For years, decades even, I was inundated with the many "wrongs" done to women, how awful it was to be a woman and not have the opportunity that men had, etc. In my particular case, I was even friendly with some women who were at the very top at MS magazine. Remember that? Remember the National Organization For Women? Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, etc....all the feminist heroes of yesteryear...While, I'm sure, they were making points that were needed to be made, the "movement" seemed a little contrived to me. Wasn't it just a few years ago, the brigade of Pink Pussy Hats set out to right the many wrongs women were forced to endure?
Well, just last night I was watching some of the Olympic trials for swimming and track and field and so forth. I just like sports...you know...higher, faster strongser, etc...the best athlete wins,and so forth. Fair competition...that sort of thing.... I was imagining the 100 meter time trials and how they might alter the US Olympic Team with some 6 foot, 210lb dude who claims to identify as a woman destroying the field as well as the marvelous accomplishments of these women who have devoted their lives to fulfill an athletic passion...to make an olympic team, to wear a US Olympic uniform.
Where are those feminists now? Where are the wearers of pink pussy hats when we need them ? They haven't destroyed the Olympic competion just yet. Will they?
As is so often the case with liberal idiology, the politics of it all is just way more important than what is purported to be true. Trans athletes running, swimming, etc against women? Really? Why not heavyweight boxing, as well?
I realize that this is mostly humor, but the news remains news and you'd server your readership better by explaining it better. We paid $230 million for the pier. How does that break down? I mean, the Army Corps of Engineers is on retainer, right? Their salaries are getting paid anyway and there probably isn't some 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 pier that didn't get built because they did this one. Concrete? I don't know prices, but that seems like an awful lot...
Moving on, we've got the billions for the (almost) non-existent charging stations. Were those billions 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁? Probably not, in which case it could have been half the amount or triple the amount and the story would have been the same. Same goes for the other billions for high-speed internet.
Don't get me wrong, the fun poked at the government for these fiascos is probably deserved, but journalists should kick the habit of using numbers to imply things that aren't known to be true.
The issue here is a subset of so called "trans athletes" who are opportunistic predators and not run of the mill trans athletes. These opportunists have found a way to "dominate" and are going to use this scheme to their advantage until people get wise to their "playing the system to their advantage". Fooled once, fooled. Fooled twice, the fool.
This is a non-story. As are all the "women's sports" stories. Women have been clamoring for equal treatment for decades., Now they're getting it. They're getting treated like men. And men are treated like shit.
Enjoy it, ladies. You asked for it.
The Democratic Party of America, and all its soft apologists at the Free Press, DELENDA EST.
Someone piss in your coffee? I don't in fact believe that Women have been clamoring for gender-inclusive competition. I think you are conflating wildly different matters here and your misogynist overtones are unflattering.
I'm a feminist, Jim. I want all women to be treated exactly the same way as men are treated. It's not called misogyny, its misandry. Women want to be equal to men in all things. They can take the hits...
Parents should be banning their children from TikTok. Until social media companies are made to conform to algorithm guidelines, we’ll continue to see brainwashing content fed to our children. It’s not an accident how social media works. It’s by design of tech companies.
In the timeline of human civilization, until about 5 minutes ago the best minds spend the majority of their time reading, writing, and thinking. With few exceptions, they subsisted on relatively meager amounts of whole, fresh foods with few chemicals added, and they walked or biked to get around.
And they would have agreed with almost unthinkable unanimity, that belief in transgenderism was either a very grave mental defect, or demonic possession of some sort.
Great news! Within the last five minutes, we've learned to swipe and scroll, reducing our attention spans from years to mere seconds, while we feed ourselves salty snacks from CostCo - so of course we've evolved. Of course we know better than they...
I fully support anyone's desire to present various avatars of their own identity.
But... 23+23=46, and XX/XY in the 23rd pair is basic biology and changes who you are physically.
I should never be told I have to endorse someone else's mental illness or delusion.
This isn't a big deal for me - unless the new Scottish laws that give jail time for "misgendering" people infect our country as well. It's toughest on children. They are bombarded with propaganda about having to make a "choice" that simply isn't. So any little boy or girl who doesn't conform to a narrow set of traits is intentionally confused and pressured.
In the past, we just let kids be kids and we recognized that adolescence is a time of enormous change and really obnoxious self-centered behavior. Now, we medicate them into strict obedience and "choices".
This seems quite regressive. And downright Stalinist for gay people.
Women's sports do not need protecting. They are thriving like never before. Men are not taking over women's sports. This is a phony moral panic. You will not be seeing trans women in elite international sports. You might occasionally see something like that in a High School, but so what? No one's life is going to be negatively altered because of a silly High School sports competition. I say we should look at each case individually on the amateur level. At the elite level, they have already adopted rules banning trans women from competing in women's sports if they transition after age puberty. You will not be seeing trans women in the upcoming Olympics in Paris. So relax.
Please. You sound like a guy with no daughters and little imagination. High school is critically important for both boys and girls, as are high school sports. As are high school bathrooms where young women expect privacy from young men. Sports was a key part of my daughters’ high school experience. Both playing in games and attending varsity girls games. Two good friends got their kids (one female, one male) into Ivy League colleges based on (they tell me) success in high school sports.
How can you defend a moderate, "split the baby" approach for something that is unequivocally black and white? A confused boy can't turn himself into a girl - nothing changes until the illness is validated by the adults around him. Indulging in the fantasies of the severely mentally ill, when it may result in permanent harm, needs to be resisted with zero tolerance. Even one case is one too many...
