Living truth.
The trans in sport issue has burst back, front and center and right in time for the holiday season. A dinner table conversation sure to please. Days ago, a transgendered swimmer broke a school record in New Jersey. Megan Cortez-Fields beat all-comers to win the women’s 100-yard butterfly after racing on the men’s team last year.
Inspiring, certainly, though not to tennis great Martina Navratilova who took to the application formerly known as Twitter to declare, “Women’s sports is not the place for mediocre male athletes who compete as women. Period.”
Ouch.
Thankfully, our World Surf League finds itself on the correct side of history. Professional surfing at its highest level has one of the more inclusive policies. As Derek Rielly reported almost a year ago, “The WSL has opened the door to trans-women competing so long as they’ve been a gal for at least twelve months and their hormone levels are real low ie less than 5 nanomoles per liter continuously for the previous 12 months (biological men hover between 10 and 35, bio-gals under three), although the WSL won’t be doing the testing.”
But correct side of history?
Of course.
A British museum, you see, is relabeling its exhibitions of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Elagabalus, with she/her pronouns instead of previous he/him. Elagabalus ruled the Roman empire for just four years from 218AD to his assassination, aged 18, in 222AD. She was married five times, four to women and once to a man. Cassius Dio, a senator and contemporary, wrote the young emperor was “bestowed in marriage and was termed wife, mistress and queen.”
A museum spokesperson said it was “only polite and respectful to be sensitive to identifying pronouns for people in the past.”
Dr Shushma Malik, a Cambridge university classics professor, disagreed with the move and told the BBC:
“The historians we use to try and understand the life of Elagabalus are extremely hostile towards him, and therefore cannot be taken at face value. We don’t have any direct evidence from Elagabalus himself of his own words. There are many examples in Roman literature of times where effeminate language and words were used as a way of criticising or weakening a political figure. References to Elagabalus wearing makeup, wigs and removing body hair may have been written in order to undermine the unpopular emperor.”
Dr. Shushma Malik sounds un-awakened, however, and I don’t know how much attention we should pay, education be damned.
Which brings us back to the World Surf League and the correct side of history.
Huzzah.
David Lee Scales and I, anyhow, briefly discussed Elagabalus though, in all honesty, David Lee didn’t seem too interested. He did have great advice on how to win the Thanksgiving table over. I guarantee it will score you maximum points but you must listen.
And enjoy.
