Tag Archives: #PoliticalCorrectness

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Some people just can’t tell the difference between comic books and reality

I devoured the Conan the Barbarian books when I was a teenager, starting out with the Lancer Books twelve volume edition. Robert E Howard wrote his original books between 1930 and 1936, and L Sprague deCamp, Lin Carter and Bjorn Nyberg added to it. Published in the 1960s and 70s, the men were strong and brave, while the hero bedded an assortment of nubile, slim but nevertheless voluptuous — how does that work — ladies after slaying countless forms.

Conan was a character which simply could not be left alone, and many authors used Conan as a character, through several publishers, during the 1980s and 90s. The difference? While there were plenty of helpless ladies to be bedded, there were also warrior women, women who could kick ass just as well as any man.

I also read plenty of comic books. In the 1960s, the female superheroines tended to have what I’d call ‘distance powers,’ able to beat the bad guys, but from a distance, not from fisticuffs. Supergirl and Wonder Woman were obvious examples of the latter, while the Invisible Woman might have been able to trip someone unseen — especially before Stan Lee had her discover that she could also create invisible force fields — and the Wasp and Scarlett Witch and Jean Grey worked their wonders from range.

Gradually, the superheroines gained the ability to match, and beat, male villains hand-to-hand. And in the CW Supergirl series, Supergirl beat her cousin Superman in a fair fight.

Well, I have come to the conclusion that today’s American left grew up reading the same things I did, but they did more than read them; they swallowed them whole, and came out believing that women were the physical equal or men in strength, speed, quickness, size, and endurance. Every girl is Supergirl; ever woman is Wonder Woman! So, heck, it’s perfectly normal and reasonable to have males and females competing against each other, and it’s always fair, right? Continue reading →

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Follow the science! If someone was out to destroy transgender acceptance, what would he be doing differently?

I have previously asked if someone was out to destroy transgender acceptance, what would he be doing differently from what Will Thomas, the male swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania who claims to be a woman named ‘Lia’ has done?

Now we have this, from the New York Post:

Trans competitor beats 13-year-old girl in NYC women’s skateboarding contest

By Snejana Farberov | Monday, June 27, 2022 | 8:51 AM EDT | Updated: 9:32 AM EDT

A 29-year-old male beat 13-year-old Shiloh Catori in a skateboarding contest, and the left think that’s perfectly OK.

A 29-year-old transgender woman beat a 13-year-old girl to take home the top prize in a skateboarding contest in New York City, reigniting the debate over whether new inclusivity pushes create an unfair advantage in women’s sports.

As per our Stylebook, we do not change the direct quotes of others, but there is no such thing as a “transgender woman”; there is only a mutilated male.

Ricci Tres, from Los Angeles, who was born a man but now identifies as a woman, won the women’s division of the Boardr Open street skateboarding competition and a $500 prize, with 13-year-old Shiloh Catori, from Florida, coming in second and taking a $250 prize.

The First Street Journal endeavors to use the correct names for those who claim to be ‘transgender,’ but an internet search for “Ricci Tres'” real name failed to find it. He shall be referred to as “Mr Tres” in the parts of this article which are not direct quotes from others. [Updated: June 29, 2022: His name is actually Richard Batres.]

Four of the six finalists were under the age of 17, with the youngest being 10-year-old Juri Iikura, who came in fifth. At 29, Tres was the oldest contestant.

Tres is 838 in the Boardr Global Rankings, compared to Catori’s 133 ranking.

The transgender athlete’s victory sparked an outrage on social media among critics, who blasted Boardr Open for allowing a much older competitor assigned male at birth to face off against biological females — many of them more than half her age.

Sadly, the Post’s stylebook apparently uses the silliness of the ‘transgender’ agenda. People are not “assigned” a sex at birth; they are recognized as being what their sex actually is.

It was discovered a hundred years ago that the sex of humans and other mammals was determined by the XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomal pair, and that the sex of an offspring was determined by whether the sperm cell which fertilized the egg carried an X or a Y chromosome. Thus, sex was determined at conception, and at no other time. We used to chuckle at stories that King Henry VIII was angered by his first two wives because they gave birth to female rather than male babies, at least as far as the ones who survived infancy. With modern knowledge, we knew it was actually Henry, and not Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn, who determined the sex of his children. Now, in the 21st century, political correctness demands we abandon scientific knowledge. The formulation “sex assigned at birth” is simply political propaganda to support transgenderism.

Skateboarder Taylor Silverman led the chorus of discontent, writing in an Instagram post: “Male wins women’s finals and money at Boardr Open NYC presented by DC today. My story is not unique in skateboarding.”