And same can be said for the girls - the topic is competitive sport. Which means opportunities are limited and must be won. If even a single girl anywhere is denied a place that would have been hers if not for the confused boy that was empowered to take it for himself, then that also is one too many.
I hope nobody poopoo'd your dream away with "so what, it's silly..."
You are so full of shit. Trans women (men) don't belong in womens sports. Such a dick thing for a guy to say that it doesn't matter in HS sports. That is where it matters most.
How can I defend myself against such cogent and well-reasoned arguments?
By offering a cogent, well-reasoned response, of course.
People who take High School sports too seriously frighten me, and a lot of umpires. And we can learn a lot of good lessons from losing, too. We can learn that it's just a race. It means nothing in the grand scheme of our lives. Elite sports are very different. High School should be about learning excellence and discipline and being a team player, and learning about sportsmanship, winning with honor.
Is there honor in treating a trans person as the gender they see themselves as? I think so. Is there honor in losing and winning with grace? I think so. Let's use sports to teach kids these lessons.
And that's exactly the behavior from adults who indulge the concept that gender identity can differ from biological sex. They are stealing girls' opportunities for fair competition with their peers.
I don't understand your position very well, I guess. Why even have boys' and girls' sports in the first place? Why are girls' rights somehow less important than the rights of individuals who want to pretend they are girls? What do you learn from competition against people who dominates your sport not because they have more talent or they've worked harder, but simply because they decided to compete against girls rather than boys? Why not extend your logic and say high school kids can play in leagues for elementary school kids if they identify differently? After all, the grade school kiddies should learn about discipline, too?
Just because ESPN isn't going to televise the game and no one is going to pay the kids a big salary to compete doesn't make sport unimportant to the participants. Lessons in sport only work when there is a fair playing field.
"adults who indulge the concept that gender identity can differ from biological sex"
This is a fact of human life. You folks can pretend that such people don't exist but this sort of thing has been going on throughout human civilization. There are people who have genuine cases of gender dysphoria. My nephew is such a person. GAC and support from his loving family have been a huge positive in his life. A good society will not force such people to live in shame.
Of course, there is still reason to have men's and women's sports. There are only a handful of High School athletes who are trans women and have a snowball's chance of actually competing with the best women. It's not common enough to make a big deal out of it. The right is turning this into a national political issue because they think it's a winning issue at the ballot box, or because they think God said it was bad.
And we always have to weigh people's rights against the rights of others. I'm confident that adults can find a way to work all of this out on a case by case basis. I don't think it has to be a crushing experience for a girl to lose a race or a match to a trans woman athlete. Most girls in High School regularly lose to athletes who are more talented than them. They still play to do the best they can. And that's the whole point in High School sports––learning to do the best you can, practicing excellence. We can do that and accommodate the occasional trans athlete. And boys are not doing this just so they can win competitions. They are people who genuinely identify as women. If some young man is playing games, that's a different story.
One argument that seems to be common these days is saying that an opposing view is due to some perceived evil, like being right wing or religious in your case. I'm neither, by the way, and I don't oppose boys playing in girls' sports for political reasons or religious reasons.
What is gender dysphoria? What does that mean? A lot has been written about dysphoria in general. With anorexia/bulimia, a kid looks in the mirror, apparently, and instead of seeing a thin reflection, he or (usually) she sees the reflection of someone who needs to lose weight.
What do we do in response? We don't say "oh, you're right, you are hopelessly fat, try this new diet pill." We don't indulge the dysphoria. That would be madness, right? Instead, we try and get the kid into counseling and we try and make sure she eats enough.
Trans is the same thing. Anorexics are looking at the same reflections as kids who are eating properly. Their interpretation is off. Trans didn't even exist among kids not that long ago. What's happening is that adults have suggested that gender identity is a choice, and that if you don't feel you fit in (most kids feel they don't from time to time), it's probably because your "real" identity is in conflict with biology.
That's nonsense. Indulging that nonsense with kids like your niece is cruel and potentially harmful. Her parents, if they continue on this path, will have produced a girl who has mutilated herself and will not be able to enter adulthood able to have children. Having no belief in gods, my opposition to this is not religious. It's just cruelty. By supporting her dysphoria, they encourage this path, make things worse if she actually has doubts.
Some suggest that suicide is potentially the result of trying to treat the dysphoria rather than indulging it. Some compare it to gay conversion therapy, which it isn't, as that enforces stereotypes while treating dysphoria is the opposite. The initial suicide claim was advocacy, not a scientific study. Subsequent studies are not producing the same results.
Accommodation is cruel. Both to the accommodated and to the rest of the kids who have to indulge it or risk suspension or other punishment.
Perhaps your niece is gay. Or just going through what all kids go through. Or on the autism spectrum. Or obsessed with TikToks of pretty feminine models who she feels she can't emulate. Who knows? Accepting her and loving her is vital, but not in this cruel manner. Why can't she just be a girl who doesn't look like Barbie? Or a girl who might be sexually attracted to other girls? You and your family are the ones who are insisting on her fitting a stereotype, in this case, that she's "genuinely" a boy. Now what hope does she have? Not only does she feel she doesn't fit in, but basic biology is going to confirm that every single minute. So she'll have to take drugs, mutilate herself, limit herself to a tiny percentage of the population as a potential romantic partner, unable to have children, forced into a world where people will tolerate her, but she will need constant indulgence and reinforcement.
You are helping your niece enter a life-long prison of meaningless identity.
