The Federation Internationale de Nattacion (FINA), the governing body of swimming sports, recently ruled that male-to-female transgender athletes must establish that “they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later.”

“We have to protect the rights of all our athletes to compete,” explained FINA boss Husain Al Musallam, “but we also have to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially women’s competition and also the past record and achievement of the women.” This ruled out swimmers such as Penn’s Lia Thomas, formerly Will Thomas, who transitioned from the men’s team to the women’s team.

One of the first to applaud the FINA move was swimmer Sharron Davies, Olympic silver medalist in 1980. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of my sport, FINA and the FINA president for doing the science,” Davies told reporters, “asking the athletes/coaches and standing up for fair sport for females.”

At the Moscow Olympics in 1980, Davies recalls, “the East German women had been doped with testosterone and put through male puberty. They looked and sounded like men; they had male physiques, male voices, they even had Adam’s apples.” Those who have forgotten, or were not around at the time, might check out the East German women’s Olympic team in the 1984 “Top Secret!” from the same crew that produced “Airplane!” in 1980.

The doping gave the East Germans about a nine-percent advantage, and they won 90 percent of women’s medals in swimming, first, second and third in pretty much every event. Davies finds this Communist cheating “a massive parallel to what is happening now in sports, with trans women competing in the women’s category.”

By the standards of science, a comparison of women’s and men’s skeletal structures internal organs, hormones, chromosomes and such, Lia Thomas fails the test. The cheater may be unaware that men competing against women goes back a long way.

In the 1960 Olympics, decidedly male-looking Tamara Press of the Soviet Union won medals in women’s shot put and discus, and sister Irina, not exactly svelte, won gold in hurdles. The International Amateur Athletic Federation Instituted a sex-testing policy in 1966, and the Press sisters promptly pulled out of the European championships, with Tamara conveniently retiring in 1967.

In 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR)  as Stalinist East Germany styled itself, put up a wall to prevent Berliners from fleeing to the West. American presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford (“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”), and Carter did not challenge the barrier, which claimed hundreds of victims. One family constructed a hot-air balloon and flew over the wall, an escape dramatized in the 1982 Night Crossing, a Disney film. 

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan showed up at the Brandenburg Gate and challenged Soviet boss Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Gorby wasn’t going for it but in 1989 the people went ahead and tore it down. Soon the vile GDR was no more but decades later a Dictatorship of the Subjunctive Mood (DSM), equally totalitarian, is becoming pervasive in the West.

Under DSM, for example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren can proclaim herself a Cherokee and still run for president after her fraud is exposed. Joe Biden can claim that he served as a liaison between Egypt and Israel during the Six-Day War, when he was still in law school. The Delaware Democrat touts his fantastic performance in office, if only the people could see it.

DSM is an endless war on reality. Under DSM, men can pretend to women, with the demand that others must accept this fraud on pain of being called  “transphobic.” As with the GDR and other Stalinist regimes, dissenters are pronounced insane and jokes forbidden.  Comedian Dave Chappelle has drawn the “transphobic” charge for his Netflix comedy specials. Jamie Glazov was suspended from Twitter simply for wondering if Lia Thomas’ rudder was still in place.

For FINA, the transformational process is okay, as long as it starts before age 12. That would require parental collaboration. Parents might imagine FINA, the NCAA or the Olympics sanctioning steroids and other performance enhancers as long as the athlete starts taking them before age 12.

According to Al-Musallam, FINA plans an “open” category for athletes to compete, “without regard to their sex, their legal gender, or their gender identity.” Sharon Davies likes the concept.

“It’s important that we find ways that trans people can be included in sport,” Davis explains, “whether that’s turning the men’s category into an Open category, having a third category or supporting the trans community to create their own Pride games. I don’t know what the answer is; I’m not professing to have all the answers. All I’m professing to stand up for is for fair sport for females.”

As FINA works this out, the DSM continues to imprison minds behind a wall of unreality, a legacy of the Stalinist GDR.