SUBVERTING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM.

Walter Williams, the former head of the economics department at George Mason, has long been delightfully contrarian, for instance authoring The State Against Blacks, which, its title notwithstanding, encourages people to see exactly what their no-doubt well-intentioned interventions accomplished; and he later deputised for Rush Limbaugh during the Festive Season, describing his appearances as "Black By Popular Demand."  It's not surprising that he'd offer a column asking, "Is Reality Optional?"  You know I'm going to endorse it.  Because He. Went. There.

Suppose a college honored the right of its students to free themselves from biological determinism and allowed those with XY chromosomes to play on teams formerly designated as XX teams. What if an "unenlightened" women's basketball team refused to play against a team with a starting five consisting of 6-foot-6-inch, 200-plus-pound XYers? The NCAA should have a rule stating that refusal to play a mixed-chromosome team leads to forfeiture of the game. It's no different from a team of white players refusing to play another because it has black players.

I don't have the background in abnormal psychology or medicine to be able to engage arguments about how people who claim to be Napoleon don't get cannon and a map of Russia aren't germane to treating crossers, or how we understand that diet pills and liposuction don't cure bulimia.

I have, however, long entertained a wicked thought that someday, somewhere, there is a basketball coach who will end the dominance of Connecticut, or perhaps Stanford or Notre Dame, by recruiting a few male-to-female crossers who can really crash the boards.