As for the girls who are forced to compete against boys in sports... no, it's not crushing, but the lesson is "shut up, make way for the boys, learn your place, winning is not important, don't be so competitive." Instead of learning about competition, they're learning that their needs for privacy and fair competition are less important than indulging the fantasies of boys with dysphoria or whatever else is going on.
My daughter played defense on her high school lacrosse team. She's a powerful and fearless and tough kid. I can't tell you how many shots I saw whizz by her head in her three years of varsity. She never took a direct shot. Had a bio-male been on the opposing team, I would have never let her compete against him. Because boys can shoot a lacrosse ball a lot harder than girls. That's why it matters. Troll master.
Do you know many trans women? Most of them are very effeminate, and they are not normally terrific athletes. This is not the problem you folks on the right are trying to make it out to be. Political spin doctors are trying to get the base excited about voting Republican. That's all this is.
Matt strange primate. Small cranium. Not good for argue. Me no listen to Matt. Me know sexual dimorphism real. Man big, strong. Woman small, considerably less strong. No listen to slouching primate live in hole in hillside. He worship the misery of others. He say water is fire. Ask Matt to retrieve chicken, Matt come back with parsnip. Pray for Matt.
High school sports is where the discipline to excel begins. How demotivating to compete against a boy who decided to change gender because he can’t win against boys, but can against girls.
Are you suggesting girls should just “be nice” and let the boy on their team and into their spaces because he claims an identity?
Your last paragraph…huh? Nobody was talking about how transgender kids should be treated. We’re talking about preserving women’s sports for women. As for lesson, it’s clearly Lia Thomas teaching us all about how to cheat.
"How demotivating to compete against a boy who decided to change gender because he can’t win against boys, but can against girls."
Trans women do not become trans so that they can win High School competitions. Have you met many trans women? Most are very effeminate and they tend not to be great athletes. This is not the serious issue you folks on the right are trying to make this out to be. A trans female athlete beating all the girls is an extremely rare event. So rare that it will make the news.
I'm suggesting that, at least when it comes to High School sports, we should try to be accepting of people who are trans and nonbinary. These people exist. They always have. They always will. A good liberal society will make these people feel like they belong. They deserve not to live lives of shame and humiliation.
Beyond High School, they've already set very strict limits on which trans athletes qualify. Lia Thomas was just told that she does not qualify to compete on the international elite level. Problem solved.
"No one's life is going to be negatively altered because of a silly High School sports competition. I say we should look at each case individually on the amateur level. At the elite level, they have already adopted rules"
High School students lives can be impacted by meaningful sports competitions which you dismiss as "silly"--they are not silly to the participants or their parents. If this issue is merely the phony moral panic you state it is, then let's let women have the spaces they are advocating for--their voices should not carry less weight than any other voices--including yours and mine. And as you've also pointed out, if rules have already been adopted at the elite level, bringing them down to the amateur level would avoid the confusion your proposal leaves open by arguing for a case by case scenario.
Women's sports absolutely need protecting, as we saw from the case of Lia Thomas. "No one's life is going to be negatively altered because of a silly high school sports competition," is also a strange take, and one I'm guessing you wouldn't hold if racism or homophobia were involved.
The claim that we should ignore injustice simply because it's not "taking over" is misguided; bad ideas and bad policy start slowly, and that's often the only time to make the necessary corrections.
Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas lost her challenge against the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Switzerland — the world’s top court in matters of sporting fairness — to overturn the rules of World Aquatics that prevent transgender women from competing in women’s divisions. The judge ruled Thomas did not have standing to bring the case.
World Aquatics, which sets rules that inform elite competitions, including the Olympics, introduced a new gender policy in June 2022, allowing transgender women to compete in women’s events only if they transitioned before the age of 12 or before one of the early stages of puberty. The ruling excludes transgender women who underwent male puberty, like Thomas, from participating in women’s races.
Great. Now get men out of women’s locker rooms and prisons. I am tired of the so called rights of biological men always seeming to come before those of women. And if women are upset or bothered, it is their problem.
If TFP cares, they can do a huge exposé on the censorship of women and women's voices in this toxic trans issue on all social media, and especially Reddit. What's happening on Reddit, now a public company, is a gold mine. It's wild to me that no one yet has reported on it. Not even conservative media. Some of the most insidious things happening there:
1. All sub-reddits for women, women's right, lesbians, have all be taken over by "transwomen". Actual women who voice any mild dissent are immediately banned. Actual women who voice dissent on other unrelated subreddits are also preemptively banned. All women-related subreddits must be inclusive of trans. However, all porn subreddits are explicitly allowed to be exclusive of transwomen.
2. All subreddits for women, particularly tiny lesbian subreddits, no matter how minuscule the following, are immediately banned if they want to keep it strictly for actual women, or if they support gender critical views and reject trans and gender ideology. But dozens and dozens of subreddits for various types of violent porn are allowed, and all of them explicitly allowed to be trans exclusive.
3.The biggest subreddit for women against trans BS, r/gendercritical, with over 50k members, was banned. The SuperStraight subreddit, which started as a joke to celebrate "cis people' relationships, where people post totally family-friendly picture of gay and straight couples of all races and stripes in love, and quickly went viral gaining over 100K members, was banned when lesbians started telling real stories of their distress (or can I say oppression by the trans cult) that all lesbian spaces have been shut down everywhere because none are allowed to be exclusively female anymore. Lesbian bars have become obsolete because of trans. Also lesbians are being forced to accept "girl-dicks" and generally accept dicks because if they don't they're deemed bigots and would be cancelled and threatened physically. This was circa 2020 and 2021.
