Tag Archives: #PoliticalCorrectness

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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.
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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader hides a mugshot

We have often mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy that the Lexington Herald-Leader is obligated to follow. Of course, the Herald-Leader did not publish the mugshot of the defendant in the following story, despite having published several recently, all of white criminal suspects.

    Massive bond set for man accused of killing Richmond couple. Not guilty plea entered

    By Rayleigh Deaton | August 9, 2021 | 11:58 AM EDT

    A $5 million bond has been set for the man charged with two counts of murder in the slayings of a well-known Richmond couple.

    At an arraignment Monday, a plea of not guilty was entered on behalf of Thomas Birl, 51, who is accused of killing Christopher and Gracie Hager. Birl was also charged with arson, evidence tampering and receiving stolen property.

    Birl allegedly shot and killed the Hagers outside of a duplex they owned in Richmond, according to police. Birl was staying with his girlfriend. After the shooting, Birl set the duplex on fire and jumped out of a bedroom window before being arrested, according to court records.

What does the sentence, “Birl was staying with his girlfriend,” mean? Does it mean that he was staying at the apartment building owned by the Hagers? Perhaps Miss Deaton will update the article to fix that.

This has been a story that the newspaper has been all over:

But, all over it or not, the newspaper declined to print the mugshot of the accused, even though it has been freely broadcast all over the area by the local media, by Channel 18, WLEX-TV, and Channel 27, WKYT-TV, among others. Of course, The First Street Journal, which believes in the public’s right to know, does publish mugshots; they are a matter of the public record.

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Political correctness obscures the history of a brave black frontiersman

As we were moving from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to our small farm in the Bluegrass State, our 624 mile trip took us down Interstate 68 in Maryland. Along that most scenic of Interstate highways, the Old Line State maintains a few elevation signs near the tops of mountains, like Keyser’s Ridge at 2,880 feet, and Meadow Mountain, the elevation of which I do not remember. They were interesting, in passing, but not so interesting that I felt the need to research them.

Negro Mountain sign on I-68 in Maryland; the sign has been removed,

But there was one I did research, because of its seemingly unusual name: Negro Mountain. From The Baltimore Sun:

    The great divide: Negro Mountain in Maryland and Pennsylvania retains its name despite controversy

    October 3, 2020 | 3:01 AM EDT

    PITTSBURGH — An Allegheny Mountain ridge stretching some 30 miles from the Casselman River in southern Somerset County to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland has been the focus of controversy as attempts continue to change a name dating to the French and Indian War.

    The name in question: Negro Mountain.

    The name has been used consistently at least since 1841, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Negro Ridge was cited in the Pennsylvania Senate Journal in 1842.

    “If a name is offensive to people — remove it,” said James Saku, a geography professor and coordinator of African American Studies at Frostburg State University in Maryland, located about 20 miles east of the site.

There’s more at the original, but I have to ask: why is the word that the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, used to refer to his race, offensive?

Why was the mountain so named? The most widely accepted, but still not proven, story is that a free black man believed to have been named Nemesis, or possibly Goliath, the “body servant” of Col. Thomas Cresap, was killed in 1756 in a fierce battle with Indians during the French and Indian War.

    Cresap, an English-born frontiersman and land speculator in Maryland and Pennsylvania, named the mountain in honor of Nemesis’ race, according to an account from the Western Maryland Historic Library, part of the Western Maryland Regional Library in Hagerstown.

    That account also was published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette on June 17, 1756. Another account offers a different version, saying the man died while fighting with a Capt. Friend.

Lynn Bowman, an adjunct associate professor of English and speech at Allegany College of Maryland, has a darker version. She claimed that the west side of the mountain there was an area called [culturally inappropriate slang term derived from Negro] Hollow where black people were lynched, though that would seem to post-date the name of the mountain.

Well, who can know, but it wouldn’t have made much sense to name the mountain for Nemesis’ race if the second account is the true one.

But one thing is certain: I would never have heard of Nemesis, or Goliath if that was what he was called, had the mountain been named Nemesis Mountain; it would have held no interest to me. I also did not know that there were free black men on the frontier at the time; now, I do.

Alas Political correctness has struck!

    Negro Mountain signs ‘part of history’

    By Teresa McMinn | November 3, 2019

    CUMBERLAND — Kenneth Lloyd wants to buy the Negro Mountain signs, which disappeared from Garrett County roads earlier this year, and install them in his front yard.

    Negro Mountain occupies a 30-mile stretch of the Alleghenies from Deep Creek Lake north to the Casselman River in Pennsylvania.

    The ridge in Garrett County reaches 3,075 feet at its peak, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, marks the highest point in the state.

    The Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration earlier this year removed four Negro Mountain signs — two from Interstate 68 and two from U.S. Alternate Route 40.

    “I’m highly upset,” Lloyd, a Philadelphia native who now lives in Grantsville, said of the missing signs.

    “That’s a part of the history of this country,” said Lloyd, who served in the U.S. Marines from 1979 to 1986 and now works as a truck driver. “Learn from it.”

    According to Lora Rakowski, acting director of the state highway agency’s office of communications, the removal of the signs cost $212 in staff time.

