Biology of Gender Reflective Essay:
I am not going to lie; when I first signed up for Biology of Gender, I had very low expectations as to the things I would learn and, furthermore, the things that I would agree with. I consider myself an open-mined person with a libertarian (meaning I think everyone should have the ability to do what they want) outlook on politics and since many of the issues presented in the course had never interested me, I believe I had the unique experience of trying to develop an opinion on many of the topics on my own. In the house I grew up in, my parents rarely discussed politics and my teachers in high school were very good about not taking biased approaches in there teachings. In Biology of Gender, I believe you also did a very good job of keeping the discussions and information presented as unbiased as possible. This became ever more clear when you would respond to my papers with meaningful, well thought out feedback, that would present either supporting or contrary information.
This was a “breath of fresh air” for me because in my previous experiences with science and writing intensive classes, the teachers have been very biased. One of my teachers even told our class on one occasion that if “we didn’t believe in global warming (and a few other issues) then we should drop her class because she didn’t have time to lecture idiots.” Although I personally did not have an opinion on many of the issues she presented, I knew from talking to some of the other colleagues in the class that they did not believe in some of the issues for religious or moral reasons. That experience has put a bad taste in my mouth about many courses outside of my major because in Computer Science classes, it is very hard to teach programming and cyber security with a political agenda. Furthermore, with most of my college classes being very technical, I was not used to politically focused classes. As I said previously, when I first signed up for Biology of Gender, I thought it was going to be super political and I would not learn anything. I can safely say that was not the case and I enjoyed the class.
The first topic that we discussed was the differences between sex and gender. Although socially I agree that the government should not be able to tell anyone that they cannot be the gender that they want to be, I do believe that things such as bathroom admittance and sporting events should be based on biological sex. That is unless the individual can somehow prove that do to hormone therapy (or something else) they do not have an advantage. When I ran track in high school, there was a reason that there was a separation between girls and boys events. That separation was not because the school systems were being sexist, but because physical girls are not capable (on average) of getting male comparable times. For example, when running the 1600 meter race, an average time for a male (who runs competitively) is around 5 minutes. However, in order to actually be competitive in events, males have to run around 4 minute and 40 second 1 miles. For the females a competitive time (on average) is around 6 minutes and 30 seconds with the competitive event time being around 6 minutes flat. Although there are some outlier and females who can consistently run sub five minute miles, it became obvious that if females were matched up against males, it would be very rare that the females would even place in events. This is were the transgender aspect of sports gets a bit fuzzy.
Of course you want to respect that persons decision to be a female but are you willing to take away a biological females chance of winning due to the transgender individuals physical advantage. It doesn’t seem fair and opening up that can of worms would ruin many biological females chances of getting sports scholarships and things of that nature. One thing that always comes to mind when talking around transgender people in sports is LeBron James. Although he would never go to the WNBA because he one of the highest paid athletes in the world (and WNBA players don’t make very much compared to NBA), what if he did because he decided he was a women? You take a guy whose 6’8 and 250 pounds and match him up against females who are (on average) 6’ and 168 pounds, you should expect a slaughter every game. Allowing transgender people into female sports will just ruin female sports. In summary, I can agree that people should be able to be a female or a male if they want to, but as far as sporting events, those should be based on biological sex. There is a clear difference in ability in sports between males and females. This is why people tend to watch male sports over female sports. One big example I can think over was an article that was trending back in early 2016. This article simply stated that in Australia, a male U14 team (so kids ages 12-13) beat Australia’s female nation team by slaughter rule (which is 7 points without the other teams scoring). Females have a lot to offer society but pretending that biological sex doesn’t give you a biological advantage in physical sporting competitions doesn’t make sense.
The second topic that was discussed in the class was the idea of the third gender in many cultures. For the artifact that I wrote I talked about the “two-spirit” individuals in Native American tribes. I found it to be interesting. I was not aware that the transgender idea had been around for hundreds of year and it wasn’t really a new topic. Personally, I don’t see why its an issue. It someone wants to be a female or a male, let them pick what they want to be. However, just like there is an age limit for buying tobacco and alcohol, I believe that there should be an age that a person is allowed to get any body altering surgeries. This is for a few reasons. The first would be people regret a lot of the things they did when they were younger. For example, when I was in middle school I was convinced that all I wanted to do was be in a metal band. I had hair down to my shoulders and dressed in all black (always representing with the Metallica t-shirt). Up until 9th grade, I wanted a Foo-fighters neck tattoo and I wanted to get my nose pieced. I am very VERY glad that my parents didn’t let me and that there was an age limit on getting both those things. Interests change and teenage years are years of confusing and bad choices. If I would have gotten those things (which I believed were part of my identity), I would have a tattoo that disqualified me from military service and a hole in my nose that would have made me look very unprofessional when applying for any other job. I also believe that in the next few years, with all the teenagers getting body altering surgeries we are going to start to see these teenagers as adults suing their parents and the doctors for letting the surgeries take place.
The last main topic that we discussed was the global gender wage gap (which I believe should actually be called the earnings gap). It is not disputed that women are not taken care of when it comes to maternity leave and things of that nature but many ideas presented by wage gap activists are not correct. First of all women doing the same job as a man have the same wages. “Wages” referring to how much they both make on an hourly basis. However, overall, men tend to earn more money (as a population). This is for a variety of reasons that include career choice and medical leave. Personally, unless there is a government funded maternity leave, it is impossible for businesses to pay females their same salary. This is because most business, especially small businesses, are understaffed and everyone has to pitch in more than they should to keep the business running. This is because these businesses need to make money. If a female has a baby and leaves, the owner will have to hire on a replacement while they are out. This requires them to pay two salaries at once and it doesn’t make sense in business. If the activists get what they want and they get paid full salary for maternity leave, business owners will be less likely to hire females of child-bearing age. Although they will then start to complain about how sexist the business are, it will be impossible to prove that they were 100% better for the job with how competitive the job market is. In conclusion, I enjoyed the class and learned a lot of things about anatomy that I would have never known.