Saturday, June 11, 2016

transgender rights and my college athletic career

Questions are swirling about transgender rights, and the world of school athletics is not immune, as demonstrated by these stories from Alaska and the IOC.

It reminds me of an incident from my freshman year of college. As a reporter from one of our campus newspapers, I was covering a Jello-eating contest. There were separate competitions for males and females, and for some reason there weren't enough female contestants. Now, to be honest, I don;t know why they needed to have a minimum number of contestants (at least, beyond one). If there are only x contestants (with x>0), let them compete. But no. They needed one more. And I was asked to compete. In the women's competition.

Always game, I did it. And I won. For years, I jokingly told friends that I had been the Queens College women's Jell-o-eating champion. Of course, people laughed, and it was all good fun. But now, if I tell people, it takes on a different meaning...

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