Good day; sorry for the long article drought.
I suppose we are all in semi-rapt attention over the case which was the topic of audio-broadcast debate in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.
It's actually "cases", as there is one each from the states of Idaho and West Virginia, similar enough that the Court took them on together. The two states, as we probably know now, are two of the 30+ states which require women's sports, interscholastic, intercollegiate, or both, to allow only actual, God-made, XX-chromosomal human beings to participate.
This has caused a huge foofaraw in the nation, with the overwhelming majority of Americans believing the law makes perfect sense, but a handful of people complaining loudly, as handfuls of people can do, that biological men and boys should be able to play on women's teams.
I profess to be amused.
I realize that "amusement" is not the predominant emotion among interested Americans regarding this case, but it is not the litigants, their attorneys, or most Americans that are the source of that amusement.
No, it is actually about pretzels. Not the giant pretzels that are among the top-five comfort foods out there, but the metaphorical pretzels that certain people, including at least one DEI Supreme Court justice, have to twist themselves into to provide opposition to the perfectly rational posture of those laws.
Justice Jackson, the aforementioned bench-sitter, was querying the attorney representing the great (and not fictional) State of Idaho. Since God forbid she actually concede the logical and legal position supported by most all conservatives and probably most all liberals if you put them on sodium pentothal, she had to come up with questions to ask the poor guy, who had to be answering questions while thinking "How did this clown get through the Senate confirmation?"
She asked questions relating to whether males pretending to be female were being treated fairly, using non-terms like "cis women." The Idaho lawyer, to his credit, did not say what he would have loved to, and flipped the script back to the true unfairness, which was that who was actually in need of protection were actual female athletes, and his state's law did just that.
[Just a side note. As a chemistry minor at MIT, I always laugh, sometimes quietly, when some leftist clown or clownette uses "cis" to reference the gender of normal people. The term was appropriated from organic chemistry, of all things. There is a fundamental chemical structure called the "benzene ring", six carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon. Other atoms can be attached to any of those six carbon atoms. When a chemical is made up of a benzene ring and two attached atoms, they can attach to two carbons in the ring that are next to each other (the "cis" position), two that are opposite each other (the "trans" position), or two with one between them (I'm 74, I forgot what that's called). Each position produces a chemical with different properties. So some weirdo with an organic chem background decided that if people pretending to be the opposite sex were "trans", then the people without that mental illness were "cis". Go figure.]
If the Supreme Court does not come back with a 9-0 vote upholding those laws, then one wonders what is going on in DC.
Just ask yourself what the outcome of allowing cosplaying males to participate in girls' sports has been to date. The counts of how many medals, scholarships, all-region teams, etc., are all over the media these days; you don't need to hear it from me. I'll just go with "Lots, and even one is too many." Worse are the counts of injured women, including the volleyball player who got spiked in the head with a ball by a good-old XY guy pretending to be a girl, leading to a life-altering injury.
And the gain has been ...? I'm waiting. I'm also waiting for how any Court decision that doesn't totally uphold the two states' laws would deal with a guy who just wants a medal, and decides on Saturday for the competition that he is a girl, and then decides on Sunday that "Aaaaah, maybe I'm a guy again" as he polishes his medal -- or deposits a winner's check.
Men and women are different. And I'd be remiss if I didn't remind everyone of the stunning example of how different they are in sports.
I refer, of course, to the tennis match from Mother's Day, 1973, when the #1 women's tennis player in the world, Margaret Smith Court, was defeated at her peak 6-2, 6-1, by a 55-year-old man named Bobby Riggs. I was 22 and a college senior, and I remember that match quite well.
If Riggs had just hung in there close with Mrs. Court but lost (as would happen later in the year when he played another top woman player, Billie Jean King and lost in a close match), his point, and mine in this piece, would have been made. The fact that he actually did dominate against the best woman player in the world despite being 55, makes the point that much stronger.
Wait, you never heard about that match with Mrs. Court? I guess you need to read this piece: https://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2018/11/visiting-column-2-omission-in-news.html
I am strongly in favor of the integrity of women's sports, and I share that position with most all Americans.
At least those who do not resemble pretzels.
Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton. Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.