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We cannot go back in time to take advantage of opportunities we have already passed up

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain fisked an article from The New York Times, one which tried to make the case that American women postponing childbirth might still have children later in life.

“Fertility delayed is fertility denied” is one of the great maxims of demographics. As a matter of statistical average, postponing parenthood means reducing the total number of children. It requires a few more sentences to explain why this is true, but the fundamental fact is that every woman begins her fertile years at puberty (menarche) and concludes her fertility at menopause. Biology establishes a window of roughly 30 years (roughly ages 15 to 45) during which pregnancy can occur. Let us suppose that the reader is among those who feel a sense of horror about “teenage pregnancy.” While I could argue that this attitude is irrational, I’ll not belabor that point here. But in seeking to eradicate teenage motherhood, what you are attempting to do is to subtract five years from the potential baby-making years of the female population.

Stipulating, then, that no woman should ever give birth before age 20, you still have (in theory) a 25-year period during which births can occur. Ah, but biological fertility declines significantly after age 30, and the risk of birth defects (particularly Down syndrome) increases after age 35. The window for successful childbearing, you see, is actually narrower than the menarche-to-menopause span of 15-to-45 would suggest. That five-year delay you demanded to prevent teenage motherhood has consequences down the line, which is why in recent decades we have had so many 30-something women in crisis at the ticking of their “biological clock.” We cannot go back in time to take advantage of opportunities we have already passed up — fertility delayed is fertility denied.

Liberals don’t want to acknowledge this reality, and for many years have been selling false hope about egg-freezing, IVF and other advanced medical treatments as a panacea for the problems created by attempting to beat the biological clock. Even if you are buying what they’re selling — i.e., that becoming a mom at 45 is medically feasible — does it make sense that any large number of childless women would pursue these expensive procedures? You’ve gone childless for decades, and now at middle age, you’re going to pay tens of thousands of dollars to make a baby? Do you want to be the only 50-year-old mom at your kindergartner’s PTA? And then you’ll be eligible for Social Security by the time this kid graduates high school. This kind of choice just doesn’t make sense, which is why very few women actually do it.

There’s a feminist attitude that strong, smart career women have to build their careers early, along with the accurate-enough problem that career women having children are sometimes “mommy tracked,” making getting that C-suite office unattainable. Of course, most men fail to gain that C-suite office as well.

The feminist attitude also ignores something rarely discussed: while women are now in the labor force just as much as are men, most women, like most men, have jobs, but not anything the feminists would see as careers. But the career-woman ideal, pushed by so many of our friends on the left, and the public school teachers creates another issue which stifles fertility.

In 1975, the age of first marriage for women was 21.1 years; in 2025, it was 28.4 years. Assuming (hah!) that most women want to wait until they’re married to get knocked up have children, that’s another 7.3 years out of fertility.

Then add the fact that in 1975, 66% of all households were headed by a married couple, while only 47% were in 2025, we have a huge population of unmarried single women, women who are (supposedly) less likely to procreate.

Then there’s this. A lady on Twitter styling herself skum wrote:

My boomer mom told me I spend too much on food.

“Just cook at home like we did.”

Mom: Your groceries in 1987 cost $180/mo.
Mine cost $420/mo.
Same items.
Same store brand.

Your kitchen was in a house you owned at 29.

Mine is in apartment I share with a roommate at 34.

I’m not eating out too much.
I’m eating in a different economy.

I passed the salad.
Said nothing.

Being the [insert slang term for the anus here] that I am, it’s unsurprising that I responded with the absolute truth:

“Your kitchen was in a house you owned at 29. Mine is in apartment I share with a roommate at 34.”

Translation: your mother was married by age 29, was being a grown-up, while you’re still playing a being a kid at 34. Marriage is greatest contributor to economic well-being.

