We’re often told to see things from the perspective of others. As a management tool, perspective taking can improve employee morale and productivity. In a marriage, it helps husbands and wives better understand each other, making them more accommodating of each other’s needs and wishes. Understanding the perspective of those in our personal and professional lives is a good idea.
There’s an article about this on the website of Psychology Compass, which employs tech entrepreneurs and professionals with Ph.Ds in psychology and neuroscience, and conducts corporate “cognition coaching.” According to this article, “the best way to get better at perspective taking is to do it in the context of your own life and experiences.” So I did that after reading this Item from the New York Post.
A high school cross country runner in Maine who competed against other boys last year decided to run this year as a girl. He was “ranked approximately 172nd among males in the state,” in the five kilometer division but when he ran against girls, he was ranked 4th. We can only presume that his ranking was important to him; being fourth best is better than being 172nd best.
As a high school kid, I ran varsity cross country for four years. I never won a race, and my best time in the three-mile event was 15:48. I still remember that meet, which was held along the shores of Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. It was a good day - I normally ran three miles in about 16:30. Despite never finishing in first place, being able to do something athletic helped manage my adolescent insecurities. Running was the only sport I was marginally good at so cross country is what I did. I wasn’t great but I was okay.
Today, a growing number of teenage boys and young men are demanding to compete against girls and women in sports. To the best of our knowledge, none of these boys have genitalia that is inconsistent with their chromosomal sex so they are mercifully not afflicted with clinical transgenderism.
Examining this trend in the context of my own life and experiences, as Psychology Compass advises, I appreciate that the student in Maine would want to rank higher in cross country. I too wanted to rank higher, so I ran about 1,000 miles every summer to get in shape for when the season started in the fall. I tried to improve by working harder; the Maine high school boy chose a different path. His perspective prompted me to consider what might have happened had I chosen his path, and I realized I could have been a Minnesota state high school girls cross country champion.
My team didn’t qualify for the state championship event while I was a student but if I had run that race as a senior, my best time would have placed me in the top-15. A time of 15:48 over three miles works out to a pace of 5:16 a mile, and my normal race time would have averaged 5:30 a mile.
However, if I’d run in the 1975 girls championship meet, I would have finished in first place, and not by a little. Girls ran two-mile cross country courses back then and the winning time in that race was 12:04.6, which pencils out to a pace of about 6:02 a mile. The girl who won was Leslie Seymour from Regina High School in Minneapolis.
I don’t know Leslie Seymour but I know cross country runners and guarantee you she worked extremely hard for her success. She made sacrifices in her day-to-day life. She suffered cramps and aching muscles, maybe shin splints. She ran to exhaustion in blazing heat, cold rain, and probably snow now and then. Leslie prioritized her sport, discovered endurance she didn’t know she had, and became a champion.
If I had adopted the perspective of the Maine high schooler and run in the girl’s race that year, I would have stolen the high school championship from Leslie, likely finishing well ahead of her. In a two-mile race, a difference of 60 seconds between first and second place is not simply a big win; it’s a humiliation.
The desire of any confused, insecure teenager - myself included - to be good at something is normal and understandable. It’s important to cultivate a kid’s sense of self esteem and achievement, which holds them in good stead after outgrowing adolescence. But there is no truth in pretending to be something we’re not, and whatever self esteem results from this pretension is false, fleeting and hollow.
People are deceiving this boy in Maine into pretending he’s a girl, and they are doing a terrible disservice to him in the process. Teenagers need honesty and truth to survive adolescence, not the lies of a warped ideology.