Changing directions rarely is easy. In this, societies are much like cosmic boulders hurtling through space: Inertia rules.
We are reminded of this by recent activity in Florida, where the governor and the Legislature have spent the last few years attempting to dislodge those aspects of culture and society within their influence from the tug of radicalism.
Lately, the realignment efforts by Florida’s energized and elected conservative supermajority aimed at moderating leftist silliness have been met with resistance wrapped in apoplexy. Two recent well-publicized events reflect the grudging state of the political cosmos.
Wednesday, public school teachers who are committed to and apparently proud of their attempts to limit the centuries-old definitions of words, sued various government entities over Florida’s restrictions on personal titles and pronouns to those that match a person’s sex at birth.
Three public school teachers challenged a new Florida law in federal court Wednesday, arguing the state’s ban on using personal titles and pronouns that do not match a person’s sex at birth is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two transgender women who teach in the Hillsborough County and Lee County school districts, respectively, and a non-binary teacher in Orange County fired from the Florida Virtual School in October for using gender-neutral courtesy titles in their online physics classes.
The state’s new law “targets Florida’s transgender and nonbinary teachers for being themselves at work” and “clearly and unlawfully discriminates based on sex and restrains their speech, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and civil rights statutes,” said a statement issued by the attorneys for the three teachers.
The trio are unhappy about the Parental Rights in Education law passed in 2022, which prohibits age-inappropriate instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity, and the expanded 2023 version, which bans teachers from directing students to use personal titles and pronouns that fail to correspond with their sex.
[Gov. Ron] DeSantis said those rules would protect children from “gender identity politics in schools,” and Republican lawmakers who pushed for the law’s passage said it would help shield students from difficult or mature topics.
How about, the law also protects classrooms from subverting effective communication by manipulating the dictionary. All of a sudden, it’s not only trendy to declare you’ve become unmoored from your biological sex, but we must accommodate your whim by abusing “they” and “them.”
If a nonbinary motorist is alone in “their” car, do “they” qualify for the HOV lane? No wonder new math is hard.
Wait, there’s more. Florida’s “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which prevents biological males from participating in girls and women’s sports — individual and team competitions alike — has been targeted lately over the banning of a lad living as a lass and being allowed to play (in defiance of state law and Florida High School Athletic Association rules) on the girls volleyball team at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, near Fort Lauderdale.
Florida’s state athletic board fined Monarch High and put it on probation after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team. https://t.co/eyzeCqGEKn
— FOX29WFLX (@FOX29WFLX) December 13, 2023
Much that is misguided and illogical (as shown above) has been expressed in sympathy for and defense of the lad living as a lass. Here’s a sample from Jennifer Solomon, part of the leadership of LGBTQ rights group Equality Florida:
“So now we are punishing student-athletes and wasting money on fines that could be used to support our schools and our students.”
That’s one way to look at it. Per Solomon, cheating is OK if it serves the correct socio-politico agenda.
In the real world, however, Monarch’s volleyball coach, athletic director, and administration made a bad decision. Rather than appeal on the student’s behalf, they all conspired to flout the FHSAA rule and the state law that spawned it. The Broward County School District properly reassigned all the perpetrators and put the school on probation.
Regarding this, the epitome of horrendous takes — which is saying something — was published under the byline of one Mackenzie Meaney. An accomplished scholar at Marist (where — irony alert — she played women’s lacrosse) and Northwestern, Meaney celebrated her first week as a Deadspin staffer by publishing a take that was exquisite in its horribleness.
We quote (and add emphasis):
“The main argument in this dumb law is that biological men are stronger than biological women, so allowing people who were assigned male at birth to compete in female sports makes the playing field uneven. Your daughter could get beaten in a race by a trans girl, and that would make you sad, wouldn’t it? That would make you stop and say, “[W]ow, that is really unfair that they let her race.” Good thing volleyball is a team sport, where her individual performance doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of whether the team wins or loses. There are five other people on that court working just as hard as her to get that ball over the net. Her biology means nothing here.”
So, at the same time our bold young crusader is conceding the fact of the ersatz girl’s biology — oops — she also argues in team sports, one player cannot improve the likelihood of a squad’s success. Who’s going to tell the Los Angeles Dodgers’ front office?
In Meaney World, the first pick in the draft is useless. MVP awards, meaningless. Gretzky, Jordan, LeBron, Brady, Payton, Purdy … even Rapinoe, Breanna Stewart and Lisa Leslie — they’re all indifferent cogs in team-sport machines.
Also in Meaney World, perhaps especially in Meaney World, high school teams with a handful of four- and five-star prospects are no more likely to win a state championship than teams with kids who will never play a minute in college.
While we’re at it, let’s decommission all those team-sport halls of fame. Because every inductee had teammates who were working just as hard.
Absurd, right? Competition based on level courts and fields encourages endeavoring and identifies excellence.
Wade Boggs, who played on teams of 25, never imagined himself a face in the crowd. As any farsighted student of baseball would, he’d had read The Natural, and identified with Roy Hobbs. “When I walk down the street,” he’d say, even in high school where everybody works just as hard, “I want them to say, ‘There goes Wade Boggs, the best there ever was.’ ”
In the world prescribed by philosophers such as Meaney and Equality Florida’s Solomon, and foreseen by George Orwell, honest striving for supremacy must make way for participation, belonging, community, and accepting. If we fracture convictions regarding legitimate fairness and engraved definitions along the way, that’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
Florida, where conservatives won in a historic landslide 13 months ago, thinks otherwise.
