Sometimes, we get emails so fierce, we feel they’ll fight their way out of our inbox if we don’t just share them. All bolds and italics and capitalizations are kept in their original form. Some links included were provided by the sender of the message, while others were added by me.

SederSkier –

This email is in response to a recent article posted on Nordic Insights which states women hold one-third of high-level American cross-country skiing coaching jobs. 

I’d like to qualify my coming claims — it might be No Quarter November in Moscow, Idaho, but I’m no Doug Wilson.

First, I hold to the only appeal possible when it comes to justifying the inherent equal value of men and women: they are made in the image of God. There is no other foundation for such a claim, and it bothers me secularists talk about things like ‘human rights’ without acknowledging they’re borrowing from the Christian worldview.

Second, although I believe God created men and women to be different, I also see this as a self-evident reality, both to Christians and non-Christians.

Finally, I don’t mean to harbor ill-will towards the author of this article, though the subject matter was about as based as an OANN piece on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Now, let’s get to the meat of the matter. One-third of high-level American Nordic ski coaches are women … is that a bad ratio? I couldn’t have been the only person at first confused as to whether this was a puff piece lauding the Trail to Gold movement or if it was a puff piece suggesting our bigoted and backwards society still had a ways to go. Turns out, its sentiment leaned towards the latter….reality, however, seemed to suggest the former. 

In case you’re wondering, 3.6% of auto mechanics and 9.9% of construction workers in the U.S. are women. Gee, I wonder why that is?

Before I praise the progressiveness of our Nordic ski hierarchy, though, I must point out the REAL issue in the world right now: discrimination against men!!! (Calm down and follow my logic…it’s the same one used by Nordic Insights….).

Take for example, the crisis in education. 77% of teachers in the U.S. are women. If you look strictly at elementary schools, that number goes up to 80%. In major orchestras across the country, about 7 out of 12 violinists are women, and in a similar world — McDonalds crews — the number is 58.5%. Perhaps the most sexist profession, however, is nursing. Only 14% of nurses are male. 

I’ll stop the sarcasm and get to that last stat in a minute. 

Here’s the fundamental rub I have with this piece: equality of outcome is the standard. That’s a bad standard. 

I believe that whether it’s ski coaching, music, or McDonalds, the focus should be on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. It seems like the only reason that’s a bad thing to advocate for is that it will necessarily lead to inequality of outcome. Ok…well, as one person put it, “we can have equality of outcome very easily – everyone can be equally miserable.”

It seems that is where we’re headed.

In response to the data-harvesting done by Nordic Insights, Maria Stuber — who is in her third year as the Development Team coach of the U.S. Ski Team and was an NCAA DI coach before that (such discrimination) — said, “While counting the number of women is a fantastic way to measure progress, it does not actually mean the complex system that discriminates against women has changed, so we need to keep focusing on improving there.”

I have a question: can you point to a specific rule or law or opportunity that discriminates against women? 

Maybe female athletes aren’t getting a chance to compete….yes…I’ll bet laws are forcing collegiate women’s endurance sports teams to be cut? Oh….wait….

Well, women don’t have good facilities and coaches and uniforms, though, right? I’ll bet there a law that says funding for men’s sports needs to be higher than women’s?…. What?

Yeah, but opportunities. When it comes to skiing, I’ll bet the national team stated before hiring their last coach that it “would be a male, full stop” and has also enacted a program to funnel energetic World Cup coaching candidates — provided they’re boys — to a unique, multi-week World Cup coaching experience? Plus, FIS is practically incentivizing teams to hire more male coaches.

Wait, you’re telling me it’s just the opposite? That men’s college teams get cut, that funding is legally required to be equal for men and women, and that the U.S. Ski Team has a women’s-only World Cup coaching recruiting initiative? And FIS incentivizes teams to hire women’s coaches?

Imagine we have two 25-year-old coaching candidates, both with identical coaching experience (let’s say 3 years at the NCAA DI level), identical education (a M.S. in exercise science with a Nordic Ski specific thesis), identical skiing experience (let’s say, two-time All-American) and identical ‘intangibles’ (I know, this seems like an unlikely scenario, but for the sake of the argument, they’re both “likely to add to the team’s ‘culture.’”), but one is male and one is female.

Now, which candidate is more likely to get hired for a job that is only looking for a female coach? 

Which candidate is more likely to get to spend a few weeks learning how to be a World Cup coach as part of a program accepting only female applications?

If that’s maddening to any men out there, don’t worry, I have a solution, but I don’t want to head to the gulag yet, so I’ll keep quiet.

Still, is this line of thinking not ‘complex’ enough for the woke readers out there? Well, let’s make it more nuanced then. 

Back to nursing. I think the nursing statistic is interesting and here’s why: I witnessed my wife give birth. I know men, I was exactly like you. I wanted so badly to shout, “You know what?!?! This whole operation would sure be a lot better if we had more men in here…..” 

Of course, that is absurd. In all seriousness, the nurses who delivered my first child — all female – were the reason my wife opted to try for a second, and third, and fourth. She was cared for and, more importantly, encouraged, in a way that a male nurse simply wouldn’t have been able to duplicate. 

I wonder – and maybe this is just a bit too much of a stretch – if the reason more women become nurses than men as because women have a certain feminine nurturing predisposition that lends to the profession? Could it be? 