4. The subreddit r/feminist is moderated and run by a known Men's Rights Activists. It's been so for years. He admits to being an MRA activist and is also moderator for MRA subreddits. The subreddit r/lesbians is not for lesbians but a porn subreddit.
5. Though unsubstantiated, some reddit sleuths have found what they believe to be evidence that Ghislane Maxwell was a reddit moderator under the name u/maxwellhill. One of the worse kept secrets about Reddit is that it is a breeding ground of pedophile predators to prey on and groom minors. Ghislane Maxwell being a moderator for 14 years would directly show the depth of the problem. The sleuths on reddit themselves have gathered evidence to prove their suspicion. Here's the link to what they found. I'll include also a link from a little-known site that looked at this objectively:
6. While the Ghislane Maxwell thing can be disregarded as internet conspiracy, what is fact is that Reddit hired as a paid staff former UK politician Aimee Chanellor ("Aimee" is a trans) was a partner of someone (a man to be clear) who was a reddit power-moderator under the account u/nekosune. Nekosune moderated 70+ subs, including r/lgbt, r/actual lesbians, and r/transgenderteens and r/lgbt_kidszone. He is a pedophile apologist who has preferences for adult diapers and porn with underaged characters. Aimee Chanellor's father is a also a convicted serial child rapist. Chanellor's hiring led to a mass revolt by a number of subreddits, and officially Channellor was terminated. U/nekosune closed his account. However, it is not known if Channellor was ever rehired under a different account name, or if u/nekosune remain a power moderator under a different account name. They may still be there and the termination was only to stop the PR controversy.
7. While people were sleuth investigating the Channellor hiring, they also discovered at least two other power moderators who were moderating teen subreddits and at the same time grooming kids. At the time, U/drewiepoodle moderated 84 subs, had openly posted about talking to underage kids on reddit, inviting them over to his place so he can give them drugs to help with their "transitions" without their parents knowledge.
OTOH, he himself had said the reddit admins know who he is and what he did, and bragged about it. On this post of Reddit official announcement about the Aimee Channellor scandal, see the first comment by u/drewiepoodle.
I'll add a reminder how this is related to the subject of this article. All these power-mods are there for the work of shutting down women's dissenting voices against gender ideology and conflicts of women's rights and trans ideology. Grooming kids is their personal pastime.
For the record, Reddit's CEO is Serena William's husband and a father of two girls.
The problem is not just a TikTok problem. It's a all-tech/social media problem (Twitter/X excepted post Elon). Reddit happens to be under the radar but may be the biggest problem of all.
I noticed this censorship trend on Nextdoor as well. The moderators bully any dissent on trans related issues. “Neighbors” report any logical response so that it disappears from the conversation, and then the moderation result always goes their way. If you report their posts for being “disrespectful” because they call you, for example, a racist bigot, that post is never removed. I complained to Nextdoor then decided never to use it again. Like politics, the kind of person volunteering to moderate may be the exact kind of person who shouldn’t. It seems a waste of time to expect anything else right now.
I'm just wondering how all of this plays out in the long run. I think we've all come to accept that the internet gate-keepers and tech elite are going to default to refusing a platform to those who defend the obvious as a sort of tacit endorsement of those who demand we all pledge fealty to the absurd. It is what it is. But how does it wash out? How does the cultural dominance of the cuckoo birds come to a head? How will sanity restore itself? It's so stupid that it has to destroy itself, right?
Heaven forbid we allow a company the space to have an opinion we don't agree with. Eventually people will realize what losers TikTok decision makers are. But that will take ten years and a couple of replacement platforms...
I'm sorry you find this shocking. Women who have anything to say about their biological reality, rights or body have been banned for years on Tik Tok. I know women who are on their 22nd account. The irony of course, is that MEN can talk about women's bodies, rights, and biology. Tik Tok is owned by China, but run by blue haired, nose ringed they/them's. There is no democracy on Tik Tok, nor Instagram. My comment on Insta was removed yesterday for discussing Biden's Title IX rewrite. The Liberal cult thinks this is a Right wing talking point.
Because most people don't know about it. It's spun as "protections for LGBTQIA+++." They have no idea that their historic civil rights have been taken away. And to be honest, liberal women seem to be so passive and meek, maybe they wouldn't care? If Trump change a historic civil rights law without congress, voters or courts, he'd be called a dictator.
Welp, it's highly disturbing. I have two young daughters and I am terrified of the day that I have to explain to them why they are no longer offered the same protections that they once had, whether it be in sports, locker rooms, or even that the word woman and words related to being a woman are systematically being erased. It's as if we have gone back in time 150 years.
This is a great substack that documents that phenomenon, erasure of women-related words. I have to brace myself every time I read it because its so disheartening.
It’s traumatizing. But we need to keep up on it. The Democratic Gynophobes are banking on us being distracted so we don’t know how they’re destroying our rights and democracy.
For years, decades even, I was inundated with the many "wrongs" done to women, how awful it was to be a woman and not have the opportunity that men had, etc. In my particular case, I was even friendly with some women who were at the very top at MS magazine. Remember that? Remember the National Organization For Women? Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, etc....all the feminist heroes of yesteryear...While, I'm sure, they were making points that were needed to be made, the "movement" seemed a little contrived to me. Wasn't it just a few years ago, the brigade of Pink Pussy Hats set out to right the many wrongs women were forced to endure?