Silverman, who has been skateboarding for 11 years, previously complained on social media that she had lost to transgender rivals twice, including at the Redbull Cornerstone competition in May, when she missed out on $5,000 in prize money by coming in second.

“I deserved to place first, be acknowledged for my win, and get paid,” she wrote. “I reached out to Redbull and was ignored. I am sick of being bullied into silence.”

Silverman’s post from May 17 drew a mixed response, with some users fully supporting her stance, while others accusing her of being a sore loser, with one commenter writing: “lol or you could just … be better at skating & actually win the already fair contest?”

Mr Tres’ win is hardly something as big as Will Thomas’ victory in the NCAA nationals, but it’s simply one more piece of evidence that males are not the same as females, and in athletic contests in which size, speed, strength, quickness and endurance are factors, biological males will always have an advantage over females. Simple common sense — something apparently not quite as common as we like to think — has told us this all along, and the 50 year anniversary of Title IX, celebrated just four days ago, is being bitch-slapped by males claiming to be women competing against real women in sports. There’s some real irony that the American left are using ‘transgenderism’ to undermine the opportunities for real women.

I’ll ask it again: why would biological males who are convinced that they are really female, and who want other people to recognize them as women, undertake actions which prove just how different ‘transgender women’ are from real women?

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Killadelphia Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw ought to worry about her primary job first?

We already knew it was a bloody few days in the City of Brotherly Love, but the city didn’t update its figures on Friday, due, I suppose, to the Good Friday holiday. Now they have, and it’s ugly.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that there have been 140 homicides in the city as of 11:59 PM EDT on Easter Sunday, April 17th. That’s 11 more dead bodies since the previous Sunday, and 8 of them occurred since the end of Wednesday, April 13th, 8 murders in 4 days.

So, about what has Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw been worried?

Please join me in welcoming @Phillypolice‘s first Chief Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Officer, Ms. Leslie Marant! Ms. Marant’s position and office have been established to oversee diversity and inclusion efforts at every level of our organization. A lifelong Philadelphian, she …is uniquely qualified to succeed in this position. Having demonstrated tireless dedication and passion to the field of DEI work, she is the former Chief of Staff for the Universal Education Company, as well as the former Chief Council to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. She has earned a B.S. in Finance & HR Admin, and a Juris Doctor & Master of Laws, Trial Advocacy from @TempleUniv. We will benefit enormously from her experience as we continue to build and rebuild trust with the communities we serve. Welcome!

The Commissioner’s statement quoted is from three separate tweets. The image of the tweet on the right is a screenshot taken by me at 9:15 PM EDT on Monday; click on the image to take you to the original tweet.

“(D)iversity and inclusion”? It would seem that “diversity and inclusion” efforts have not been exactly successful in the city’s shootings and killings! Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw should worry about her primary job, bringing criminals to justice, first?

According to the city’s Shooting Victims database, there had been 49 people shot from Thursday through Sunday, 33 of them black, 12 listed as Hispanic white, and 4 as non-Hispanic white. That brings April’s total to 133 shooting victims, 104 of them non-Hispanic black, 12 Hispanic white, and 6 non-Hispanic white. No other racial/ethnic groups are listed as shooting victims.

Philadelphia’s population, according to the 2020 census, was only 38.3% non-Hispanic black, yet, thus far in April, they’ve been 78.20% of the shooting victims. Yet the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website had exactly one story on the shootings and killings this morning, and it was dated on Saturday, April 16th. The publisher, Lisa Hughes, the Executive Editor, Gabriel Escobar, and their minions don’t want to report at all on shootings and killings in minority communities, because that would be raaaaacist!

By this afternoon, the Inquirer’s Editorial Board weighed in:

50 shootings during the weekend warns of a deadly summer in Philly | Editorial

As summer approaches, and with the city once again on pace to record more than 500 homicides this year, officials must act now to stem the possibility of bloodshed later.

by The Editorial Board | Monday, April 18, 2022

When it comes to gun violence in Philadelphia, it’s long been clear that warm weather can have serious consequences.

A 2018 New York Times analysis found that days when the temperature exceeds 50 degrees have nearly 70% more shooting victims in our city than days when the weather is 49 or below. A similar trend, the Times found, plays out in other cities that also experience seasonal weather changes.

It should hardly have come as a surprise, then, that an unexpected stretch of sunny April weather during the holiday weekend also saw the number of incidents of gun violence tick up dramatically in the city. During a 24-hour stretch from Thursday to Friday, the city averaged a shooting an hour, and of the two dozen people who were shot, five were killed. All told, from Thursday to Sunday, the city saw a total of 50 shootings. During that four-day stretch, the high temperature in the city did not dip below 52 degrees.