Now, there are phenomenal male nurses out there, too, I bet…or hope…. And there are phenomenal stay-at-home dads and female construction workers. My beef isn’t that women or men CAN’T do something (though, probably not ‘anything’ like I’ve often spoonfed to believe). My problem is when society just flat out ignores inherent differences between masculinity and femininity. It’s ok, and I’ll qualify again, to say that men and women are equal in value and worth but different in traits, qualities, or giftings.

So, when it comes to coaching….can women coach? 

I think they can. One of the best coaches I ever had as a runner was a woman, and she still gets letters from former athletes reminding her of her influence to this day.

I will say that I think my point — men and women are different and their differences can be manifested by unequal representation in a society even if said society has perfect equality of opportunity — is made clear by the representation of coaches in certain sports. 

For example, there is currently one – ONE – female head NCAA men’s basketball coach. Out of….what, a thousand DI, DII, DIII programs?…compare that to cross-country, track and cross-country skiing. How many female head NCAA football coaches are there? I’m too lazy to Google it, but I bet it’s somewhere between 0 and 1.

My belief isn’t that women are incapable of learning basketball and football strategy – I think they could easily do that. (Well, maybe not easily….it’s taken 24 years to explain to my wife why there is such a thing as turnover on downs….)

But still, they have the intellectual capacity for it. But that doesn’t mean they’d be great at leading a group of 120 22-year-old men in physical team game embodying many core tenants of masculinity – core tenants, which, I’m not afraid to say, are different than core tenants of femininity. 

But, the author of this story says he is feminist. He must be unaware that all we learn from that statement is the one thing he REALLY hates more than anything is femininity. 

The feminist movement has, as one of my favorite writers aptly put it, “turned first-rate women into third-rate men.” That topic probably deserves it’s own book…..having listened to your podcast, I’m guessing you’d point me here.

Alright, I suppose it’s time for my action steps. Here’s what I think we should be focused on: 

• Make the standard for success equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. When you choose the latter, you by necessity ruin any possibility of the former, and that’s really, really bad… for everybody.
• Hire the best coaches, period. Would adding female staff to a team WITH FEMALE athletes, which the USST is, improve performance? I absolutely think yes! Does that mean we should have 50/50 gender representation on the coaching staff if the athletes are the same ratio? Well, do you also think we should have 50/50 male/female nurses in hospitals, since half of patients are men? Should 50% of construction workers be women, since, after all, 50% of people who drive cars are women?  
• Have a little respect for the past. I like Matt Whitcomb, mostly because of the things you’ve said about him on your show, but it bothered me that he said an inability to hire women as coaches by other countries meant they were “stuck in the past.” One of the biggest failings of our current generation is to believe that we are somehow morally superior and smarter than those who came before us. This is so false it’s absolutely laughable. We live in the age of information, so our access to knowledge is greater than those who came before us, but the intellectual capacity isn’t. If we dropped the brightest NASA scientists on a deserted island, they could draw up blueprints for a rocket ship to fly them home, but they wouldn’t be able to make a pencil. If you don’t understand the significance of that illustration, you’re part of the problem. The same is true for morals. Are there skeletons in the closet of human history? Sure. There been atrocities throughout the ages. But only today do we have something as gross as virtue signaling, a word which appropriately, and in preordained timeliness, makes no sense, as the acts are rarely virtuous at all….

Sincerely,

Will

Will –

There’s a lot to sift through here. First of all, your presuppositionalism is evident and on-fire…I’ll empathize with you …it’s a hard battle. We live in a society actually much less intelligent, from a philosophical standpoint, than the one 200 years ago. Worldview acknowledgement – much less inevitable inconsistencies – are rarely noted in public discourse. They tend to halt conversation when they’re understood by the people standing in a boat with holes.

I was also unsure of Kentch’s premise when I first saw the story. To be fair, he is a good journalist when it comes to simply presenting facts, so at first, that’s all I thought he was doing. I don’t have a problem with him highlighting the raw data…he’s just reporting stuff…even if there’s an underlying agenda.

I’m all for giving women the opportunity to coach. But, I am also opposed to the idea that if there isn’t a 50/50 ratio, that reveals a ‘systemic’ sexism at play. Is there sexism in educational hiring practices, given the data you stated? I don’t think so….

Finally, the end goal should be to improve the quality of the coaching staff, not simply its diversity. Some people say those two things will always go hand in hand, but I think as you pointed out with the construction and nursing professions, that isn’t necessarily the case. (I had a very similar experience at the hospital when my wife gave birth to both of our girls, too, by the way).

With endurance sports, particularly those where women are training, racing, and traveling alongside male counterparts, it is often beneficial to have a female coach. This has been my personal experience as an athlete and also as a co-assistant cross-country coach with my wife. She could hold different conversations with high school girls than I could or even should. She could offer specific instruction and help I couldn’t either.

It’s interesting – people are willing to acknowledge that the reason it’s valuable to increase the number of women coaches is because men and women are inherently different and thus present different needs and responses to instruction. And yet, this difference isn’t recognized, as you pointed out, as a possible reason why the ratios they seek to equalize exist in the first place.

Keep on striving, keep on skiing…

-Ryan