South Park takes on trans athletes in women’s sports

South Park is a notoriously offensive animated television show, which is why it’s not surprising that they recently spoofed one of the most absurd things to come down the pike of late—trans women in women’s sports.

Invoking the spirit of Randy “Macho Man” Savage, the latest South Park episode straight-up savages the issue of biological males in women’s sports. Here’s a clip from the episode:

Of course, the trans lobby is furious. Outrage and indignance is what they do best these days. Quillette editor Jon Kay quite rightly points out the fact that, with responses like these, they are quickly becoming the zealots of our time: “You can always tell who the real zealots are in any society: They’re the ones who despise humour and satire—because they know that spontaneous laughter marks one of those few moments when people are immune to the strictures of mob-enforced dogma.”

If anyone thought that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would shy away from skewering the absurdity of biological men dominating women’s sports just because they feel like women, they obviously haven’t been paying attention. This is the team that brought the world Tony Award-winning Book of Mormon, which takes aim at Mormon missionary work. Just like South Park, the show was initially reviled by the offence police but is still running nine years later.

The funniest part of all of this is how trans advocates keep thinking we shouldn’t laugh at how ridiculous these claims are. Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais have also made fun of biological men invading women’s spaces too. It’s because biological men forcing women into scenarios where they get their asses kicked (as is the case in many sports from MMA to rugby to cycling) or are forced to touch genitals against their will (as is the case in the Jessica Yaniv saga) are either criminal or funny, and since this madness keeps happening with complete endorsement of the elite political class and media, it must be funny.

Biological men with 12 months of estrogen treatment trounce women in every sport they enter, from cycling to track & field to weightlifting. Not only that, but in the case of cycling world champion Rachel McKinnon, they brag and call the women losers. It turns out that taking 12 months to lower a lifetime of testosterone levels doesn’t actually do much to handicap trans male athletes. It’s pretty funny that international athletic associations in so many sports, including rugby, one of the most violent contact sports around, allow men, taking performance decreasing drugs, to compete with women. Even when women take testosterone—which would be against the doping rules—they can’t match the decreased male testosterone levels.

South Park points out the extreme absurdity that we have allowed to happen because of the fear of censure for saying something politically incorrect. While no reasonable person denies the right of trans people to exist in the world and have their identities respected, there must be common-sense limits. When it comes to biological men dominating women’s sports, it must be said loud and clear that in this case, men are not women. And since the people in charge are too cowardly to say so, we must rely on comedians to mock the absurdities of the situation.

Besides: dudes beating the hell out of women in competitive sports is just an objectively funny spectacle worthy of mockery. And when it comes to the women who have trained hard their whole lives to achieve athletic excellence only to be beaten by these men, it’s funny enough to make you cry.