The weather has been cool in the northeast on Monday, so maybe there won’t be as many shootings and killings, but the forecast is for a warming trend, to finally get back to spring normal temperatures.

The Editorial Board, a self-described “group of journalists who work separately from the newsroom to debate matters of public interest,” but who seem to have a strong commonality of #woke leftist views, continue with typical liberal pablum ideas: opening more swimming pools this summer, the School District offering in-person educational programming for all students over the summer, and a roster of summer programs.

While restoring programs and reopening pools are important steps for cooling tensions, the stakes and the scale of this crisis demand the same kind of bold intervention that we’ve seen from Mayor Jim Kenney on COVID-19. That means finding more ways to fight gun violence, not telling residents and colleagues that you’ve done all you can.

Apparently Commissioner outlaw believes that hiring a Chief Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Officer is the way to go! Yeah, that’ll sure calm down the gang-bangers!

Call me a cynic if you will, but somehow I’m not confident that the city’s wannabe gangsters are going to be all that interested in summer school.

If the city is once again unable to open all of its pools, then avoid hitting poorer neighborhoods with most of the closures. If library hours and programs cannot be fully staffed, find ways to support branches in our most vulnerable communities. If trash collection once again falls behind, prioritize neighborhoods where residents have smaller homes and fewer cars, leaving them without options to store and transport their waste. Hold the Police Department accountable, track and transparently evaluate anti-violence programs, and ensure the implementation of recommendations from the “100 Shooting Review.” Integrate violence prevention into everything the city does, as this board called for at the outset of the year.

Apparently to The Editorial Board, “poorer neighborhoods” is a synonym for black and Hispanic neighborhoods. As we have previously noted, the Board are very, very concerned about the racial disparity in the danger faced by Philadelphians, and blamed it on Philly being one of the most internally segregated cities in the country. Curiously enough, if you read their editorial carefully, you might come to the conclusion that the Board want white residents to feel as endangered as black residents do, sort of a socialist leveling down rather than raising up.

The fact is that there are a lot of poorer white Philadelphians as well, and they aren’t shooting each other at the same rate black city residents have done. However, neither the Editorial Board, nor the Mayor, nor the District Attorney, nor the Police Commissioner can admit that the homicide rate in Philadelphia is a racial problem more than an economic one. There is something in the culture of urban black communities that is leading the young men males of those communities to carry guns and blast away, but it is apparently wholly raaaaacist to point out that statistically obvious fact.

But you cannot address a problem if you are unwilling to acknowledge the problem, and the while liberals of Philadelphia are unwilling to face the problem because it is so very politically incorrect.

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The Washington Post makes itself ridiculous Democracy dies in political correctness

Seventy-six years after D-Day, British author J K Rowling enraged the left with her tweet suggesting that the word for “people who menstruate” is woman! Heaven forfend! Miss Rowling dared, dared! to suggest that menstruation is limited solely to women, that men can’t menstruate.

Yeah, I know: that’s pretty much what anyone would have said in the 20th century, and before, but last century’s people were just so unenlightened! Miss Rowling has been criticized as a TERF: trans-exclusionary radical feminist:

    So, first, a primer: TERF is an acronym meaning “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” While the term has become controversial over time, especially with its often hateful deployment on social media, it originally described a subgroup of feminists who believe that the interests of cisgender women (those who are born with vaginas) don’t necessarily intersect with those of transgender women (primarily those born with penises).

    To some feminists, that notion is obvious: the experience of having lived as male for any period of time matters. But some trans scholars and allies say that notion is in and of itself transphobic, since it means that trans women are somehow different from women, or that they’re not women at all.

And today we have the apparently very #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 Washington Post, kowtowing to modernism:

    Pregnant people at much higher risk of breakthrough covid, study shows

    By Amy Goldstein and Dan Keating | Thursday, March 31, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

    Pregnant people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus are nearly twice as likely to get covid-19 as those who are not pregnant, according to a new study that offers the broadest evidence to date of the odds of infections among vaccinated patients with different medical circumstances.

    The analysis, based on medical records of nearly 14 million U.S. patients since coronavirus immunization became available, found that pregnant people who are vaccinated have the greatest risk of developing covid among a dozen medical states, including being an organ transplant recipient and having cancer.

    The findings come on top of research showing that people who are pregnant or gave birth recently and became infected are especially prone to getting seriously ill from covid-19. And covid has been found to increase the risk of pregnancy complications, such as premature births.

