Cool in the pool

 

A woman, earlier today

The world governing body for the sport of swimming has finally struck out for the shores of sanity. After the fuss about Lia Thomas, a biological man who claims to be a woman, FINA (actually a French acronym) has banned such chaps from competing against women. It is to be wished that other sports will follow. But it is important to understand exactly what is happening here.

The recent absurd situations in which public figures from the British Opposition Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, to American Supreme Court Justice nominees don't seem to be able to define the word 'woman' has nothing to do with their grasp of biology. Rather, it is a compound of coercion and fear.

The demand that this absurdity, whereby a man can 'become a woman' simply by stating he is, has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with epistemology.

The Left are not interested in transgenderism in itself, but in telling both those in power and those controlled by the powerful that they will name reality as they are instructed to name it. Power and control are two sides of the same coin, and the value of that coin is coercion.

If you can change reality, you have genuine power. This is the meaning of the end of George Orwell' s 1984. When O'Brien shows Winston Smith four fingers and explains to him that Smith can see five, Smith does not agree merely to save his life. That is what he actually sees.

If you can change reality in the framework of individual experience, you control that person. I wonder if the world swimming body knows that it is not merely changing rules but dealing in metaphysics. I imagine they do. They are French, after all.