Wymyn Swymmyn’

This is where I’m supposed to weigh in on the swimmers of Penn.

As it happens, I have all the necessary background to do exactly that. Ten members of my family, including my father and and his father, went to the University of Pennsylvania. Also, I went to Mercersburg Academy, a very serious swimming school. When I was a freshman at the Academy, we had two champion swimmers, both of whom went to Harvard. One became the captain of the Harvard swimming team. The other slept with a Kennedy girl. He went on to become a VP of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was dumb as a fucking post and built like a brick shithouse. Could any woman anywhere, ever, beat him in a 50 meter freestyle sprint? No. Not a chance. Credentials for comment? Yeah.

If there is any sport in the world where women are at a permanent disadvantage, it’s swimming. I kid you not. Well, there’s also all the track and field events, tennis, hockey, basketball, football, baseball, bicycling, and soccer. But swimming is where it hurts the most. Upper body strength, leg length, hip configuration, lung capacity. It’s like what Samuel Johnson said about woman preachers…

“Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well: but you are surprised to find it done at all.”  Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1763).

Everything anatomical is against them. Hormones don’t change the skeleton or the musculature. They don’t change anything but temperament. They’re even disadvantaged in the breaststroke and the butterfly.

This site is farcical. I apologize. This post is not farcical. And I do not apologize for it. I like watching women swim. They are lovely in the water. 

Just to keep things clear, I love certain women’s sports. I prefer women’s college basketball to men’s. They play as a team, like the founder saw the game, passing  and passing and winning thereby, with no macho slam-dunking. I love women’s tennis. The Williams sisters are a legend, deservedly so. I love women’s softball. Those underhand pitchers are amazing. I love women’s gymnastics, except for the nasty puberty-delaying tactics required of the stars. I like women pole vaulters. Breaks my heart to see them be so good and jump so high and be so brave. Motocross? Don’t like women with broken faces and shattered bones.

Women’s hockey? A yawn. Glacial skating and boredom on ice. Women’s soccer? Slow motion version of a game that already puts me to sleep. Golf? Even with a boost off the tee they seem to lack the temperament, which might be hormones after all.

I hold out hope for women as professional racing drivers. Not that they will ever be Lewis Hamilton, Richard Petty, A.J. Foyt, or Jimmy Clark. But I believe they can be competitive. The anatomical disadvantages aren’t nearly as prohibitive. F1 drivers are small. Women are small. I root for them. Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney, Janet Guthrie, Danika Patrick, and way back in my youth Donna Mae Mims, whom I saw in person and had a crush on…

I’ll leave it there. Men with intact genitals swimming as women? What part of stupid don’t you get?

Picture worth a thousand words?  How about a million words?

I’m quitting now. But when I referenced earlier, “Track and fields events, tennis, hockey, basketball, football, baseball, bicycling, and soccer,” I wasn’t being casual. I’ve actually done the research, unlike everybody else. It’s just a “no go” across the board. To put it the way nobody ever does, women are weaker, slower, less aggressive, and entirely too inclined to quit when the going gets rough.

Latest news I heard? Venus Williams wants equal prize money for women. To which I respond as I always have; play five set matches like the men do. Then we’ll talk.