There’s more at the original.

You know, I get it: the Post’s stylebook required “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women,” because it might just hurt some people’s precious little feelings, but I have to ask: how can the article authors, or the editors of the Post, expect readers to take this article, and the information it contains, seriously, when it was so obviously written unseriously? How many potential readers saw the headline, rolled their eyes, and just skipped it for something more intellectual, like the comics?

When I opened the article, there were 720 comments, and through as many as I skimmed, the vast, vast majority were commenting on the silliness of referring to “pregnant people”. One commenter, styling himself rwessel51, said, “I jumped from the headline straight to the comments.”

The information in the article was serious:

    The analysis found that the 110,000 pregnant individuals included in the study were 90 percent more likely to have been infected with coronavirus than the same number of people who were not pregnant. The next-highest risk — 80 percent greater — was among organ transplant recipients. The elevated risk among those two groups was higher than among patients with compromised immune systems, who had 60 percent greater odds of coronavirus infection.

People Women who were fully vaccinated either before or during their pregnancies had significantly less protection from contracting COVID-19, and more likely to have become seriously ill with the disease, than women who were not pregnant. That’s serious, and serious information, and much of it was just wasted because the Post descended into the silliness of political correctness.

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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The truth shall set you free . . . from your job

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

The First Street Journal has previously published five articles on Will Thomas, the male swimmer who claims to be female and swims for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s team under the name ‘Lia’ Thomas. With a lot of different stories published in the Washington Examiner, New York Post, and OutKick, about teammates critical of his participation on the team, I cautioned, “I have to wonder: has it always been the same (anonymous) teammate who has been the source for these stories? This has sort of jumped out at me as I have read these stories.”

Well, that question has been answered, surprisingly enough, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    16 Penn swimmers send letter saying teammate Lia Thomas has an unfair advantage

    The players’ names are not signed on the letter, but it appears to reveal a division in the team less than two weeks away from the Ivy League championship meet.

    by Ellie Rushing | Friday, February 4, 2022

    Sixteen members of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team have sent a letter to school and Ivy League officials speaking out against transgender teammate Lia Thomas’ participation in the upcoming championship meets. They also ask the university and league to not take legal action against the NCAA if it adopts a policy barring Thomas’ eligibility.

    The letter — penned by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, former Olympic swimmer and CEO of Champion Women, on behalf of 16 unnamed Penn swimmers and their families — appears to reveal a division in the team less than two weeks away from the Ivy League championship meet.

    The players question the fairness of Thomas’ participation, and say that she is taking “competitive opportunities” away from other members of the team.

    Thomas is a 22-year-old transgender woman who holds the fastest times of any female college swimmer in two events this season. She has been on gender hormone therapy for more than two years and has followed all NCAA eligibility requirements. Her times make her a favorite for the NCAA championship in March.

There’s more at the Inquirer original. Note that while our Stylebook specifies that the ‘transgendered’ will be referred to by their birth names and the pronouns appropriate to their biological sex, the Inquirer, and most of the credentialed media have chosen to refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their assumed names and preferred pronouns. We do not alter the direct quotations of others.

What we are seeing here is more than just the idea that ‘transgendered’ athletes are the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they actually are, but the self-censorship of people who fear the consequences of doing something radical like telling the truth. The Inquirer reported, three days earlier, that “several” team members issued a letter of support for Mr Thomas; the number of teammates who signed the letter was not revealed:

    Members of the Penn women’s swimming and diving team have issued a statement in support of their transgender teammate, Lia Thomas.

    “We want to express our full support for Lia in her transition,” the statement said. “We value her as a person, teammate, and friend. The sentiments put forward by an anonymous member of our team are not representative of the feelings, values, and opinions of the entire Penn team, composed of 39 women with diverse backgrounds.”

    This is the first official public message of support for Thomas from the Penn women’s swim team. An anonymous member of the team had previously criticized Thomas and the university’s decision to allow her to swim to the Washington Examiner, the Daily Mail, and Fox News.

    Tuesday’s statement was not signed, but a Penn representative told ESPN that it was from “several” swimmers.

There’s more at the original, but one thing is obvious: releasing the names of the “several” team members who signed the letter supporting Mr Thomas also reveals which teammates did not sign the letter. The Washington Post reported:

    A Penn spokesman told ESPN that Tuesday’s statement was sent on behalf of “several” Quakers swimmers. On Thursday, the parent of a Penn swimmer, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation against their daughter, said in a telephone interview that they estimated the letter supporting Thomas was sent on behalf of only “two or three” swimmers.

