Female & male bodies are different

The P.S. DuPont High School Swim Team in 1975 in Wilmington, Del. I’m the one who sticks out the most, along with my mistaken beliefs that girls could compete fairly against people born with genetically embedded testosterone. Skill and training could not win over biology and socialization.

Which one of these people doesn’t belong? That’s me, the white girl in the top row. Here’s what I learned about gender and race in this high school in the 1970s.

1. Boys and girls have different bodies and socialization. Most males would die trying rather than be beaten by a girl. People born male are bigger, stronger and driven by testosterone.
2. No matter how much you love swimming, join the girls basketball team instead. It would have been more fun and an equal playing field. You would have had more friends and a locker room to change in, not a janitor’s closet or teacher’s bathroom.
3. Tell your parents you need to go to a different school where you’re not harassed because of your white skin.

After being the only female swimmer [the girl to my right quit after the photo] for two years, I continued my quest to compete with and against males, guaranteed by the Federal Title IX for females on high school and university teams.

I played on co-ed volleyball teams in my 20s and discovered the same hard truth: I can never compete equally against male bodies. They jump higher. The co-ed net is 6 inches taller. Their spikes hurt!

Look at the 29 records smashed by trans women, and ZERO records being smashed by trans men. We need to protect females in competition not the fragile egos and mental health of trans women and girls. They must discover the reality of femaleness (and life) — you can’t have everything. The new rules steal victories from female-born athletes and hand them to trans women on a silver platter.

Male bodies jump higher, run faster and can lift more weight. They outclass females in size and muscle mass. Taking hormone blocking drugs, identifying as a woman and putting on a bra does not make an equal match against female-born athletes. Yet the ACLU — American Civil Liberties Union — has embraced the rights of trans women to break into women’s sports. What’s wrong with this picture? Is it a civil right to barge into a competition to guarantee a class of people multiple advantages?

Legal, social and bathroom trans rights make sense. Sports are in a different category because they rely on sheer physicality. With modern gender fluidity, we need to devise new games and competitions for all gender identities that are fair for every person, especially those born with smaller skeletons, and less muscle mass and testosterone.

How about creating a new paradigm of competition. Design trans-ed rules for team sports like volleyball, basketball, and softball, similar to co-ed volleyball that regulates who is on the court, and how often they must touch the ball. Bike polo puts competitors somewhat on the same level, yet male teams typically dominate.

Allowing trans women to compete against female bodies severely handicaps female athletes in individual and team sports. Don’t we have enough male privileges in the world already?

Cons of maleness

Photo by Jonathan Borba
Text and photo editing by Jan E. Pat

One of the main drawbacks of being born a man is the inability to give life.
Yes, it can be a gift and a burden. Like many things, the government sticks its
nose where it doesn’t belong to try to regulate the miraculous ability
to bring a child into the world.

Besides the seeds to life, pregnancy gives birth to conflict,
violence, emotions, domination and intrusive laws. Men seek to control women’s
bodies because of women’s duo-power – to create human beings and provide sexual satisfaction.

Continuing on my theme of the pros and cons of being a man, a MAJOR pro for
men is their enjoyment of the patriarchy including historical contributions and
control and favorable treatment in culture, government, education, laws,
politics, economics, health care, banking and most aspects of society.

The no-pregnancy thing totally cancels all that out. A few men have managed
to breast feed a baby with hormonal intervention and a lot of effort. Women are
built for the job. Until someone really wants a baby, this supreme advantage of
female body is overlooked and even considered inconvenient.

In my cli-fi futuristic novel Riddles Island, the non-binary characters have ways around and through pregnancy. The island colony is childless by design. It’s a bit barren, to say the least. Watch for the next installment of pros and cons of maleness, to be followed by the same series for females. Bottom line: can anyone have it all? Do we need to?

Wanted: Sturdy futuristic thinkers

Nate Hagens is Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/about

Human behavior, monetary/economic systems, ecology, geopolitics and the environment all meld into the backdrop of Riddles Island. They are also the life work Nate Hagens, director of the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future.

