Tag Archives: #Transgender

Posted on by

Common sense and lawfare tend to be two diametrically opposed things.

I used to think that political liberalism encompassed some divergence of views. After all, they can’t all think exactly the same on everything, right? But the more I read the more I see a mental monolith, and it’s a monolith that verges on stupidity.

The Trump administration is investigating Smith College for admitting trans women. Could Bryn Mawr be next?

Bryn Mawr College, like Smith, accepts all individuals who identify as women. The Trump administration says that violates federal discrimination laws, but has not yet gone after Bryn Mawr.

by Susan Snyder | Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo 2026 | 4:52 PM EDT

President Donald Trump’s administration this week opened an investigation into Smith College, one of the oldest women’s colleges in the country, for admitting transgender women.

Both Bryn Mawr College and Moore College of Art & Design — women’s colleges in the Philadelphia area — also admit trans women, opening up questions about whether they could be among the next targets, though Moore already is weighing whether to go coed.

“The college remains focused on our mission and commitment to academic excellence,” Bryn Mawr said in a statement. “We continue to operate in compliance with all federal laws and regulations.”

Full disclosure: I did some concrete work at Bryn Mawr College, in 2004, though it was between semesters, with few people on campus.

Further down:

The 1,370-student Bryn Mawr on its website notes that it accepts all individuals who identify as women, including cisgender and trans women. The school also accepts “intersex people who do not identify as male, individuals assigned female at birth who have not taken medical or legal steps to identify as male, and individuals assigned female at birth who do not identify within the gender binary.”

Bryn Mawr clarified its enrollment practices regarding transgender women in 2015, noting that the school would accept transgender women and “intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application.”

Does that mean Bryn Mawr would have to retain individuals who identified as women at the time of application, but who later decided that they were really men? 🙂

Personally, I do not see the legal issue, unless there are males who applied and were denied because they are male; such men might have a potential discrimination complaint.

I could see a potential privacy issue, as was the case with Brayden Fleming, the male volleyball player calling himself “Blaire” and pretending to be a woman to play on the San José State women’s volleyball team, and who could “pass” well enough that both his teammates and opposing teams did not know he is male. His road trip roommate didn’t realize that he was male. But if Smith and Bryn Mawr colleges were open, and informed other students that a particular student was actually male, giving the other students the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wished to share a locker room or restroom with the transgender student, it’s difficult to see a legal problem.

Then again, we know how that would work out: any student who decided that no, she did not want to share a bathroom or locker room with a male student would herself be accused of transphobia, and disciplined, possibly to the extent of expulsion. Any student who protested the inclusion of men males in women’s only spaces would face all sorts of problems in Bryn Mawr, because the far-left leadership have decided, against all rationality and all science that boys really can be girls, and that it’s hateful to dispute that cockamamie notion.

So, the colleges have created their own problems, but had they decided that only real women could be admitted, they’d have faced problems under the previous Administration. Common sense and lawfare tend to be two diametrically opposed things.

Posted on by

A victory for common sense It shouldn't have taken so long

For our good friends on the left, it is an unwritten rule: not only must they be ‘progressive,’ and ‘woke,’ but they must take the furthest left position possible on any issues in any way related to sex, or they will be enabling MAGA and the evil reich-wing conservatives. Thus, beyond all science and reason, they have forced themselves to take the cockamamie position that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

Vermont is one of our most liberal states, having elected the avowed socialist Bernie Sanders to Congress for decades, but, sha-zamm! it seems that the Constitution applies to them as well:

Vermont pays $566K in damages, legal fees to Christian school it banned from all sports competitions for years

A settlement agreement following mediation was finalized Tuesday after the school was barred from athletics and academic competitions for two years

By Jackson Thompson, Fox News | Tuesday, April 28, 2026 | 7:43 PM EDT

State education agencies in Vermont have paid over $566,000 in damages and legal fees to a Christian school that was banned from all sports and academic competitions for two years after its girls’ basketball team refused to compete against a trans athlete in 2023.

Let me be more explicit than the Fox News story was: the girls’ basketball team refused to compete against a team with a boy claiming he was a girl on it.

