As SCOTUS Debates "Trans Women" Competing in Girls Sports, the World's 671st Ranked Male Tennis Player Easily Beats the Woman Ranked #1; also, Remembering Scott Adams and Dilbert

The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this week on whether individual states are allowed to ban “transgender women” (e.g. males) from competing in girls’ sports at the high school and college level. It’s a triumph for the woke assault on civilized norms that the Supreme Court justices even took this case.

The good news is that the prevailing sentiment of court watchers is that the court will rule in favor of the states which ban biological males from competing in women’s sports. But it is also concerning if this NBC report is true, “There was wide agreement on the bench that, at least in the cases before them, the scientific consensus on to what extent transgender girls and women have a competitive advantage is not clear.”

Yikes. I hope that statement is just wishcasting on the part of a left-wing journalist. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson famously admitted during her confirmation hearing in 2022 that she is scientifically illiterate not a biologist and is unaware of any differences between men and women. But I certainly hope that there is not “wide agreement” among the other eight justices that men do not have a proven competitive advantage over women.

Meanwhile, a tennis “battle of the sexes” just took place a couple weeks ago, matching Nick Kyrgios against Aryna Sabalenka. Mr. Kyrgios is ranked 671st among male professional tennis players. He has played just six tour-level matches in the past three years. Ms. Sabalenka has won four women’s grand slam tournaments, and is currently ranked #1 in the world among professional female tennis players.

Because the tennis world understands that women and men are not equal, Ms. Sabalenka’s side of the court was 9% smaller, meaning that she had less ground to cover compared to Kyrgios, and that he had a smaller in-bounds area in which he could place his shots than she did.

Mr. Kyrgios won easily in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3.

This is also an appropriate moment to remember that back in 2017 a soccer team of under-15 year old boys whipped the US Women’s National Soccer Team.

“FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women's National Team in a scrimmage” [CBS – 04/04/2017]

In preparation for two upcoming friendlies against Russia, the U.S. women’s national team played the FC Dallas U-15 boys academy team on Sunday and fell 5-2, according to FC Dallas’ official website.

Circling back to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Ace documented this amazing question of hers from the bench this week, "Is treating someone transgender, but does not have, because of the medical interventions and the things that have been done, who does not have, uh, the same, uh, threat to physical competition and safety and all the reasons the state puts forward - that's actually a different class, says this individual. So you're not treating the class the same. And how do you respond to that?"

Yes, how do you respond to that? KBJ is an orator for the ages. We may have to start referring to her as Ketanji Wendell Holmes.

GM Pivoting its Focus from One Tesla Niche to Another Tesla Niche

My latest piece at The American Spectator, “EVs and Autonomous Vehicles: General Motors’ Doomed Focus on Unprofitable Boutique Products” has been published.

General Motors’ heir-apparent to the CEO office was hired just eight months ago from an autonomous vehicle start-up company that has lost billions of dollars and has less than 10 vehicles on the road.

Since Mr. Anderson’s hiring, several prominent executives have departed [General Motors], presumably because they don’t share his vision for prioritizing self-driving cars. As reported by CNBC a few weeks ago, Mr. Anderson “has consolidated power to oversee ‘the end-to-end product lifecycle’ of GM vehicles, including manufacturing, engineering, battery, software and services product management, and engineering teams, according to GM.”

Despite the massive EV losses that GM has incurred, the company is apparently casting its lot with a tech executive whose profit-and-loss experience is with cash burn rather than cash flow.

This piece is not behind a paywall. I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.

Remembering Scott Adams

Scott Adams’ death is being eloquently covered by others, so there is not much I can add. But I do want to offer up a few quick thoughts. Aside from Dilbert being my favorite cartoon for decades, I was a loyal reader of Mr. Adams’ blog for many years before his greater celebrity during the Trump era. Mr. Adams often expanded my views, and occasionally frustrated me, but he helped me understand how rational people can understand things differently.

Back in 2016, when I doubted that Donald Trump was in any way conservative, and when I thought Trump had no chance to beat Hillary in the presidential election, Scott Adams was one of two writers who made an impact on my attitude toward that election. Mr. Adams famously wrote about the reasons why Trump was likely to win. He was right. (The other writer was John Hinderaker of Powerline, who was the first legacy conservative I read who stated that of course we traditional Republicans needed to vote for Trump.)

I was flattered once when Scott put out a call for Dilbert topics and he ended up using one of my submissions. As I recall, his invitation to the public was something to the effect of ”You provide the workplace situation and I’ll provide the humor.” I wrote him and offered up what a special hell it was to be working for a company campaigning for recognition in a local “Best Places to Work” contest. Shortly thereafter he used that in a cartoon.

Finally, my favorite Dilbert character was one who got very little screen time. Scott Adams may be gone, but Mordac, The Preventer of Information Services lives on.

I think of Mordac every time I have a spontaneously obsolete password, or I’m blocked from being able to access a system necessary for my job, or I can’t access an SaaS app because there are too few licenses, or I’m logged out of a system because I got called away for a short meeting, etc. In all these circumstances, I give a tip of the hat to Mordac, and I applaud his success in protecting my employer by preventing me from doing my job.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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