Back to the first article cited:

    “We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically,” the letter reads.

    “However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female. If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy, and NCAA Women’s Swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete,” they wrote.

Oddly enough, I have been unable to find a link to the text of the original letter. But here’s the money line:

    Penn’s women’s team roster lists 41 members. The 16 teammates did not identify themselves in the letter, stating that they “have been told that if we spoke out against her inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.”

In other words, sit down and shut up, or you’ll be punished for speaking out.

This is the tyranny of political correctness: if those sixteen teammates, at an Ivy League school, identify themselves, they’ll be punished. Though the letter does not say so, as far as I know, their grades could suffer as liberal professors might mark them down. Some of the slights that the left give to those who just aren’t #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 enough to think that girls can be boys and boys can be girls aren’t just slights, but career-trashers. Remember: the #woke pushed liberal columnist Bari Weiss out at The New York Times and politically liberal Stan Wischnowski out as executive editor at the Inquirer, because they just weren’t #woke enough.

Me? I’m retired, and have no career from which to be fired, so I can do something really radical like tell the truth.

I’ve yet to see it mentioned anywhere else, but when you have part of the team supporting Will Thomas and another part, at least 16 teammates out to 41, or 39%, opposed, Mr Thomas has become a locker room cancer. At least some of the team considered boycotting a January 8, 2022, meet against Dartmouth, but eventually decided against it. At least one team member has complained that Mr Thomas still has male genitalia and this is causing stress for some of the team.

If Will Thomas wants to claim he’s a woman, that’s his business. But when institutions like the University of Pennsylvania start enforcing his delusions, when the NCAA allows his beliefs to determine his athletic status, it starts to become other people’s business, as he is being allowed to exercise a competitive advantage over biological women.

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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“This can’t possibly be rewarding in any way. I can’t see how anyone could feel good about this.”

We have written previously about the University of Pennsylvania’s ‘transgender’ women’s swimmer, Will Thomas, who goes by the name “Lia.”[1]In accordance with The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, the ‘transgendered’ are referred to by their birth names, and using the honorifics and pronouns appropriate to their … Continue reading Now the New York Post has printed a story from an unnamed teammate of Mr Thomas’:

That part is incorrect: Mr Thomas, was according to the University of Pennsylvania’s athletic department’s swimming and diving 2018-19 team roster, a sophomore member of the men’s team. He was “Second-team All-Ivy in the 500 free, 1,000 free, and 1,650 free after reaching the ‘A’ final of the Ivy League Championships and finishing second overall in each of the events.” During the 2019-20 season, he “won the 500 free against Villanova (Nov. 15).” That is competitive, if not exactly dominant.

    The anonymous female swimmer gave an interview to the Washington Examiner on Sunday — a day after Thomas, 22, racked up two more wins at a meet against Ivy League rival Harvard University.

    She railed against the NCAA for not acknowledging Thomas had a distinct advantage and accused the board of governors of “not protecting women’s rights.”

    “Women are now third-class citizens,” the swimmer told the outlet.

    “Lia was not even close to being competitive as a man in the 50 and the 100 [freestyle events]. But just because Lia is biologically a man, [Lia] is just naturally better than many females in the 50 and the 100 or anything that [Lia] wasn’t good at as a man.”

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

Mr Thomas’ times have been gradually slowing, so much so that there have been suspicions that he has slowed down deliberately, still winning, but by much smaller margins.

But there’s an obvious question here: who is this unidentified female teammate? There are a couple dozen real women on the UPenn team, and it could have been any of them, but I’ve noticed a pattern here: the stories are all broken by the same two outlets, the Washington Examiner, a conservative website, and OutKick. OutKick said:

    While University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who spent three years at the Ivy League school swimming as a male, has been busy smashing female pool records, friction has been building within the team, according to a Penn female swimmer who said she feared for her ability to find employment after graduating from college for sharing her honest opinion about a transgender teammate. For that reason, OutKick is granting her anonymity to speak out.

Those are reasonable concerns for the teammate, but I have to wonder: has it always been the same teammate who has been the source for these stories? This has sort of jumped out at me as I have read these stories.

But one part of the New York Post story cited above really jumped out at me, a quote from this anonymous woman, who said, “This can’t possibly be rewarding in any way. I can’t see how anyone could feel good about this.”

That’s absolutely right: how does Mr Thomas, who grew up male, who competed athletically with men, doing well and occasionally winning at the collegiate level, justify in his own mind beating a bunch of real girls? How does Mr Thomas, in his tremendous concern to be accepted as a woman and not a male, justify competing in events which only serve to point out the differences between him and biological women? I have asked that second question before, and no one has been able to give me an answer.