Skum didn’t mention having a child, but that she was sharing an apartment with a roommate, so I assume no kids, at age 34. I suppose it’s great that she hasn’t got a bastard child, bastardy being one of the major contributors to poverty, but it also means that if she meets Mr Right, as opposed to Mr Right Now, tomorrow, and gets married, she is still unlikely to get knocked up have a child before age 36. That’s a major factor in the declining birthrate, because a first child at age 36, even if he’s healthy, is still unlikely to be followed by a second child.

Our demographic decline, other than seemingly by illegal immigrants, is a natural result of liberalism.

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough!

When it comes to posts on Twitter, I have gotten away from doing the easy thing and embedding them to taking screenshots and then embedding the links to them. I use them for illustrations on my site, because tweets are not copyrighted, and because they serve as a permanent record.

Well, apparently Bethany Allen, whose Twitter bio states that she is “Head of China investigations @aspi_cts. Was @axios, @foreignpolicy, @yale, @HopkinsNanjing. Author BEIJING RULES, FT Best Books 2023. bethanyallen AT aspi org au” isn’t quite as intelligent and educated as she thinks she is, because Stephen Miller did the same thing, and took a screenshot of his response to her now deleted tweet.

This site has made considerable fun of CNN’s Jake Tapper and his co-author Alex Thompson for their non mea culpa est book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, and now we’re seeing supposedly professional journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading trying to tell us that it’s not their fault that they didn’t report on the perv from the Pyrite State, Rep. Eric Swalwell and his proclivity for sexual assault. No, they knew about it, but it wasn’t their beat, you know?

Steven Tavares of the East Bay Insider admitted that he knew about it as well, since 2013, screenshot here, and also kept his mouth shut.

Well, Mr Tavares is stuck in the area around the city of my birth — Go Oakland, never Las Vegas, Raiders! — and Miss Allen lives in Taipei, far, far away from the corridors of federal power in Washington, DC, and even they had heard about what has been described as an ‘open secret’ concerning Mr Swalwell. So how is it that The New York Times — “All the News That’s Fit to Print” — and The Washington Post — “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — found news about the Distinguished Gentleman from California not fit to print, found it too dark to illuminate for democracy? Do the voters of California’s 14th congressional district not deserve to know this about their representative in Congress? Do the voters in the United States, frequently subjected to Mr Swalwell’s attacks on President Trump, and his attempts to derail the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, not deserve to know what a huge hypocrite was making those allegations?

We have previously noted the losses and layoffs at the Post, but stories about Mr Swalwell’s proclivities had been circulating long before those layoffs, and still the Post never reported on it. There were plenty of stories, including the Post’s Taylor Lorenz’s doxxing of Chaya Raichik, an attempt to expose the previously anonymous producer of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok, hoping to get Miss Raichik to lose her day job or get run out of town, or something else horrible to happen to her, Miss Raichik having done nothing more than to have exposed the idiocy of the #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, but expose an actual predator in Congress? Maybe if he’d been a Republican, yeah, but a prominent Democrat? Nope, not happening.

But let’s tell the full truth here: former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy knew, which means most if not all Republicans in the House of Representatives knew as well, and they didn’t expose Mr Swalwell either. Either they were just fine with the pervert from the Pyrite State’s continued attacks on President Trump, or they didn’t want the light of truth shone on themselves, and both possibilities could be true.

Jeff Bezos, you’ve got some work to do! You want to revive The Washington Post, to get it back to where it was? Get your reporters on the case, get them to document and expose all of the members of Congress who are abusing their power and positions! No one will ever believe that your reporters haven’t heard the rumors about Mr Swalwell, and that there aren’t other possible abusers out there.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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The problem isn’t that the city rejected the interior remodeling plans; the problem is that the city has any authority over interior remodeling plans!

My good friend Daniel Pearson — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him, but I follow him on Twitter! — an editorial writer and columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and someone about whom I’ve thrice asked if he could actually be a conservative had sadly missed the boat in his latest column:

The fairly dry proceedings at the Zoning Board of Adjustment are also worth paying attention to if you want to know how the city is and isn’t working. One case from November 2021 has stayed with me.

