Elissa Reinsma became the first female to compete in the Minnesota state high school wrestling tournament. To which you should say: How bizarre. What on earth is a girl doing in a wrestling match with a guy? How can I guy competitively wrestle a girl and not (a) wrestle with a handicap, for fear of touching her in certain places; or conversely (b) fascinate about dominating her physically if not sexually; or (c) provide entertainment to young men who will fascinate along the lines of (b). John Piper offers a razor-sharp reflection:
Get real, dads. You know exactly what almost every healthy boy is thinking. If a jock from Northern Minnesota encircles her around the breasts and twists his leg around her thighs, trust me, he will dream about that tonight. Only in his dream she won’t have clothes on. And if he doesn’t dream it, half the boys in the crowd will. Wake up dads. You know this.
Manly gentleness is not an epidemic in our culture. Rap videos, brutal movies, fatherless homes, and military madness have already made thousands of women the victim of man’s abuse. Now we would make the high school version of feministic nature-denial a partner in this undermining of masculine gentleness.
Common grace is such that most high school young men (unless they’ve totally hardened their conscience) instinctively feel the responsibility to fight for a woman–in her defense, not against her. Every ounce of their being feels manly when they exert effort, take a risk, or make a sacrifice for a woman. They simply need fatherly affirmation to stand against the pervasive, irrational gender-neutrality of our day and be willing to lose the state wrestling championship rather than sacrifice their manhood.