References

References
↑1 In accordance with The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, the ‘transgendered’ are referred to by their birth names, and using the honorifics and pronouns appropriate to their biological sex, not their imagined “gender.” When using Twitter to publicize my stories, I have sometimes had to refer to him as ‘Lia’ to avoid getting banned for ‘deadnaming’ or ‘misgendering’.
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He feels like a woman

I do not know how many websites have, and publish, their own “stylebook,” but at The First Street Journal, I do. From that Stylebook:

    Those who claim to be transgender will be referred to with the honorific and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth; the site owner does not agree with the cockamamie notion that anyone can simply ‘identify’ with a sex which is not his own, nor that any medical ‘treatment’ or surgery can change a person’s natural sex; all that it can do is physically mutilate a person.

That is, of course, wholly at odds with the Associated Press Stylebook, which is used by many, though certainly not all, credentialed media sources, which specifies language which reinforces the notion that a person can define his ‘gender’ as something different from his biological sex, and that such choices can, should, and must be accepted by society as real.

And so we come to NBC News:

    Ivy League swimming champion becomes target of transphobic rhetoric

    Lia Thomas, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, has become the most recent target in the heated debate about trans women athletes.

    By Jo Yurcaba | Thursday, December 16, 2021 | 5:23 PM EST

    A swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania is the latest target in the culture-war debate over whether transgender girls and women should be allowed to participate on female sports teams.

    Lia Thomas, who came out as trans in 2019, set three school records and two national records at a meet this month.

    Since then, Thomas has faced criticism and verbal attacks from anti-trans groups, conservative media and, reportedly, even two teammates.

    Some of the headlines about Thomas’ wins said she “smashed” the records and continued her “dominant” season alongside pre-transition photos of her and using her previous name and male pronouns — practices known as deadnaming and misgendering.

As we have previously noted, Twitter bans “deadnaming” and “misgendering”, not allowing any discussion of whether the ‘transgendered’ really are the sex they claim to be rather than their biological sex — something The New York Times gave Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a ‘transgender’ activist who believes he is female, and goes by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy. space to claim actually promotes freedom of speech. I will confess to having difficulty with the notion that restricting speech somehow promotes freedom of speech. Were I to submit this article for publication to the Times — something of which I have no intention of doing — I would have to change all references to those deemed acceptable by their stylebook, and, in doing so, concede the argument that sex can be changed!

    Transgender advocates have condemned that coverage and some of the conversation about Thomas as transphobic. They said it mischaracterizes her victories to make it appear that transgender women are cheating just by being trans and implies that one trans woman winning means trans women generally are dominating women’s sports. They note that Thomas is competing within guidance issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

What I have pointed out is that Will Thomas and his swimming records, competing against biological women, prove that “trans women” are very different from real women. On Sunday, December 5th, Mr Thomas, won the 1,650 yard freestyle with a time of 15:59:71; the second-place finisher was his teammate Anna Sofia Kalandaze, who touched at 16:37:44 in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio. The difference between Mr Thomas’ and Miss Kalandaze’s times is 37.73 seconds.

Competitive swimming at the collegiate level involves races which are often won by fractions of a second. A victory of 37.73 seconds is extraordinary.

In the 500-yard freestyle final, Mr Thomas again defeated his teammate, Miss Kalandaze, who finished second, 4:34.06 to 4:48.99, a 14.93 second margin; Miss Kalandaze defeated the seventh-place finisher by 7.42 seconds, just half of the time she was behind Mr Thomas.

Mr Thomas time would have finished 15th in the men’s final, ahead of ten other male swimmers. The last place male swimmer in the 500 yard freestyle, Luke Scoboria of Bloomsburg University, finished at 4:42.78, 7.21 seconds ahead of Miss Kalandaze’s second-place time. His year of taking testosterone suppressants — whether he has undergone ‘sexual reassignment surgery’ is not something I have found in the published record — have obviously not done what the NCAA believe it would.

    Thomas’ critics have varying views. Some have used explicitly anti-transgender language and argue that trans women should be completely banned from women’s sports, while others argue that the NCAA’s policy regarding trans athletes’ participation isn’t strict enough.

    Thomas declined an interview with NBC News and has done only one recent interview, with the podcast SwimSwam. In that interview, she said she and her coaches expected that there would be “some measure of pushback” in response to her competing, but not “quite to the extent that it has blown up.”

    “I just don’t engage with it,” she said, regarding the criticism. “It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t, and that’s all I’ll say on that.”