Padideh Moghaddam and Ramtin Saneekhatam were bringing Moghaddam’s parents over from Iran to live with them. To accommodate the move, they sought to turn their 2,700-square-foot East Kensington rowhouse into a triplex. Like many families, they wanted their parents close by, but also a bit of their own distinct space. The project would not have involved any new construction, just the remodeling of their interior. They would not be adding a car that would compete with neighbors for street parking.

The couple hired an attorney and an architect. After a local neighborhood association surprised them by voting 6-7 against the project, they knocked on doors to gather more support. Eleven neighbors signed their petition. The area is also zoned for mixed-use structures and hosts other, similar multifamily buildings. At the zoning board hearing, their lawyer described it as an easy case. It wasn’t.

One near neighbor called in to oppose the project, dismissing their desire for a small amount of distance and personal space, saying that “they should be able to figure out how to get along and share a kitchen.” Frankly, speculation about the internal dynamics of another household should never be a neighbor’s business, let alone aired at a public hearing. Still, the proposal was voted down unanimously.

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me.

Mr Pearson’s column was more about the approval of accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, but that wasn’t the case in this instance; there was to be no external construction, just an interior remodeling. ADUs are controversial, but no ADU was planned. My question is: why would a homeowner need governmental permission for an interior remodel in the first place?

There was no issue here of an unsafe remodel, given that an architect was hired, a reasonably responsible thing to do. I’ve done a couple of remodel jobs myself, though none involved any potential structural issues, and the last thing I ever considered was asking for a stinking permit. Mr Pearson asked why the neighbors stuck their ugly noses in the family’s business: I ask why it was any of the government’s business.

This is where we have far, far, far too much government interference, and while Mr Pearson was annoyed by the decision taken, he expressed no disapproval of the cockamamie idea that it was any of the government’s business in the first place. There might be a place for requiring inspections of structural, electrical and plumbing changes in rowhomes, in homes that are physically attached to other people’s houses in ways which could damage someone else’s property, but the idea that government has any authority over actual interior remodeling is repugnant in itself.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, girl! Yet another public school teacher accused of trying to become sexually involved with a student

There was no one more disappointed than I was when The Philadelphia Inquirer and then-Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams started going after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for covering up sexual abuses by Catholic priests, or the horrible statistics when the John Jay Report, The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950-2002 was released. Priests should be above the sexual abuse, and sometimes outright rape, that was documented.

Alas! it seems that (supposedly) celibate priests have not been the only ones engaging in the sexual abuse of minors. The arrest of Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 exposed a whole other world of adult men trying to diddle teenaged girls, and if the left have been trying everything they could to tie it to President Trump — something the Biden Administration could not do when it had possession of the Epstein evidence for four years, despite all of their attempts to disqualify and jail Mr Trump before the 2024 elections — it’s clear that plenty of other miscreants had been enjoying themselves on “Epstein Island.”

Nevertheless, those were the wealthy and powerful, those who thought they could do no wrong. But what we have been seeing more and more these days is not the wealthy and powerful, but ordinary, working-class citizens, heavily tilted towards public school teachers.

KY substitute teacher, assistant coach charged with sexually abusing student

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | March 30, 2026 | 5:50 PM EDT

Bardstown police arrested a Bardstown High School substitute teacher on Monday and charged her with sexually abusing a student, police and school officials said.

Mary “Hanna” Mattingly, 31, was charged with first-degree sexual abuse and procuring or promoting use of a minor by electronic means, police said.

No, of course the Lexington Herald-Leader did not publish Miss Mattingly’s photograph, despite the fact it was available as a public record and has been available online from several other sources. The First Street Journal does publish those mugshots, and I use them whenever I can find them.

Bardstown City Schools’ Superintendent Ryan Clark confirmed Mattingly was also an assistant high school girls’ soccer coach.

Mattingly was listed in that role on the Kentucky High School Athletic Association website for the last two seasons.

Clark said in a statement that an anonymous letter was received Thursday “alleging inappropriate conduct by a female substitute teacher and a Bardstown High School juvenile.“

“Bardstown City Schools immediately initiated an investigation, removed the individual from her job duties, placed her on administrative leave, and alerted the authorities,” the school district’s statement said.

