I heard the eloquent Kendall Qualls at the Eighth Congressional District Convention last weekend. His trans-bashing brochure blaming the left he mailed to me today on ignoring biology reminds me of another Republican Mr. Qualls probably knows of. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Not long after Harry Truman integrated black men like Qualls into the US. Military Strom quit the “too liberal” Democratic Party formed his own Dixiecrat Party (He wasn’t yet ready to join the party of the hated Abraham Lincoln) and shouted across America against the “mongrelization of the White Race.” That’s race mixing which dilutes the pure white European breed of American men.
The good Senator neglected to mention one thing of interest to his voters. When he was a school superintendent he fathered a child by his black house maid.
It would be nice to think that the black Kendall Qualls has been admitted to Strom’s Republican Party although its a little hard for me to swallow his borrowing Strom’s tactics of besmirching another minority – people born with the head of one gender and the body of another.
After 71 years on this planet I can think of dozens of bullet points that ought to temper Mr. Qualls self-righteousness. Each deserves elaboration but I’ve jotted down a thumbnail of each only.
* I’m an old swimmer and swimming has had a long history in our nation’s politics. My first drive past the beautiful Gulf coast beaches of the South was in the late 60’s when they were still exclusively for white people.
* In the 40’s My Mother’s old integrated High School stopped building a swimming pool in the basement when the City of Topeka realized that black children would be swimming in it.
*In the mid 60’s took lessons in a motel swimming pool until my instructor was told he couldn’t teach black kids to swim in it because its white guests objected.
*In the late 60’s A girl on the YWCA swim team asked to swim with my boys high school swim team and our coach said what the heck. Having her in the pool made the boys swim a hell of a lot harder. One of my swimming buddies got a crush on her.
*I had a church commissioning class with another girl who swam on the YMCA swim team. When she went to college with me she told me that tough gay women drove on the bus to races and harassed the straight girls…..kind of like guy jocks.
*I heard of a transgender Christine Jorgenson when I was in grade school. She went to Denmark for an operation. Eventually American physicians began performing sex change operations. When my children were in confirmation classes in the late 90’s our church sent them to Trinity, Colorado to help needy people paint and repair their old housing. I was a chaperone. We learned the tiny host city was the capital of sex change operations in America. None of us were scandalized by this.
*My first recollection of a formerly male trans-athlete that wanted to compete with women was Renee Richards who began competing in women’s events in the late 70’s. Everything Qualls says now people said then of Renee. He/she was allowed to compete but with an unhappy cloud of tennis politics. Renee’s world ranking in women’s tennis was 20th but he didn’t transition in this prime athletic years twenties but later in life. He coached Martina Navratilova (a famously gay athlete) to two Wimbledon championships.
*As early as the 90’s a few brave girls in Iowa and Minnesota started wrestling in the formerly all male contact sport free style wrestling. I hadn’t minded swimming in a pool with a dedicated girl swimmer but I’ll admit to identifying with guys who would have to wrestle a girl.
*My niece became an elite swimmer in high school swimming far faster than I ever did with far more demanding practices. Would her parents have thrown a Qualls like hissy fit if the obviously much bigger Lia (William) Thomas had swum against her. I don’t know but I strongly doubt they would have used her picture in a Strom Thurmond-like political ad.
*The Communist world poured testosterone into their female swimmers in the 80’s and 90’s so transforming their bodies that they had to shave their body hair. Perhaps Putin’s drugged out Olympic Committee did the same although. Its ironic that Putin has been so hostile to gays but then again, the old commie, is a Christian now.
*One of my favorite political analysts is Andrew Sullivan who wrote a book about how much more wholesome it would be if Gays were allowed to marry years before the Supreme Court agreed. He also wrote that it was hard for the Gay Community which was beginning to gain acceptance to share acceptance to transgendered people. It was rather like the Old South were poor whites could look down on all blacks. I thought that was a brave admission. Qualls proves that it is not only safe to continue badmouthing God’s less favored people but in some circles a popular thing to do..
*Testosterone does build muscle and an aggressive temperament so it does seem unfair to give it to some athletes and not others. Of course, for a true male-to-female trans-athlete testosterone suppression is part of the therapy. When looking up Renee Richard in Wikipedia I discovered that Renee was no longer so keen on letting the boys who want to be girls compete with the girls. He said of himself that if he had transitioned in his twenties no professional women tennis player could have beaten him. That he, of all people, would reconsider this is thought provoking.
I can’t tell you how the issue will be decided in some distant future but I can tell you that the arguments of a Strom Thurmond “mongrel” like Qualls don’t impress me.