Hagens predicts a big energy transformation is coming in the next decade or two and thinks big about how societies can adapt to lifestyles that use less energy. He focuses on ecology, energy and the most vexing wild card — us humble humans. I added a few more themes in my story.

In 2111 on Riddles Island, there’s geneering (Newspeak for genetic engineering) that homogenizes race/ethnicity and gender; There are clashes of religion, class and culture; universal a-gender pronouns; all topped off by the collapse of international capitalism and government. Ridlets live an even more simplified life than what Hagens envisions.

I felt a little depressed after listening to Hagens’ interview on Chris Keefer’s Decouple podcast that promotes nuclear energy. Ridlets use a small portable SMR — Small Nuclear Reactor for limited electricity. Otherwise, their transition to a low-energy lifestyle is more drastic than Hagens’ courageous predictions that would alter the way we Americans use and fritter away energy. Energy use is the carpet we walk upon, the water we swim in, the air we depend on for life and commerce.

I can see why Riddles Island might be hard for some people to read because of the future I’ve depicted. There is a somewhat happy ending. Ridlets live together mostly in peace in a tightly knit community. What’s a novel — or village — without conflict and difficult situations? Riddles Island is basically a love triangle set in a post-gender, childless community that practices simple, low-energy, low-tech life on a small secure island.

When my book group read Our Souls at Night, by Kent Haruf, some objected to the sad ending. One member said, “I hate happy endings.” Is there such a thing as a happy ending? Don’t we all struggle and muddle through life as best we can, recovering from bad decisions and being dealt an unlucky hand in life? Some book group members couldn’t stomach Riddles Island, and weren’t able to say why, even though it’s information that I welcome and value about a book, not me.

Take a trip into 2111 on Riddles Island. It might ignite your imagination and make you think differently and recognize how our societies could change in the coming century, based on trends today. I’d love to hear what you think about the book – riddlesisland2111@aol.com.

And the best gender is…

The pros and cons of femaleness will be evaluated in the next post, Part 2.

Rewards of maleness	Disadvantages of maleness
Testosterone and all its glory that has engendered great things and sexual satisfaction.	Testosterone and its relentless drive to get laid, and cause minor and major violence.
Enjoy the patriarchy including historical contributions and control and favorable treatment in culture, government, education, laws, politics, economics, health care, banking and most aspects of society.	Do not have the miraculous ability to get pregnant and give birth to a new human being, and to nurse a tiny, beautiful, helpless creature from their breasts.
Never have to obtain legal permission to control their bodies, that might cause inconvenience, pain, trauma, guilt, even death.	May suffer discrimination in family court during a custody decision.
Stronger genetic capacity and social norm to excel in math, which leads to high wealth generation.	Expected to provide income, security and protection for women and children.
Normalized behaviors include: assertiveness, physical prowess, boldness, bossiness, aggressiveness, loudness, domination, leadership, criticism, and expression of anger	Risk bullying if they act, gesture, show feelings (other than anger), speak, wear clothing, colors or accessories that might be considered stereotypical female attributes.
Honored by countless public monuments and statues to recognize public contributions to society. Many phallic symbols are erected in public art, monuments and buildings, which promote the patriarchy.	High expectations to be athletic and macho to please others, especially in all-male groups, teams, and fraternities, to avoid being a victim of bullying.
Males aren’t expected to thank or acknowledge females for anything they do for them or other people.	Expected to take the risk to initiate, often pay for and develop sexual relations in male-female relationships.
When (if?) a male prepares food for others, even mediocre food, he is lauded	Can be challenged to prove their masculinity and status in relation to other males through street or bar fighting that can be fatal.
Minimal time can be spent on buffing and polishing appearance. Short hair is the norm and requires minimal care.	Must shave facial hair daily and/or groom a beard.
Men have many choices of comfortable shoes for dress and casual and avoid high heels.	Don’t understand what it’s like to be treated like a second-class citizen.
Being overweight by 20 to 50 pounds is totally acceptable and clothing is made to tent over the body fat.	Small males endure a strong cultural bias against them. Females and males may discriminate and bully them.
Suits and dress shirts are manufactured and sold to the exact specifications of male bodies, and often tailored for exact fit.	Could be wrongly accused of rape, murder and battery of females and children.
Can urinate just about anywhere conveniently.	Paranoid about being perceived as being anything less than macho, especially as gay or female.
Can conveniently, affordably and quickly rent standard-sized formal wear and shoes.
Admired and envied for sexual promiscuity instead of being shamed for it.
Can dress carelessly without judgement.
Encouraged and rewarded to think, act, talk, plan, risk and spend BIG. BIG male bodies and personalities receive praise and respect.
Have permission to interrupt, especially women, without consequences.
Consistently out-earn women, a source of power in public and private life.
Don’t have to wear bras, girdles, pantyhose, makeup, jewelry or high heels.
Assume everyone benefits from the patriarchy, especially Caucasian and Latino men.
Can blatantly treat women and girls like sex objects, in the media, in songs, and in every aspect of public and private life.
High degree freedom to move about in the world without fear of rape.
Are rarely first judged by their sexual appeal. Can star in TV shows, newscasts and movies even when overweight, balding and/or decades past their peak physical and sexual attractiveness.