Several stories noted that Miss Mattingly (allegedly) communicated with the student on more than one occasion, a record of persistence. WBRD reported, “It had been going on for several months,” Bardstown Police Detective Eric Williamson said Wednesday. “Social media was the main avenue for the communication.”

But what none of the stories I could find told us whether the student she contacted was male or female. That is a frequent enough occurrence for me to conclude that the credentialed media do not want anyone to infer that homosexuality is in any way connected to sexual abuse, even though the John Jay Report noted that 81% of the victims of sexual abuse by an all-male clergy were boys. We have previously noted how The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to conceal the fact that a teenaged murderer was transgendered, and you’ll find several more such stories on this site.

I take no inference in the specific case of Miss Mattingly, though I’d note from her photo that she’s pretty enough to have attracted plenty of attention from adult men. Bardstown had a Census Bureau estimated population of 14,104 on July 1, 2024, and isn’t a particularly poor place as small towns in the Bluegrass State go.

Miss Mattingly is listed as being 31 years old, and that means she is certainly old enough to have known better than to mess with a student. There have been enough stories in the media concerning adults in general, and adult teachers specifically, going after minor students, that no one with an IQ above room temperature could have been unaware that attempting a sexual relationship with a minor, with a public school student, was tremendously dangerous. And no teacher of any experience could be unaware that students talk; this stuff can’t be kept secret for long.

Miss Mattingly is, of course, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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Has The Philadelphia Inquirer changed its policies on publishing photos of accused sex offenders?

We noted, on April Fool’s Day, something which wasn’t foolish, that The Philadelphia Inquirer, which has a stated policy of not publishing mug shots chose to publish the photo of a woman charged with, but not yet convicted of, grooming a student for sex, something which allegedly began when the boy was only twelve.

Now we have this story:

Montco teacher who tried to coerce a teenage student to kiss him sent to county jail

John Richards IV told the 13-year-old she was beautiful, and asked if he could kiss her “at least two times” during a field trip last year.

by Vinny Vella | Monday, April 6, 2026 | 4:53 PM EDT

John Richards IV spent a decade working as a teacher, dedicating his life, he told a judge Monday, to a vocation he felt was his calling.

But Richards, 58, ruined his career and his reputation by betraying the authority granted to him, Montgomery County Court Judge Risa Vetri Ferman said as she sentenced Richards to 9 to 23 months in jail for attempting to sexually assault a 13-year-old student.

“The actions that bring us here today are horrific,” Ferman said. “He made a victim out of a girl who wanted nothing more than to be a student. There has to be a severe punishment, otherwise it would diminish the seriousness of this case.”

Richards, of Newtown Square, wrote a message in March 2025 to the girl, a student in his eighth-grade science class at Blockson Middle School in Norristown, telling her that she was beautiful, prosecutors said Monday. He asked permission to kiss her “at least two times” during a field trip to Washington he was chaperoning the next day.

So, Mr Richards was just plain stupid. He made all sorts of excuses for what he did — Mr Richards pleaded guilty to the charges — blaming loneliness among other things, but he wasn’t smart enough to look for women who were actually adults and not under his supervisory authority. Teachers cannot be unaware of what’s been happening to their fellow teachers when they try to form romantic or sexual relationships with minor students. His sentence is for stupidity as much as anything else.

“Looking back at it now, I’m appalled that I could’ve done something so reprehensible,” Richards said. “I think I was in a bad, lonely place, and I was looking to be seen in any way possible.”

Richards blamed what he called a lapse in judgment on what he described as ineffective medication to treat his ADHD diagnosis. He asked the judge for leniency, saying that his three children had already been given life sentences by the “court of public opinion.”

Well, of course he’s going to say anything he could to avoid jail!