Well, just last night I was watching some of the Olympic trials for swimming and track and field and so forth. I just like sports...you know...higher, faster strongser, etc...the best athlete wins,and so forth. Fair competition...that sort of thing.... I was imagining the 100 meter time trials and how they might alter the US Olympic Team with some 6 foot, 210lb dude who claims to identify as a woman destroying the field as well as the marvelous accomplishments of these women who have devoted their lives to fulfill an athletic passion...to make an olympic team, to wear a US Olympic uniform.
Where are those feminists now? Where are the wearers of pink pussy hats when we need them ? They haven't destroyed the Olympic competion just yet. Will they?
As is so often the case with liberal idiology, the politics of it all is just way more important than what is purported to be true. Trans athletes running, swimming, etc against women? Really? Why not heavyweight boxing, as well?
I realize that this is mostly humor, but the news remains news and you'd server your readership better by explaining it better. We paid $230 million for the pier. How does that break down? I mean, the Army Corps of Engineers is on retainer, right? Their salaries are getting paid anyway and there probably isn't some 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 pier that didn't get built because they did this one. Concrete? I don't know prices, but that seems like an awful lot...
Moving on, we've got the billions for the (almost) non-existent charging stations. Were those billions 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁? Probably not, in which case it could have been half the amount or triple the amount and the story would have been the same. Same goes for the other billions for high-speed internet.
Don't get me wrong, the fun poked at the government for these fiascos is probably deserved, but journalists should kick the habit of using numbers to imply things that aren't known to be true.
Why would the filthy totalitarian chinese government allow opposing content on their platform?
The issue here is a subset of so called "trans athletes" who are opportunistic predators and not run of the mill trans athletes. These opportunists have found a way to "dominate" and are going to use this scheme to their advantage until people get wise to their "playing the system to their advantage". Fooled once, fooled. Fooled twice, the fool.
This is a non-story. As are all the "women's sports" stories. Women have been clamoring for equal treatment for decades., Now they're getting it. They're getting treated like men. And men are treated like shit.
Enjoy it, ladies. You asked for it.
The Democratic Party of America, and all its soft apologists at the Free Press, DELENDA EST.
Sinistra delenda est
Sounds like you were doin' some really bad beer last night, Bro.
Someone piss in your coffee? I don't in fact believe that Women have been clamoring for gender-inclusive competition. I think you are conflating wildly different matters here and your misogynist overtones are unflattering.
I'm a feminist, Jim. I want all women to be treated exactly the same way as men are treated. It's not called misogyny, its misandry. Women want to be equal to men in all things. They can take the hits...
The Democratic Party of America, DELENDA EST!
Not sure exactly what you're getting at. But thanks for inspiring me to look up "delenda est". Always nice to start the day by learning something new.
Parents should be banning their children from TikTok. Until social media companies are made to conform to algorithm guidelines, we’ll continue to see brainwashing content fed to our children. It’s not an accident how social media works. It’s by design of tech companies.
Tsk, Tsk, TikTok ...
In the timeline of human civilization, until about 5 minutes ago the best minds spend the majority of their time reading, writing, and thinking. With few exceptions, they subsisted on relatively meager amounts of whole, fresh foods with few chemicals added, and they walked or biked to get around.
And they would have agreed with almost unthinkable unanimity, that belief in transgenderism was either a very grave mental defect, or demonic possession of some sort.
Great news! Within the last five minutes, we've learned to swipe and scroll, reducing our attention spans from years to mere seconds, while we feed ourselves salty snacks from CostCo - so of course we've evolved. Of course we know better than they...
I fully support anyone's desire to present various avatars of their own identity.
But... 23+23=46, and XX/XY in the 23rd pair is basic biology and changes who you are physically.
I should never be told I have to endorse someone else's mental illness or delusion.
This isn't a big deal for me - unless the new Scottish laws that give jail time for "misgendering" people infect our country as well. It's toughest on children. They are bombarded with propaganda about having to make a "choice" that simply isn't. So any little boy or girl who doesn't conform to a narrow set of traits is intentionally confused and pressured.
In the past, we just let kids be kids and we recognized that adolescence is a time of enormous change and really obnoxious self-centered behavior. Now, we medicate them into strict obedience and "choices".
This seems quite regressive. And downright Stalinist for gay people.
Women's sports do not need protecting. They are thriving like never before. Men are not taking over women's sports. This is a phony moral panic. You will not be seeing trans women in elite international sports. You might occasionally see something like that in a High School, but so what? No one's life is going to be negatively altered because of a silly High School sports competition. I say we should look at each case individually on the amateur level. At the elite level, they have already adopted rules banning trans women from competing in women's sports if they transition after age puberty. You will not be seeing trans women in the upcoming Olympics in Paris. So relax.
Please. You sound like a guy with no daughters and little imagination. High school is critically important for both boys and girls, as are high school sports. As are high school bathrooms where young women expect privacy from young men. Sports was a key part of my daughters’ high school experience. Both playing in games and attending varsity girls games. Two good friends got their kids (one female, one male) into Ivy League colleges based on (they tell me) success in high school sports.
How can you defend a moderate, "split the baby" approach for something that is unequivocally black and white? A confused boy can't turn himself into a girl - nothing changes until the illness is validated by the adults around him. Indulging in the fantasies of the severely mentally ill, when it may result in permanent harm, needs to be resisted with zero tolerance. Even one case is one too many...
And same can be said for the girls - the topic is competitive sport. Which means opportunities are limited and must be won. If even a single girl anywhere is denied a place that would have been hers if not for the confused boy that was empowered to take it for himself, then that also is one too many.
I hope nobody poopoo'd your dream away with "so what, it's silly..."