Of course Mr Thomas does not wish to engage with it, because, regardless of how he feels about things, his swimming records point out the differences, shout out the differences, between males and females. I get it: he really wants to feel like a woman, but he just isn’t one. Even he has to wonder about all of this, because with every meet he swims, every record he breaks, he is demonstrating the differences between himself as a ‘trans woman,’ and real women.

The Daily Mail reported:

    ‘Usually everyone claps, everyone is yelling and cheering when someone wins a race. Lia touched the wall and it was just silent in there. When fellow Penn swimmer Anna Kalandadze finished second, the crowd erupted in applause.’

Simply put, regardless of what Jo Yurcaba says, regardless of what Bruce Jenner or Bradley Manning or Will Thomas believe, the crowd of ordinary people knew what had happened, knew what was going on, and knew that the winner was not a real female swimmer.

This is the part I simply do not understand: if Mr Thomas believes that he really is a woman, why is he doing things which make the differences between him and real women so apparent?

It is wholly politically incorrect to say that men and women are different, but I’m not exactly politically correct; men and women are different, and somehow, some way, every human society about which we have any knowledge knew about and understood those difference. Every bird, every reptile, and every mammal, can tell the difference between males and females of their own species; it’s necessary for survival. Some mammals, cats and dogs for instance, appear to be able to distinguish between human males and females. It is only now, among our 21st century liberals that that innate ability has been educated right out of them.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a ‘transgender’ activist who believes he is female, and goes by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy.
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Girls can’t be boys and boys can’t be girls

Will Thomas was, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s athletic department’s swimming and diving 2018-19 team roster, a sophomore member of the men’s team. He was “Second-team All-Ivy in the 500 free, 1,000 free, and 1,650 free after reaching the ‘A’ final of the Ivy League Championships and finishing second overall in each of the events.” The 2019-20 roster lists him as Lia Thomas, and states that he “Competed in four of Penn’s eight regular season events (as a male, and) won the 500 free against Villanova (Nov. 15).” The 2017-18 roster notes that he was “Ivy League Championships qualifier in 500 free (A final), 1000 free (A final), 1650 free (A final).”

Will Thomas, prior to ‘transitioning,’ from the Daily Mail.

Penn, an Ivy League school, erased Mr Thomas portrait from those rosters. For the 2021-22 season, he is now listed as Lia Thomas on the roster, complete with his portrait after ‘transitioning’. His individual biography page no longer lists his top times, or his past accomplishments on the men’s team, and simply notes that “All 2020-21 Ivy League winter sports were canceled on November 12 due to a nationwide outbreak of coronavirus COVID-19.”

To no one’s surprise, Mr Thomas, now claiming to be a female and competing against women, is setting the pool on fire. From the London Daily Mail:

‘It’s bringing people to tears’: SECOND UPenn swimmer speaks out against trans Lia Thomas competing for the women’s team and says the crowd was silent when she won most recent meet

  • An second anonymous female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has spoken out to say she and her teammates are upset by transgender teammate
  • Lia Thomas, 22, smashed three US swimming records at an Akron, Ohio contest last weekend 
  • Thomas also gave an interview to SwimSwam touting the fairness of inclusive but controversial IOC guidelines allowing transgender athletes to compete 
  • Thomas previously competed for the school’s men’s team for three years before joining the women’s team with her last men’s competition in November 2019 

By James Gordon | Published: 18:29 EST, 10 December 2021 | Updated: 21:33 EST, 10 December 2021

A second female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has aired her frustrations and fury as her transgender teammate Lia Thomas continues to smash records.

The entire team has been ‘strongly advised’ not to speak to the media and the second swimmer has been granted anonymity.

Nevertheless, the teammate stepped forward to tell how UPenn swimmers are ‘angry’ over what has been perceived as a ‘lack of fairness’ as Thomas smashes record after record in the pool.

On Sunday, December 5th, Mr Thomas, won the 1,650 meter freestyle with a time of 15:59:71; the second-place finisher was his teammate Anna Sofia Kalandaze, who touched at 16:37:44 in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio.

The difference between Mr Thomas’ and Miss Kalandaze’s times is 37.73 seconds.

‘Usually everyone claps, everyone is yelling and cheering when someone wins a race. Lia touched the wall and it was just silent in there. When fellow Penn swimmer Anna Kalandadze finished second, the crowd erupted in applause.’

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Waking up from wokeness. People can tell when leftism has degenerated into idiocy.

Translation: regardless of the current political correctness, which states that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, the crowd knew the truth.