But, what interested me more was that the newspaper published his photo[1]I chose to screen capture the newspaper’s Twitter blurb to publicize the story, rather than copy the one directly in the article, to avoid copyright issues. The Twitter feed is open to … Continue reading. The newspaper’s stated policy stated their reasons:

  • Because of longstanding racial disparities in arrest rates, mugshots disproportionately feature Black and Latinx people. Unrelenting, routine publication of such mugshots strengthens stereotypes and contributes to systemic racism.
  • Pre-conviction mugshots are inherently unfair, depicting suspects as criminals before guilt or innocence has been established.
  • Online, mugshots exist indefinitely, easily findable through search engines. Years after the alleged offense, mugshots on Inquirer.com or other news sites can make it harder for individuals to find jobs and move on with their lives.
  • Many published mugshots feature private individuals, charged with routine crimes. They are frequently published out of habit. The news value of these photos is often negligible

Mr Richards pleaded guilty, so the second reason would not apply to his case. However, Ashley Fisler, who was featured in the story we previously noted, has not been convicted, so the second listed reason should have applied.

Both Mr Richards and Miss Fisler are white; some might assume that, given the newspaper’s stated reasoning, the first reason given wouldn’t apply to them. But that third reason, that publishing the photos might make it more difficult for the accused to find new jobs and move on with their lives, certainly does apply. Mr Richards is 58, and the Inquirer’s story did not specify whether he will lose whatever retirement pension he has from the school system, but Miss Fisler is only 36; retirement is a long way away for her. Technically, neither photo is a mugshot, but shouldn’t the same reasons apply to other pictures?

It’s an obvious question: has the Inky changed its policies for accused sex offenders? If so, the newspaper should tell us!

References

References
↑1 I chose to screen capture the newspaper’s Twitter blurb to publicize the story, rather than copy the one directly in the article, to avoid copyright issues. The Twitter feed is open to retweeting, meaning that the newspaper is giving open permission to spread the story and the photo. Our regular readers — both of them — may have noticed that is our normal way of doing things. The photo used by the newspaper in the tweet is the same one published in the story, and which appeared on the newspaper’s website main page, as screen captured here on Tuesday, April 7th, at 10:55 AM EDT.
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The seriousness of the surge in Catholic conversions

As a somewhat frequent participant in Catholic discussions on Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏, the dumbest rebranding of the 21st century — I’ve been seeing a ton of posts about the surge in Catholic converts. Apparently, the algorithms see what we like, and send more of the same our way!  Many tweets about people’s individual conversions cheered me, but the one by Chrissie Mayr, screen captured at the right, seemed far more important to me. Miss Mayr pointed out what not everyone knows: unlike our Protestant brethren, who basically welcome everyone into their churches as members as soon as they walk in the door, conversion to Catholicism is a process, one which involves serious time and education into the beliefs held and requirements of becoming Catholic.

Miss Mayr told us that she initially found the process of OCIA, Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, intimidating, and it certainly can be.  OCIA is not meant to be intimidating, but I suppose I can see where some might see it that way. But it is intended to show aspiring Catholics what being Catholic really means, and to what they planned to commit. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the sacrament of Reconciliation — confession and absolution — and the need for an examination of conscience. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and Apostolic Succession. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the real reverence of the Eucharist, the heart of every Mass. We want aspiring Catholics to not only be proud of being Catholic, but to understand why they should be proud of it.

I’m old enough to remember the surge of “Jesus freaks” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were, essentially, non-denominational Protestants, and the passion and fad of such soon faded. The recent surge in conversion to Catholicism entails as orderliness that the Jesus freaks never had, and we hope that OCIA brings that orderliness and with it, a more durable commitment.

OCIA is a process which has the catechumens coming to Mass every Sunday, not only for the Mass, but for their instruction. This is a subtle, or perhaps not-so-subtle means of instilling in them the habit of getting out of bed on Sunday morning and coming to church. One thing too infrequently acknowledged is that attendance at church is a habit, and the more often you do get up rather than sleeping in, the easier it is to get up the next Sunday. For me, especially during colder weather, there are some Sundays that it’s really hard to get out of our nice, warm, comfortable bed, but it’s a habit, and I do it anyway. On both Palm Sunday, when the bedroom was cool due to the window being open, and Easter, when it was just plain cold, our bed was just so very nice, but yes, I got up anyway, and went to Mass. There’s a point at which you are more encouraged to get up and go to Mass because you want to keep your attendance record spotless.