If you had a trans child, you would change your mind.
You are so full of shit. Trans women (men) don't belong in womens sports. Such a dick thing for a guy to say that it doesn't matter in HS sports. That is where it matters most.
How can I defend myself against such cogent and well-reasoned arguments?
By offering a cogent, well-reasoned response, of course.
People who take High School sports too seriously frighten me, and a lot of umpires. And we can learn a lot of good lessons from losing, too. We can learn that it's just a race. It means nothing in the grand scheme of our lives. Elite sports are very different. High School should be about learning excellence and discipline and being a team player, and learning about sportsmanship, winning with honor.
Is there honor in treating a trans person as the gender they see themselves as? I think so. Is there honor in losing and winning with grace? I think so. Let's use sports to teach kids these lessons.
No, Matt, there is no honor among thieves.
And that's exactly the behavior from adults who indulge the concept that gender identity can differ from biological sex. They are stealing girls' opportunities for fair competition with their peers.
I don't understand your position very well, I guess. Why even have boys' and girls' sports in the first place? Why are girls' rights somehow less important than the rights of individuals who want to pretend they are girls? What do you learn from competition against people who dominates your sport not because they have more talent or they've worked harder, but simply because they decided to compete against girls rather than boys? Why not extend your logic and say high school kids can play in leagues for elementary school kids if they identify differently? After all, the grade school kiddies should learn about discipline, too?
Just because ESPN isn't going to televise the game and no one is going to pay the kids a big salary to compete doesn't make sport unimportant to the participants. Lessons in sport only work when there is a fair playing field.
"adults who indulge the concept that gender identity can differ from biological sex"
This is a fact of human life. You folks can pretend that such people don't exist but this sort of thing has been going on throughout human civilization. There are people who have genuine cases of gender dysphoria. My nephew is such a person. GAC and support from his loving family have been a huge positive in his life. A good society will not force such people to live in shame.
Of course, there is still reason to have men's and women's sports. There are only a handful of High School athletes who are trans women and have a snowball's chance of actually competing with the best women. It's not common enough to make a big deal out of it. The right is turning this into a national political issue because they think it's a winning issue at the ballot box, or because they think God said it was bad.
And we always have to weigh people's rights against the rights of others. I'm confident that adults can find a way to work all of this out on a case by case basis. I don't think it has to be a crushing experience for a girl to lose a race or a match to a trans woman athlete. Most girls in High School regularly lose to athletes who are more talented than them. They still play to do the best they can. And that's the whole point in High School sports––learning to do the best you can, practicing excellence. We can do that and accommodate the occasional trans athlete. And boys are not doing this just so they can win competitions. They are people who genuinely identify as women. If some young man is playing games, that's a different story.
One argument that seems to be common these days is saying that an opposing view is due to some perceived evil, like being right wing or religious in your case. I'm neither, by the way, and I don't oppose boys playing in girls' sports for political reasons or religious reasons.
What is gender dysphoria? What does that mean? A lot has been written about dysphoria in general. With anorexia/bulimia, a kid looks in the mirror, apparently, and instead of seeing a thin reflection, he or (usually) she sees the reflection of someone who needs to lose weight.
What do we do in response? We don't say "oh, you're right, you are hopelessly fat, try this new diet pill." We don't indulge the dysphoria. That would be madness, right? Instead, we try and get the kid into counseling and we try and make sure she eats enough.
Trans is the same thing. Anorexics are looking at the same reflections as kids who are eating properly. Their interpretation is off. Trans didn't even exist among kids not that long ago. What's happening is that adults have suggested that gender identity is a choice, and that if you don't feel you fit in (most kids feel they don't from time to time), it's probably because your "real" identity is in conflict with biology.
That's nonsense. Indulging that nonsense with kids like your niece is cruel and potentially harmful. Her parents, if they continue on this path, will have produced a girl who has mutilated herself and will not be able to enter adulthood able to have children. Having no belief in gods, my opposition to this is not religious. It's just cruelty. By supporting her dysphoria, they encourage this path, make things worse if she actually has doubts.
Some suggest that suicide is potentially the result of trying to treat the dysphoria rather than indulging it. Some compare it to gay conversion therapy, which it isn't, as that enforces stereotypes while treating dysphoria is the opposite. The initial suicide claim was advocacy, not a scientific study. Subsequent studies are not producing the same results.
Accommodation is cruel. Both to the accommodated and to the rest of the kids who have to indulge it or risk suspension or other punishment.
Perhaps your niece is gay. Or just going through what all kids go through. Or on the autism spectrum. Or obsessed with TikToks of pretty feminine models who she feels she can't emulate. Who knows? Accepting her and loving her is vital, but not in this cruel manner. Why can't she just be a girl who doesn't look like Barbie? Or a girl who might be sexually attracted to other girls? You and your family are the ones who are insisting on her fitting a stereotype, in this case, that she's "genuinely" a boy. Now what hope does she have? Not only does she feel she doesn't fit in, but basic biology is going to confirm that every single minute. So she'll have to take drugs, mutilate herself, limit herself to a tiny percentage of the population as a potential romantic partner, unable to have children, forced into a world where people will tolerate her, but she will need constant indulgence and reinforcement.
You are helping your niece enter a life-long prison of meaningless identity.
As for the girls who are forced to compete against boys in sports... no, it's not crushing, but the lesson is "shut up, make way for the boys, learn your place, winning is not important, don't be so competitive." Instead of learning about competition, they're learning that their needs for privacy and fair competition are less important than indulging the fantasies of boys with dysphoria or whatever else is going on.