Best of luck Olivia Pichardo

Dear Olivia,

Way to go, you’re the first woman to play NCAA Division 1 men’s baseball at Brown University. I hope playing with the men lives up to your expectations. From my experience playing on several men’s teams, I realized some dour facts.

1. Male opponents will exploit your weaknesses because after all, winning is the point. For example, as the lone female on a men’s recreational volleyball team, one team set up spikes against whatever front line position I rotated to. The simple strategy worked. I’m 5 feet 8 and a half inches tall, blocking on a 6 foot net, against stronger, testosterone-driven men, many of whom were taller and could jump higher.
2. You’ll never excel or dominate. As a high school swimmer on the boy’s team, I rarely placed in the top three, unless the team was weak or sent scrawny junior varsity members. Like you, I competed because I loved swimming and righteously took my place thanks to Title IX. Had I played girls basketball, competing against equal bodies, I would’ve often had the physical advantage. When I played women’s USVBA (United States Volleyball Association), I liked dominating on the 5 foot 6 inch net.
3. You’ll never be their physical or hormonal equal. It’s impossible.
4. You might find competing with and against females is more fun, satisfying and relaxing.
5. I hope you don’t get hurt. I quit co-ed volleyball to prevent the pain of receiving hard testosterone-fueled spikes and serves.
6. You may encounter opponents who feel insecure about being “beaten by a girl.” They play harder to protect fragile egos. Teammates might resent you, expressed by silence, resistance to throwing you the ball, avoiding partnering with you in practice or sitting beside you on the bus, and even blatant hazing. It’s awkward and sometimes hurtful.
7. I hope you get a changing room, unless you’re going to suit up and shower with the boys. The home team usually gets the boy’s locker room, and the visitors, the girl’s lockers. That leaves you with broom closets, coaches’ offices and toilet rooms. Again, awkward.
8. You may discover what men think and say when women aren’t around. In my 30s, I found a group of men who played soccer at noon, a quarter mile from home. Those conveniences were quickly outweighed. Their e-mails included derogatory sexual references to women and name calling. “Nancy-boy” was a favorite insult, to be compared so weak that you were like a woman. They avoided passing me the ball unless desperate and outplayed me with superior strength and muscle mass. That was the last time I competed with males. It wasn’t fun.

Olivia you’ve said that you’ve achieved your dream. I hope it doesn’t become a nightmare, in which you’re trying to prove something that defies the realities of strength, size, hormones, muscle mass and socialization. Thanks to Title IX, you have lots of options to compete against equals, a luxury enjoyed by Western women who like choices and rights. Good luck.

[Photo credits: Futurestarssseries.com, and at top, Brown University]

Can we all get along?