Will the recent surge in Catholic conversions hold? Will our Church see more Catholics staying Catholic, more Catholics in the pews every Sunday morning? Only the Lord knows the answer to that, but I believe we have reason to hope.

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Citius, Altius, Fortius Girls can't be boys and boys can't be girls, no matter how much a few of them don't like it

The Nation is one of our oldest political commentary journals, dating from 1865, and these days it is charitably described as “progressive,” though far-left and #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading would be more accurate. They’re just another bunch who’ve fallen for the idiocy that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

The Olympics Is Repeating One of Its Worst Mistakes

The IOC’s new anti-trans testing regime revives some of the most discredited and discriminatory policies in the history of the games.

Michael Waters | Holy Thursday, April 2, 2026

In 1967, a Polish sprinter named Ewa Kłobukowska sat for a mandatory DNA test. Kłobukowska, a rising track star, had won a gold and a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Now, a new policy required all women track-and-field athletes to be screened for the presence of X chromosomes. Kłobukowska was probably shocked to learn that the test had placed her on the wrong side of the gender binary. Exactly what happened is hazy—news reports claimed that Kłobukowska was discovered to have “one chromosome too many,” without further explanation—but the consequences were immediate. Kłobukowska was banned from the Olympics. Her sporting career was over.

Now why would the Olympics be running DNA tests back in the mid 1960s, before there was any such thing as “transgenderism”? It’s simple! Female athletes in international competition from the Soviet bloc nations, the USSR and the satellite countries in the old Warsaw Pact, sure looked as though there were some men in drag competing in women’s sports. They were cheating, no surprise during the Cold War and the Soviets’ attempts to persuade the civilized world that Communism was somehow superior.

Track-and-field officials framed this as an unmitigated triumph, proof that DNA testing had weeded out an athlete who was “not truly female.” But even at the time, some onlookers could see that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was going down a dark road of gender policing, weeding out women who had always understood themselves as female based on some arbitrary biological marker. The head of the Polish Olympic Committee, perhaps radicalized by the dismissal of one of his top athletes, called DNA testing a “form of discrimination” as well as something of a gender delusion: How could the IOC hope to split up athletes into biological binaries when “there are no generally accepted criteria of sex for woman athletes”? Sex, after all, is a spectrum.

These critiques did not stop the IOC from expanding its testing requirements. From 1968 on, all women athletes had to sit for chromosome exams ahead of the Olympics. Only at the end of the 1990s, when the chorus of critical voices became unavoidable, did the IOC ditch this sex testing regime.

Translation: when Communism in the USSR fell and their attempts at cheating ended, genetic testing to see if women were actually women was no longer needed. But author Michael Waters revealed his point of argument when he wrote, “Sex, after all, is a spectrum.”

No, it isn’t. Sex falls into two major categories, males and females, and one minor one, those unfortunate individuals who suffer from genetic or developmental defects which make them “intersex.” Our #woke friends on the far-left sometimes claim that gender is a spectrum, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone claim that sex is. Even the World Health Organization, which buys into the gender spectrum idea, differentiates it from sex:

Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs. Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.

It would seem that Mr Waters is attempting to move the goalposts to make his argument!

Sadly, the article falls behind the paywall just a bit after the parts I’ve already quoted, but, not to worry, I had first found it in my morning feeds from another source, which has the entire article here.

After a couple of paragraphs whining about the tests, Mr Waters continued:

Just as it did in 1968, the IOC is insisting that the new regime is about preventing men from breaching the barriers of women’s sports, saying that “it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.” And, just as was true all those decades ago, this excuse doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Instead, the IOC is playing a linguistic jiu-jitsu with us, lumping intersex and trans women into the categories of “biological males,” even though they are not men and do not have the same athletic advantages as men.