My daughter played defense on her high school lacrosse team. She's a powerful and fearless and tough kid. I can't tell you how many shots I saw whizz by her head in her three years of varsity. She never took a direct shot. Had a bio-male been on the opposing team, I would have never let her compete against him. Because boys can shoot a lacrosse ball a lot harder than girls. That's why it matters. Troll master.
Do you know many trans women? Most of them are very effeminate, and they are not normally terrific athletes. This is not the problem you folks on the right are trying to make it out to be. Political spin doctors are trying to get the base excited about voting Republican. That's all this is.
Matt strange primate. Small cranium. Not good for argue. Me no listen to Matt. Me know sexual dimorphism real. Man big, strong. Woman small, considerably less strong. No listen to slouching primate live in hole in hillside. He worship the misery of others. He say water is fire. Ask Matt to retrieve chicken, Matt come back with parsnip. Pray for Matt.
Ad hominem attacks are not impressive.
Where is the cogent in your response?
High school sports is where the discipline to excel begins. How demotivating to compete against a boy who decided to change gender because he can’t win against boys, but can against girls.
Are you suggesting girls should just “be nice” and let the boy on their team and into their spaces because he claims an identity?
Your last paragraph…huh? Nobody was talking about how transgender kids should be treated. We’re talking about preserving women’s sports for women. As for lesson, it’s clearly Lia Thomas teaching us all about how to cheat.
"How demotivating to compete against a boy who decided to change gender because he can’t win against boys, but can against girls."
Trans women do not become trans so that they can win High School competitions. Have you met many trans women? Most are very effeminate and they tend not to be great athletes. This is not the serious issue you folks on the right are trying to make this out to be. A trans female athlete beating all the girls is an extremely rare event. So rare that it will make the news.
I'm suggesting that, at least when it comes to High School sports, we should try to be accepting of people who are trans and nonbinary. These people exist. They always have. They always will. A good liberal society will make these people feel like they belong. They deserve not to live lives of shame and humiliation.
Beyond High School, they've already set very strict limits on which trans athletes qualify. Lia Thomas was just told that she does not qualify to compete on the international elite level. Problem solved.
"No one's life is going to be negatively altered because of a silly High School sports competition. I say we should look at each case individually on the amateur level. At the elite level, they have already adopted rules"
High School students lives can be impacted by meaningful sports competitions which you dismiss as "silly"--they are not silly to the participants or their parents. If this issue is merely the phony moral panic you state it is, then let's let women have the spaces they are advocating for--their voices should not carry less weight than any other voices--including yours and mine. And as you've also pointed out, if rules have already been adopted at the elite level, bringing them down to the amateur level would avoid the confusion your proposal leaves open by arguing for a case by case scenario.
Women's sports absolutely need protecting, as we saw from the case of Lia Thomas. "No one's life is going to be negatively altered because of a silly high school sports competition," is also a strange take, and one I'm guessing you wouldn't hold if racism or homophobia were involved.
The claim that we should ignore injustice simply because it's not "taking over" is misguided; bad ideas and bad policy start slowly, and that's often the only time to make the necessary corrections.
Lia Thomas has a dick
From the NY Times:
Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas lost her challenge against the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Switzerland — the world’s top court in matters of sporting fairness — to overturn the rules of World Aquatics that prevent transgender women from competing in women’s divisions. The judge ruled Thomas did not have standing to bring the case.
World Aquatics, which sets rules that inform elite competitions, including the Olympics, introduced a new gender policy in June 2022, allowing transgender women to compete in women’s events only if they transitioned before the age of 12 or before one of the early stages of puberty. The ruling excludes transgender women who underwent male puberty, like Thomas, from participating in women’s races.
Lia Thomas has a dick
Great. Now get men out of women’s locker rooms and prisons. I am tired of the so called rights of biological men always seeming to come before those of women. And if women are upset or bothered, it is their problem.
If TFP cares, they can do a huge exposé on the censorship of women and women's voices in this toxic trans issue on all social media, and especially Reddit. What's happening on Reddit, now a public company, is a gold mine. It's wild to me that no one yet has reported on it. Not even conservative media. Some of the most insidious things happening there:
1. All sub-reddits for women, women's right, lesbians, have all be taken over by "transwomen". Actual women who voice any mild dissent are immediately banned. Actual women who voice dissent on other unrelated subreddits are also preemptively banned. All women-related subreddits must be inclusive of trans. However, all porn subreddits are explicitly allowed to be exclusive of transwomen.
2. All subreddits for women, particularly tiny lesbian subreddits, no matter how minuscule the following, are immediately banned if they want to keep it strictly for actual women, or if they support gender critical views and reject trans and gender ideology. But dozens and dozens of subreddits for various types of violent porn are allowed, and all of them explicitly allowed to be trans exclusive.
3.The biggest subreddit for women against trans BS, r/gendercritical, with over 50k members, was banned. The SuperStraight subreddit, which started as a joke to celebrate "cis people' relationships, where people post totally family-friendly picture of gay and straight couples of all races and stripes in love, and quickly went viral gaining over 100K members, was banned when lesbians started telling real stories of their distress (or can I say oppression by the trans cult) that all lesbian spaces have been shut down everywhere because none are allowed to be exclusively female anymore. Lesbian bars have become obsolete because of trans. Also lesbians are being forced to accept "girl-dicks" and generally accept dicks because if they don't they're deemed bigots and would be cancelled and threatened physically. This was circa 2020 and 2021.
