By Selwyn Duke
It’s difficult to say if the greatest drama
of the 2012 Olympics has occurred inside or outside the athletic arena, but
it’s hard for anything to compare to the controversy that recently surrounded
16-year-old Chinese swim sensation Ye Shiwen.
The story started on Saturday when Ye shattered the women’s world record
in the 400-meter Individual Medley in a time of 4:28.43, beating the old mark
by more than a second.
If a second constitutes a “shattered”
record—and it does at that high level—you can only imagine what a 14 or
23-second difference is: it’s a vast ocean away. So it should surprise no one that those also
happen to be the number of seconds Ye was slower than, respectively, the last
finisher in the men’s 400m IM, and its winner, Ryan Lochte.
But you wouldn’t know it from the
reportage, which, fueled by Ye’s anomalous final leg of her race, seemed
content to rank race times like bowling scores. For instance, the first part of a Daily Mail headline read,
“Ryan Lochte may be speedy...but this 16-year-old Chinese girl is even
quicker!” the Guardian had a subtitle
stating
“Chinese 16-year-old swam faster than Ryan Lochte,” while Drudge jumped the
shark with “Faster than any man!” Not
surprisingly, such reporting left many readers—including someone close to
me—with the impression that Ye actually registered a faster time than the male swimmers.
The confusion stems from the fact that Ye
did swim the final 50m of her 400m race marginally faster than Lochte swam his
last 50, which rightfully raised eyebrows.
Yet there were men in Lochte’s race who swam that short stretch faster
than Lochte (and Ye, of course), yet no one implies that they “beat” the men’s
gold medalist.
And this certainly caused problems for Miss
Ye. While her anomalous improvement
curve and dusting of her female 400-IM competition already aroused suspicion,
the silly notion that she beat the boys didn’t help. Accusations of “doping” flew among Internet
commenters, countered by Chinese allegations of jealousy and “racism” (add to
today’s one-world economy a one-world social arena: even foreigners know how to
play the race card now).
Of course, experts
also found her closing leg in the 400 IM suspicious, especially since China China
What I don’t need time to know about,
however, are media methods for enhancing Internet traffic and social
causes. And the reportage here was partially driven by a desire to
attract eyeballs—“woman beats man” is a man-bites-dog story. But I believe there’s another reason. It’s the same reason why we see
unrealistically powerful female characters who outshine men on TV, specious
science reporting that glorifies women and diminishes men, and the replacement
of male figures in history books with women of dubious accomplishment: it’s
part of the effort to portray women as the same as men and, when possible and
beneficial, as superior.
Thus, before continuing, let’s place
matters in perspective for the girl-power gascons out there. Ye may be able to beat the boys, but they’d
actually have to be boys—and not
high-level ones, either. For example,
the 400m-IM record for under-18 boys in just one championship, the Junior
Worlds (this isn’t even necessarily a world record), is 4:15.64, which is
considerably better than Ye’s women’s world record. Or consider that while the women’s world
record for the mile is 4:12.56, the boys’ American high-school
record is 3:52. With some variation,
this gap is reflected across events, and it reveals the silliness of comparing
women to men in physical sports. For the
best women couldn’t even measure up in a robust junior-boys or high-school
environment.
I mention this not just to
rub feminists’ noses in reality (although that is fun), but for a more
important reason. We understand the
different roles of birds and fish partially because we recognize the
differences between them. We don’t, for
instance, put a goldfish in a birdcage and then attribute its flopping and
twitching to a lack of affirmative action; we don’t use Buff Tabbies in place
of German Shepherds in a shipyard at night and then wonder in the morning why
the place was robbed. Likewise, if we’re
blind to the differences between the sexes, will we be able to establish the
proper policies and social norms for them?
Consider the matter of women in
combat. Whether it is or isn’t a good
idea, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know if we’re confused about sex
differences. And, really, whether you’re
for it or against, we should all be able to agree on one simple proposition:
our decisions should be informed by fact, not fantasy. We should agree to tell the truth.
So while I’m not going to write the book Men are Birds, Women are Fish (although,
who really catches whom?), I do know that what follows from the notion that the
sexes are the same is that they should be doing the same things. And the social engineers know this also. This is precisely why they seek to twist
people’s perception of reality.
And it’s effective. When working with kids years ago in
athletics, I encountered an 11-year-old boy who was under the assumption that
the women’s mile record should be faster than the men’s. If people are raised with a grasp of reality
like that, how can they possibly figure out what social codes, policies or
politicians to support?