    “We know this issue involves an important piece of local history,” she said via email. “We also know that some people feel the signage was inappropriate.”

There is some dispute about the man’s name; it was not given in the contemporaneous stories. What is given is that he was a free black man, a frontiersman, who fought and died on that mountain. But his deeds, even if perhaps somewhat legendary, honor him, but, due to the political correctness of the #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, fewer people will know of it.

And so the signs are gone. There will be no future travelers on I-68 in Garrett County, Maryland, who will see the odd sign, and decide to Google search for it, and what little remains of Nemesis’ memory will fade away.

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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Journolism: We publish what the Lexington Herald-Leader will not.

It has become somewhat of a passion with me to provide the information the Lexington Herald-Leader will not. We have noted the McClatchy Company’s Mugshot Policy and how the local newspaper has honored it by declining to publish mugshots of non-white criminal suspects but doing so when the accused are white. And we noted Robert Stacy McCain’s point that journalists used to refer to the “public’s right to know,” but that such has been subjugated to political correctness, and to what the Sacramento Bee called “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

Mr McCain noted last Saturday that the media were, once again, seeking to avoid perpetuating stereotypes.

You might think that when 13 people are shot in downtown Austin, and the gunman is still at large, that it would be a public service to describe this murderous maniac. But you’re not “woke” enough:

Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The Austin American-Statesman is not including the description as it is too vague at this time to be useful in identifying the shooter and such publication could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes and potentially put innocent individuals at risk.

Oh, if it was a right-wing white supremacist Trump voter who had committed this atrocity, you bet the media would have no qualms identifying the suspect, “perpetuating stereotypes” or not. Because the “woke” media have made themselves utterly useless as a source of facts, we must turn to Breitbart for the relevant information:

A statement from the Austin Police Department states . . . “It is unknown if there is one, or multiple suspects involved. There is one suspect described as a black male, with dread locks, wearing a black shirt and a skinny build.” . . . The shooting follows massive cuts in police funding by the Austin City Council. The council cut $150 million from the police budget . . .

Is it any wonder why people hate the “fake news” media?

The Austin American-Statesman is not a McClatchy newspaper. The Herald-Leader is:

2 more suspects arrested after death of Lexington man who was shot, set on fire

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 14, 2021 | 11:55 AM EDT | Updated 4:11 PM EDT

Two more people have been charged in connection with a Lexington homicide after the victim’s body was set on fire in a barn, according to court records.

Martae Laron Shanks and Autumn Owens, both residents in the building where 38-year-old Lazarus Parker was allegedly shot and killed, have been charged with arson, abusing a corpse and criminal mischief, according to an indictment from a Fayette County grand jury.

The grand jury alleged that Shanks and Owens either intentionally started the fire or tried to help with the fire by purchasing gasoline in Fayette County and taking it to Bourbon County to burn Parker’s body.

Shanks and Owens were both arrested in Scott County and then transferred to the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center last week, according to jail records.

Cecil T Russell (Fayette County Detention Center)

Cecil T. Russell, a co-defendant with Shanks and Owens in the case, was previously charged with murder. Russell was charged with killing Parker after a “cooperating witness” told investigators she heard Russell and Parker get into an argument before multiple gunshots rang out and someone screamed, according to an arrest warrant.

Cecil Russell’s mugshot was not published in the Herald-Leader, but I was able to find it in an Associated Press story published by WVLT-TV. The First Street Journal is dedicated to your right to know, and thus we reproduce it here.

Martae Shanks (Fayette County Detention Center)

More, I was able to open account with the Fayette County Detention Center, and get access to mugshots there, thus getting the mugshot of Mr Shanks. There are actually three mugshots of Mr Shanks in the records, dated October 16, 2015, March 4, 2021, and June 9, 2021, so it would seem that he is not unfamiliar with the jail. The record lists only the current offenses with which he is charged.

There were two mugshots for Autumn Owens, one dated March 4, 2021, and the current one June 10, 2021. It’s interesting that both of her bookings came concomitantly with Mr Shanks. As with Mr Shanks, only her current charges are listed on the jail website.

Autumn Owens

Is there something wrong with a mid-sized newspaper, part of a national newspaper chain, subjugating the public’s right to know to political correctness? I think that there is, and that’s why this website goes ahead and finds and published these mugshots. As for the claim that this “perpetuates stereotypes,” please note that one of the three suspects here is white, and that, in my previous post with mugshots, one of the convicted criminals was white, and one was black.[1]I confess: I had originally written that post with the black offender’s mugshot first, and the white offender’s second. Since Twitter tends to pick up the first photo in an article, I … Continue reading

A further note: the Lexington homicide investigations page has not, as of this publication, been updated since May 9th. We had previously noted this, and there have been three additional homicides in the city since that date. Someone needs to start doing his job.

Mr McCain was correct, and the credentialed media, decades ago, were correct: the public does have a right to know these things. The question is: why so small, private websites like Mr McCain’s or mine have to be the ones to

References

References
↑1 I confess: I had originally written that post with the black offender’s mugshot first, and the white offender’s second. Since Twitter tends to pick up the first photo in an article, I switched the order, so that the tweet of the article would show the white offender.