4. The subreddit r/feminist is moderated and run by a known Men's Rights Activists. It's been so for years. He admits to being an MRA activist and is also moderator for MRA subreddits. The subreddit r/lesbians is not for lesbians but a porn subreddit.
5. Though unsubstantiated, some reddit sleuths have found what they believe to be evidence that Ghislane Maxwell was a reddit moderator under the name u/maxwellhill. One of the worse kept secrets about Reddit is that it is a breeding ground of pedophile predators to prey on and groom minors. Ghislane Maxwell being a moderator for 14 years would directly show the depth of the problem. The sleuths on reddit themselves have gathered evidence to prove their suspicion. Here's the link to what they found. I'll include also a link from a little-known site that looked at this objectively:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_the_evidence_that_reddit_user_maxwellhill/?
https://wegotthiscovered.com/true-crime/was-ghislaine-maxwell-really-one-of-reddits-top-moderators/
6. While the Ghislane Maxwell thing can be disregarded as internet conspiracy, what is fact is that Reddit hired as a paid staff former UK politician Aimee Chanellor ("Aimee" is a trans) was a partner of someone (a man to be clear) who was a reddit power-moderator under the account u/nekosune. Nekosune moderated 70+ subs, including r/lgbt, r/actual lesbians, and r/transgenderteens and r/lgbt_kidszone. He is a pedophile apologist who has preferences for adult diapers and porn with underaged characters. Aimee Chanellor's father is a also a convicted serial child rapist. Chanellor's hiring led to a mass revolt by a number of subreddits, and officially Channellor was terminated. U/nekosune closed his account. However, it is not known if Channellor was ever rehired under a different account name, or if u/nekosune remain a power moderator under a different account name. They may still be there and the termination was only to stop the PR controversy.
Grahame Linehan talked about this: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/ashton-challenor-the-boy-who-disappeared
https://www.reddit.com/user/Blank-Cheque/comments/mc9ave/list_of_protesting_subreddits/
7. While people were sleuth investigating the Channellor hiring, they also discovered at least two other power moderators who were moderating teen subreddits and at the same time grooming kids. At the time, U/drewiepoodle moderated 84 subs, had openly posted about talking to underage kids on reddit, inviting them over to his place so he can give them drugs to help with their "transitions" without their parents knowledge.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MisterMetokur/comments/bgwsbu/how_reddit_powermods_are_unethically_grooming/
OTOH, he himself had said the reddit admins know who he is and what he did, and bragged about it. On this post of Reddit official announcement about the Aimee Channellor scandal, see the first comment by u/drewiepoodle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/mcisdf/comment/gs4ocoo/
I'll add a reminder how this is related to the subject of this article. All these power-mods are there for the work of shutting down women's dissenting voices against gender ideology and conflicts of women's rights and trans ideology. Grooming kids is their personal pastime.
For the record, Reddit's CEO is Serena William's husband and a father of two girls.
The problem is not just a TikTok problem. It's a all-tech/social media problem (Twitter/X excepted post Elon). Reddit happens to be under the radar but may be the biggest problem of all.
I noticed this censorship trend on Nextdoor as well. The moderators bully any dissent on trans related issues. “Neighbors” report any logical response so that it disappears from the conversation, and then the moderation result always goes their way. If you report their posts for being “disrespectful” because they call you, for example, a racist bigot, that post is never removed. I complained to Nextdoor then decided never to use it again. Like politics, the kind of person volunteering to moderate may be the exact kind of person who shouldn’t. It seems a waste of time to expect anything else right now.
I'm just wondering how all of this plays out in the long run. I think we've all come to accept that the internet gate-keepers and tech elite are going to default to refusing a platform to those who defend the obvious as a sort of tacit endorsement of those who demand we all pledge fealty to the absurd. It is what it is. But how does it wash out? How does the cultural dominance of the cuckoo birds come to a head? How will sanity restore itself? It's so stupid that it has to destroy itself, right?
Heaven forbid we allow a company the space to have an opinion we don't agree with. Eventually people will realize what losers TikTok decision makers are. But that will take ten years and a couple of replacement platforms...
I'm sorry you find this shocking. Women who have anything to say about their biological reality, rights or body have been banned for years on Tik Tok. I know women who are on their 22nd account. The irony of course, is that MEN can talk about women's bodies, rights, and biology. Tik Tok is owned by China, but run by blue haired, nose ringed they/them's. There is no democracy on Tik Tok, nor Instagram. My comment on Insta was removed yesterday for discussing Biden's Title IX rewrite. The Liberal cult thinks this is a Right wing talking point.
I don't understand why there isn't more outrage over this. We are 50% of the population.
Because most people don't know about it. It's spun as "protections for LGBTQIA+++." They have no idea that their historic civil rights have been taken away. And to be honest, liberal women seem to be so passive and meek, maybe they wouldn't care? If Trump change a historic civil rights law without congress, voters or courts, he'd be called a dictator.
Welp, it's highly disturbing. I have two young daughters and I am terrified of the day that I have to explain to them why they are no longer offered the same protections that they once had, whether it be in sports, locker rooms, or even that the word woman and words related to being a woman are systematically being erased. It's as if we have gone back in time 150 years.
This is a great substack that documents that phenomenon, erasure of women-related words. I have to brace myself every time I read it because its so disheartening.
https://millihill.substack.com/p/the-word-is-woman-41
It’s traumatizing. But we need to keep up on it. The Democratic Gynophobes are banking on us being distracted so we don’t know how they’re destroying our rights and democracy.