We have previously noted how Will Thomas, a very much middle-of-the-pack male swimmer, vaulted to the top of the ranking after he decided he was really a woman and started calling himself “Lia.” We pointed out how, in the Zippy Invitational he was not only utterly destroying the real women in the pool, but his times were in the middle of the pack for the male swimmers. We noted how the last place male swimmer in the 500-yard freestyle had a time 7.21 seconds faster than the first real female finisher in that race.

But, don’t take my word for it: Swimming World magazine ran the numbers in an article entitled “A Look At the Numbers and Times: No Denying the Advantages of Lia Thomas.”

Clearly, this new policy has little to do with science or fairness—and everything to do with the metastasizing right-wing panic against trans women. Instead of dealing with the occasionally messy work of including gender-diverse athletes in a binary sports infrastructure, the IOC seems to have decided that it’s more convenient simply not to try. That the global right has made trans women athletes into a fixation, a proxy for their much wider-ranging campaign to disenfranchise trans people, has proven to be a convenient cover for a return to the 20th century. It’s also only the latest example of the regressive gender politics that have defined the Olympics for their entire history.

Ahhh, it’s not really science but Mr Waters’ view of fairness, fairness for “trans women” rather than fairness to real women, which is his bugaboo, and what he calls “right-wing panic.”

Michael Waters, from his website.

Sports does not really care about sensible conservative or whacko leftist politics; sports simply measures, by various means, strength, speed, quickness, and other physical metrics. The Olympics motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter”, which is Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”, and there is absolutely no denying that, overall, males are faster, can jump higher, and are stronger than females. Through rigorous training, some women will be able to run faster, jump higher, and be stronger than most men, but when it comes to athletic competition the subject is not the males in the middle, but the top women’s performances versus the top men’s performances. As Mr Thomas so well proved, a mid-level male collegiate swimmer is going to outperform a top-level female swimmer. A simple look at the men’s records versus women’s records in track and field demonstrates the physical advantages men have.

The real panic is among our good friends on the left, who are adamant that men and women are equal. That can certainly be true under the law, and in some areas, we are seeing women’s achievements in things such as medical school admissions and collegiate admissions in general outpacing those of men. The top surgeons are heavily men, but as the surge of women in medical schools persists, the time and experience of women in medicine might change just who are at the top surgeons.

But physically? Sorry, Mr Waters, but biology will not be mocked. Not only are males, in general, taller, larger, and stronger than females, the structural differences between the hips of males, optimized for strength and speed in running, versus the hips of women, which have to have larger internal openings to permit babies to pass through, lead to real differences, differences which make a difference when it comes to sports and many other physical activities. The last player on the Washington Wizards team would absolutely dominate in the WNBA. 5’7″ “Spud” Webb once won the NBA dunk contest; very few WNBA players can dunk the ball.

Sexual dimorphism is a real thing, and it’s not subject to politics. Mr Waters actually knows this, but chooses to ignore it over politics. Girls really can’t be boys, and boys really can’t be girls, no matter how much a few mentally ill people think they can.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! I'm sure that he only crossed the border to build a better life for himself!

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Lexington Herald-Leader, now under the leadership of Executive Editor Jeremy Chisenhall, chose not, in two separate stories, to publish the mug shot of Jorge Luis Martinez Ulloa, 31, charged with:

  • one count of kidnapping a minor;
  • two counts of first-degree rape of a victim younger than 12;
  • two counts of first-degree sodomy of a victim younger than 12; and
  • two counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a victim younger than 12.

Fortunately, the Department of Homeland Security has no qualms about publishing photos of illegal immigrants apprehended for serious crimes!

Man accused of kidnapping, sexually abusing minor in Lexington has ICE detainer

By Christopher Leach | Monday, March 30, 2026 | 3:45 PM EDT

Court documents indicate Martinez Ulloa is not a U.S. citizen and was born in Mexico. No other information about his immigration status was available.