(Photo courtesy of David Zalubowski, Associated Press)

It’s hard to wake up to another mass shooting based on hate and labels. The nightmare at the Colorado Springs night club shows how people go crazy over the identity and appearance of some people, who are not their business. It’s a sick expression of fear and homophobia. It’s kind of like abortion: if you don’t like abortion, don’t get one. If you feel insecure around people different from you, stick with your own kind.

Dana was the first transwoman with whom I had a personal relationship when I co-led a 2006 production of “The Vagina Monologues.” The director really wanted at least one transwoman in our cast. She somehow succeeded and Dana joined the dramatic telling of a series of hilarious tales and bone-chilling horrible experiences that women and transwomen endure.

“My very presence sparks every ounce of a person’s insecurity,” said Dana, who had been a victim of bullying. Some cis-men are obsessed with transwomen. Some cis-men verbally intimidate, physically threaten and beat up, as well as murder transwomen. It seems that transwomen of color are most vulnerable.

Dana’s story has stayed with me for more than 15 years and made me question my own insecurities toward members of the LGBTQ+ community. I used to make inappropriate jokes with a lesbian couple, which reflected my self-doubt. Luckily, they didn’t hold it against me, and we are still friends. If I were born 20 years ago, maybe I’d be queer or trans. Who knows?

I empathize with victims and people on the fringes of society because I was a victim of bullying and social ostracization as one of a few white kids in a mostly African American inner city high school. That nightclub was a sanctuary for a community of people, and now it’s forever tainted. We all seek acceptance and our own tribe.

Dana taught me a lot about trans folk. She earned a good income which helped to pay for surgery, which can be a burden. As a cast and crew of women, our technical abilities were low. Dana took on responsibility for the light and sound board. When we sometimes used the wrong pronoun, Dana said, “It’s my fault for not acting more female.” Talk about blaming the victim.

A note to the US media: take a page from the horrible 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, where the government and media pledged to NEVER share the name or photo of the shooter, to abort his instant fame.

We need to listen to Rodney King who said back in 1982, “I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

BTW, it’s time to start planning for a February production of “The Vagina Monologues,” a month during which Eve Ensler waives the license fee if all proceeds are donated any organization dedicated to end violence against women.

Nuclear power is closer than 2111

The ancient Nordic God of Thunder, for whom the nuclear element THORIUM is named.

In my first draft of Riddles Island in 1999, I followed the flawed cultural beliefs about the disdain for all things nuclear. While editing during the quiet Covid times, my attitude turned 180-degrees. I embraced the enormous green potential of nuclear power and joined a group of scientists, advocates and environmentalists to advocate for nuclear power as the fastest way to de-carbonize the planet.

Ridlets (Riddles Island residents of 2111), power up their bakery oven with a THOR, a portable thorium generator that could be common place sooner than 2111. Thorium is widely, affordably, and easily accessible all over the planet, in quantities that could provide energy for millennia when used in molten salt reactors.

How come this is secret? Lotsa reasons.

1. Nuclear power is associated with bombs and fear because of its incredible energy and hazardous by-products. ALL types of energy — even solar and wind — have hazardous waste at the tailpipes. Nuclear is the ONLY energy source that reuses and/or sequesters all of its waste. We have the technology to do it safely. Confusing nuclear bombs with nuclear power plants is like saying guns are made from metal, therefore all metal is dangerous and could easily become a gun.
2. Nuclear power is handicapped by massive misinformation in popular culture and media. I became aware of my unconscious bias after embracing it and integrated a positive view of it in Riddles Island. I found subtle and obvious references to unfounded assumptions about nuclear energy throughout the draft. I join other artists like Justin Bieber and Drake to promote clean green modern nuclear power.
3. Environmentalists have adopted the false prophet of wind and solar and adamantly overlook their drawbacks. The top three downsides are: A. Inconsistency. The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. Wind and solar must have backup to sustain the electrical grid 24/7, like we demand. Big enough batteries are part of the pipe dream. B. It’s impossible to provide the amount of land required. The math and science don’t add up. Wind and solar are best for intermittent local power. C. The true cost is supplemented by publicly funded tax incentives and gigantic infrastructure improvement to transmit the electricity from turbines and panels. The costs of trashing the panels and blades and replacing them 30-40 years later are totally ignored.

