It’s a Woman’s World. Unless….

By John Summer

Aug 12, 2026

I am a survivor of college in the late ‘60s. Remember the Berkeley Free Speech movement with Mario Savio? The burning of the Isla Vista bank at UCSB? The “Summer of Love” in Haight-Ashbury? Yea, those late ‘60s… filled with protests and turbulence and free love and communal spirits,…

…And women’s rights. Feminism. The “fem” in the “ism” stands for women.

Yup…. That was a biggy. You had pioneer feminists like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, all simply asking to be treated fairly in what was then considered a “man’s world” … to paraphrase the great James Brown. But the “godfather of soul” went on to say: “… but it wouldn’t be nothin….nothin… without a woman or a girl.”

He was, and is… right.

So we had the beginning of parity among the sexes. Men. And Women.

You do the same job. You get the same compensation.

You qualify for the same job. You’re not discriminated against based on your sex.

You want to run for office. Go for it.

And so on….

The Battle of the Sexes

I don’t know if many of you remember this, but in the early ‘70s, as the women’s movement matured, we had an interesting little event. It was called “The Battle of the Sexes.”

This was a tennis match in 1973 between a man, and a woman. The man was a 55-year-old semi-retired professional player named Bobby Riggs who was a champion in 1940s. The woman was the then-current grand slam champion, 29-year-old Billy Jean King. It was held at the Houston Astrodome and somewhere around 100 million people world-wide watched it.

King beat the old guy in straight sets.

Good for her.

But what people may not remember, is that only a few months earlier, Riggs played in a similar match against another one of the all-time greats, 30-year-old Margaret Court, who completed the grand slam only a few years earlier.

Twenty-five years her senior, Riggs beat Court soundly.

This all happened as a result of the ruling then known Title IX. And the original intent of that ruling was to prevent sex discrimination in all venues. Employment. Education. Political office.

Everything.

Including sports.

And that’s where things become sticky now.

Variations on a Theme

And it becomes sticky, because we are currently having this incredibly weird debate over what the definition of “sex” is in humans. Is “sex” something that is clearly defined by the scientific standard based on chromosomes? You know, that pesky XX or XY thing? We were told that we’re supposed to believe in science, right? Biology? Pretty straight forward. Kind of like math. 2 plus 2 equals….hmm, let’s see. 4?

Would you like it to equal something else? If you said 2 plus 2 equals 73 because you have decided that’s what you want it to be…. Does it make it so?

If you said that you wanted to be a tree, would it make it so?

Q. If you are a man with the XY thing, but you’ve decided you want to be a woman, would it make it so?

A: NO.

You can hold your breath until you turn blue, and it will still never make it so.

Now that doesn’t negate the beautiful freedom of personal choice. You can choose to be anything that you “feel” is your “authentic self,” to use the currently accepted term. Your choice. And most reasonable people will accept that and then move on.

Do your thing.

But you can’t force people to blindly believe that your “authentic self” is reality just because you want it to be.

Like XY men playing in XX women’s sports. Unless the women don’t care.

But we know they do.

At least 99.9 percent of them do. Because they fought for that. Women wanted to be treated equally so that they could be honored and benefit from…. Being a woman.

So we have women’s sports like the WNBA. (Note to self: The “W” stands for women.) Otherwise, what’s the point?

The point is… when pretend women steal the trophies and scholarships and prestige of competing against other actual women, the “pretend women” steal much more. They steal what it means to be a woman.

So it’s a woman’s world… unless. You don’t want it to be.

•••

As a post script, I entered the 55-word essay contest held annually by a regional “entertainment” publication that will remain nameless here. And, no surprise, my contribution wasn’t selected. I knew it wouldn’t be… because it succinctly describes the perils of who gets to play in women’s sports… beyond women.)

Story Title (7-word maximum):

“And why not? Why not, indeed!”

My 55-word (or less) story:

LeBron was ready to retire from the NBA. Age was setting in. He was having trouble competing. But then he had a thought. “I will become LeShawnda!”

The WNBA never stood a chance.