What stings the swimmers the most is that the records are being set by a swimmer who didn’t even make the first-team when she was competing as a man in the All-Ivy league during the 2018-19 season.

However, as a woman, Thomas broke 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:34:06 last Friday at the Zippy meet. She raced to victory 14 seconds ahead of Kalandaze – the swimmer she beat by 38 seconds on Sunday.

And then on Saturday, she won the 200-yard freestyle in 1:41:93 – seven seconds ahead of her nearest rival, giving her the fastest female US time ever for that race too.

As per our Stylebook, The First Street Journal refers to those who claim to be transgender with the honorifics and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth, but we do not change the direct quotes of others.

The Daily Mail article refers to a second anonymous female athlete on the team speaking out; the first was quoted in this from Fox News:

“Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach [Mike Schnur] just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” the female Penn swimmer said during a phone interview.

“When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake,” she added.

Why anonymity? The first swimmer to speak out said that she feared for her ability to find employment after being graduated from college for sharing her opinion about a transgender teammate. I’m retired; I can say what I wish without having to worry about getting fired for it.

There’s a Twitter hashtag, #TransWomenAreWomen, but when I hear about and read about people like Mr Thomas, a man male who went through puberty as a male, who competed athletically as a male, all of whose experiences growing up were as a male, I am hearing about someone who wants so desperately to be female that he has gone through all sorts of medical, and I assume, surgical, treatments to try to become female, yet who is doing everything he can to prove to us that he isn’t female.

The crowd at the Zippy Invitational Event knew what was happening right in front of their eyes; they could see the differences between someone born male, competing against real women. Whatever the political beliefs of the spectators, of the coaches, and the other athletes are, common sense was smacking them right in the face.

We can feel sorry for those who are consumed with the idea that they are really the opposite sex from what their genes and their bodies say they are. But having sympathy for them does not and should not overcome reality. Will Thomas was conceived as male, he was born as male, he grew up as male, and he will always be a male.

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The internet is forever . . . and so is stupidity. Journolists attempt to control the language to influence people's thinking

As regular readers — both of them — of The First Street Journal know, I have a tendency to do screen captures of things I suspect might be deleted. As Travis Lyles, “the first official Instagram Editor at The Washington Post,” now knows, the internet is forever.

    Washington Post adds ‘pregnant individuals’ to style guide

    by Luke Gentile, Social Media Producer | October 1, 2021 | 4:51 PM

    When referring to pregnancy, the Washington Post will strive to be more inclusive and use the term “pregnant individuals,” according to a Twitter post that has since been made private by the publication’s Instagram editor.

    “While biology dictates who can become pregnant, it does not always reflect gender identity,” the style manual reads. “If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and nonbinary.”

    However, writers can’t use “pregnant individual” as a blanket term, as that would be at the expense of women who are already a marginalized group, according to the style guide.

    “If you are dealing with a situation in which you know the people identify as women , then you can appropriately use the phrase pregnant woman or pregnant women,” the directive stated. “In other situations, to be more inclusive, use pregnant women and other pregnant individuals.”

The Washington Examiner then included the screenshot of Mr Lyles Instagram post:

Washington Examiner screen capture of Travis Lyles’ Instagram post. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original.

So, what is the Washington Examiner? Originally a tabloid-sized daily in the nation’s capital, now a weekly publication and conservative website, it has been around for sixteen years now. Like The Washington Times, it originally hoped to supplant the post, but never did. Wikipedia has questioned its journalism, but at least here, Luke Gentile, the site’s social media producer, had the documentation.

Also see: Abigail Shrier, via Bari Weiss: Top Trans Doctors Blow the Whistle on ‘Sloppy’ Care

Conservatives routinely mock what 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 have been using as politically correct terminology, but it’s more than just political correctness at work here. It is a leftist attempt to normalize transgenderism, to normalize the cockamamie notion that, in the words of the Kinks, girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

We have previously noted how the left have been trying this, even altering a quote from liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the ACLU having to apologize for such obvious stupidity.

Even Mr Lyles recognized the biology, saying, “While biology dictates who can become pregnant, it does not always reflect gender identity,” a statement which attempts to decouple the as-long-as-we-have-had-language associations between man and male, woman and female. The control of language is the control of ideas, something the left well know, and something we must resist to preserve the common sense of millennia of known human language and history. The left are attempting to prey on conservatives’ sense of courtesy against us, to get conservatives, and everyone else, used to the idea of transgenderism as somehow being normal and acceptable, as a way to undermine our thinking and our ideology.

It’s simple: it is better to be discourteous than suborned.

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. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.