Christopher_LX

Christopher_LX t1_jacqlp0 wrote

“We believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players,” MVCS head of school Vicky Fogg wrote in an email to the Valley News on Wednesday evening.

While you may find this explanation disingenuous coming from a Christian school, it has merit based on a simple principle of fair play. It's not like the team refused to compete against female players who were black.

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Christopher_LX t1_j7w17ur wrote

At age 62, I can remember when there were no digital resources in the library. My children are in college and I rarely see them with a book. Although they are able to access a great deal of information online (without a great deal of effort, I might add), their laptop computers don't allow them to see very much of it at one time. When I was a college student, I'd have at least 6 books open at once when I was writing a paper—like having 6 computer screens to look at. It's not the same when you have that many browser tabs to switch back and forth between (I know because I am now a professional writer). I also find that my children don't search as widely as we used to when researching a subject. They'll use the first couple of pages of internet search results and call it a day. When you're browsing in the stacks of a physical library, you come across things that wouldn't even make it onto page 10 of your search results. A book by a small publisher, some other student's dissertation, and so on. I also remember the pleasure of handling the volumes themselves. Paper from the Soviet Union had a particular smell (a good one). Early 20th century book bindings from Germany were extraordinarily crafted, like art objects. And when I wanted to free myself of distractions, I would decamp to the Chinese literature section, where I could not read anything at all. I don't miss having to type up my work from handwritten manuscripts, often cut up and taped back together as part of the editing process. But I do have wonderful memories of the books I learned from, all those pages turned by the students who had gone before me.

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