain the status quo. But it's too late, that path to power is dead, any movement is just the kicking of a corpse. New life will evolve, nothing that can be planned or legislated. We have to discover what works, suffer the pain of what doesn't. This legislation won't.

Perhaps what we'll learn is maybe we can wait until our kids are older and able to make a choice for themselves before we subject them to each other's capacity for violence, for the sake of some lessons. We're not so fucking dumb we can't come up with competitive activities that don't involve physically forcing ourselves on each other.