Perhaps reporter Christopher Leach didn’t have more information about Mr Martinez Ulloa’s immigration status, but Homeland Security’s tweet stated that he had entered the US at least four times during the Obama and Biden Administrations, and a fifth time at an unknown date.

Lexington police said they were dispatched to the 1300 block of Davenport Drive, in the Cardinal Valley neighborhood, for a juvenile assault victim. Martinez Ulloa was arrested and booked into the Fayette County Detention Center.

Davenport Drive, spelled Devenport on Google Maps, is a neighborhood of mixed single-family homes and smaller apartment buildings. Parts of the Cardinal Valley neighborhood are also known, colloquially, as Little Mexico.

Court documents say Martinez Ulloa grabbed the victim by her arm and neck, trapped her inside his apartment and raped her. The girl was a stranger to Martinez Ulloa and told officials the only way out of his apartment was through a window.

The victim was sent to a local hospital for treatment, police said.

Martinez Ulloa was arraigned in Fayette District Court Monday afternoon. He appeared virtually from the jail. Fayette District Judge Melissa Murphy left Martinez Ulloa’s bond unchanged at $100,000. A preliminary hearing in his case has been scheduled for April 7.

Mr Martinez Ulloa has not been convicted of anything, but it appears than simply being previously deported means nothing to him other than the annoyance of taking another trip north of the border.

Under KRS §510.040, the first degree rape of a child under 12 is a Class A felony, which, under KRS §532.020 carries a sentence of at least twenty and not more than fifty years, or possibly life in prison. Under KRS §510.070, the first degree sodomy of a child under 12 is a Class A felony as well.

If Mr Martinez is guilty of the crimes of which he has been accused, he should spend the rest of his miserable life in the worst prison the Commonwealth has. If the evidence against him is solid, his attorney, the Department of Public Advocacy, will undoubtedly seek some sort of lenient plea bargain; this must be rejected! If he is guilty, he should never see the light of day again as a free man.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!

Color me shocked that The Philadelphia Inquirer published the photo of an accused criminal. Technically, it isn’t a mugshot, so perhaps it’s allowed under a very narror interpretation of the newspaper’s stated mugshot policy. but I couldn’t find the newspaper’s Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — blurb, so I screen captured the image from the article itself. Since the photo caption states it was from a New Jersey state Supreme Court video, there isn’t a copyright issue.

Former South Jersey teacher charged with sexual assault began grooming student when he was 12, prosecutor alleges

Ashley Fisler was charged last week with sexually assaulting a former student at Orchard Valley Middle School in Washington Township.

by Melanie Burney | April Fool’s Day, 2026 | 3:33 PM EDT

A former Washington Township middle school teacher began grooming a student for a sexual relationship when he was 12 and abused him for years, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

The allegations against Ashley Fisler, who was charged last week with sexually assaulting a former student at Orchard Valley Middle School, were detailed during a detention hearing to determine whether she should be released pending trial. Superior Court Judge William Ziegler said he would issue a decision Thursday.

Note that Miss Fisler has been charged but not yet convicted. The newspaper stated that “Pre-conviction mugshots are inherently unfair, depicting suspects as criminals before guilt or innocence has been established.”

Fisler, who is no longer working as a teacher, is charged with six counts of sexual assault of a minor and one count each of endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct of a public servant.

“This was more than just six isolated acts of sex abuse against a minor,” said Kylie Finley, an assistant Gloucester County prosecutor. “This was a pattern of six years of grooming, manipulation, and abuse by this defendant as a middle school teacher against one of her active and former students.”

Miss Fisler, now 36, left the school system in 2023.

Teachers are all college educated, with at least a bachelor’s degree, and are normally pressured to be working toward their master’s as well. They really can’t be unaware of the scandal by Mary Kay Letourneau, and the fact that Mrs Letourneau spent years behind bars for it. Public schools have orientation lessons for all teachers, and inappropriate relationships are surely discussed. The news of Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in 2019 was national news, and Miss Fisler couldn’t have missed it. You just can’t expect this s(tuff) to stay hidden forever.

Well, if the allegations are true, she’s in a heap o’ trouble.