Sadly, environmentalists and progressives are the most freaked out about nuclear energy. By 2033, I regretfully predict we nuclear advocates will be saying, I told you so, when the impossible dreams of solar and wind become a costly nightmare.

Do your own research. Read A Bright Future, by Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist, and The Power to Save the World, The Truth about Nuclear Energy, by Gwyneth Cravens. Go to a roadmap to nowhere to read the unattainable math of an all solar-wind grid. Some environmentalists are coming around, as in this TED talk.

Go ahead, label me transphobe/TERF

Lia Thomas, a transwoman swimmer who has smashed records. Photo courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

It’s fantastic that Title IX guarantees girls and women the right to participate in interscholastic sports, with equal facilities and coaching, like in Nebraska, as covered by the Boston Globe.

Title IX allowed to me to join the boys swimming team at my high school in 1973, where my adolescent brain mistakenly believed I could compete equally. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Boys are stronger, bigger, more muscular and driven by testosterone.

Later, in my 20s, I played co-ed volleyball and soccer and ran smack into the same obstacle: females are built differently. Competing against women is totally different than competing against male bodies.

Now, with trans women breaking records as they compete against females, I join Martina Navratilova in advocating for women to compete against those with similar skeletons, muscles and hormones. Women are generally smaller and different from men. Now will I be labeled a transphobe like Martina? Will such threats cause league directors to cower in fear when setting difficult policies about who plays against who?

Apparently male privilege extends to males who transition to females. It’s treacherous stand, yet I must speak up because I competed against male bodies in swimming, volleyball and soccer and learned male bodies have inborn advantages over female bodies.

Should I cower in fear that cancel culture will attack me? As usual, women have to scream for our rights, often against popular opinion. Transwomen need to compete in co-ed and boys sports competitions.

Kirkus Starred Review

Pat’s dystopian novel examines gender identity, environmentalism, and sexuality on an island enclave in the year 2111.

Set mainly on an island off the coast of what used to be Maine, the narrative begins in a post-Collapse world struggling to survive nuclear fallout, environmental disintegration, and worldwide economic failure. In this future world of chaos and lawlessness, Riddles Island (which is child-free and mostly technology-free) offers increasingly rare amenities to its inhabitants—peace and security.

The small, self-sufficient populace are all nonbinary (and use the pronouns mer instead of her/him, e instead of he/she, and others), with most couples being polyamorous. The harmony, however, is maintained in large part through pharmaceuticals. The Ridlets, as they are called, take D2—a cocktail of drugs that regulates hormones, dampens emotions, and supposedly keeps the residents “healthy and alert.”

But when a raggedy pirate named Jed lands on the island and meets the nonbinary couple Rory and Dylan, he connects sexually with Rory and talks mer into quitting a daily dose of D2. Jed, who travels as far away as Brazil with his crew, visits Rory infrequently after that initial tryst. With each visit, he finds mer not only more feminine, but also more lucid (not to mention more open to lifestyles outside the strictly regulated confines of the island) after quitting the D2.

When Rory discovers that e is . . . mer utopian existence suddenly looks much different. The characters here are vividly drawn (even secondary characters are memorable), the world building is nuanced and convincing, and its examination of gender identity and gender roles in society makes this novel hard to put down.

Add to that a post-apocalyptic backdrop that adroitly explores climate change and global food security, and many readers will find their worldviews challenged, even expanded, after living vicariously through Rory and mer adventures on and off the island.This visionary glimpse into humankind’s potential future is an absolute must-read for fans of post-apocalyptic fiction.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jan-e-pat/riddles-island/

Goodreads Kindle giveaway Nov. 13

Be one of 100 lucky winners to gain a Kindle version of “Riddles Island” through Good reads, starting Nov. 13 until supplies run out.