A settlement agreement following mediation was finalized on Tuesday that awarded the plaintiffs, including the Mid Vermont Christian School and its law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the $566,000.

When the school took the issue to the courts, the state and its agencies didn’t fold.

ADF Senior Counsel Dave Cortman told Fox News Digital that he was shocked at how firmly the education authorities in Vermont wouldn’t back down from their sweeping sanction on the small Christian school.

“It’s been surprising how much the state has dug in their heels,” he said. “The arguments they’ve made… even saying your beliefs are wrong…

“Their message was, ‘in order for you to follow your religious beliefs, boys are boys, girls are girls, that would actually violate their nondiscrimination policies.’ So the irony of it was, they were discriminating against religious schools.”

We have noted, dozens of times, the cases of Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided he is really a girl and competed on the Penn women’s swim team, and Brayden Fleming, the man male pretending to be a woman playing on the San José State University’s women’s volleyball team. It’s simple: males and females are biologically different, in ways that make a difference when it comes to athletics, but our good friends on the left can’t bring themselves to admit that and still hold on to their beliefs that people can just change their ‘gender’ based on their feelings.

I suppose that the decisions of the public schools isn’t surprising given that 199 public schools in Vermont allow staff to hide student trans status from parents, though I will admit that I cannot see how a student, especially a boy trying to become a girl, could conceal such from his parents, unless they are blind, deaf, and dumb.

Well, the leftist leaders of Vermont’s public education system might not be blind or deaf, but they certainly are dumb.

Posted on by

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

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

The Olympics Is Repeating One of Its Worst Mistakes

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

Michael Waters | Holy Thursday, April 2, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Waters, from his website.

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

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

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

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

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
Posted on by

Transgender-Affirming Specialist Ignores Reality

The tweet from Slate simply said, “The GOP’s most dangerous new policy just forced my family out of our home. I’m afraid they’re not done with us yet,” with a stock image of two blond children putting suitcases into the back of a suburban mother’s SUV. Naturally, I wondered what policy of the evil, reich-wing Donald Trump was kicking them out: families losing their homes because an illegal immigrant father had been picked up and kicked out, or a now former government employee losing her job and no longer being able to live in a high-cost subdivision in northern Virginia. But no, that wasn’t what it was. Rather, some #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 (supposed) adult pissed off because she couldn’t ‘transition’ her son or daughter into another sex.

The GOP’s Anti-Trans Crusade Already Forced Me to Move My Family. I’m Still Not Sure We’re Safe.

We thought our new state would be a haven after the last one turned on us. But I know the signs, and they aren’t looking good.

By Kalen D. Zeiger | Tuesday, March 10, 2026 | 11:04 AM

In May of 2020, my family moved so I could attend a clinical mental health doctorate program at the University of Iowa. I remember being so excited about the program’s LGBTQ Counseling Clinic, where I would be the assistant director and where I would get to focus on providing much-needed therapeutic care for queer folks. It was the deciding factor for me on what program I ended up attending.

At that time, I would never have predicted that the same clinic that had drawn me to Iowa would no longer exist when my family would be forced to flee the state in 2025.

I first read the article on my tablet, loaded via the tweet, while still in bed early this morning, but, of course, I needed my desktop to be able to write about it. That’s when I found out that Slate had the article hidden behind the paywall for a non-first visit. Undeterred, I Google searched for it elsewhere, and found it here as well.

At the beginning of our Iowa adventure, my kids were 9 and 12, and the plan was to stay at least until our oldest graduated from high school in 2026, if not longer. A few years into our time in the Hawkeye State, my oldest child came to us because they wanted to start on puberty blockers, since they were trans, and wanted to delay bodily changes that didn’t match their gender. When my child first came out, I was worried that because I’m a trans clinician who works in gender-affirming mental health care, others would assume my child’s choices were influenced by me. I was very careful to make sure they knew that whether to pursue gender-affirming care was entirely their own choice. The most important thing was that they knew we loved them and that we would support whatever choice they made.

Really? Dr Zeiger claims that such was entirely “their” own choice, but one thing is clear: having a mother who “works in gender-affirming mental health care” doesn’t exactly lead to a parent telling a child the truth, that no amount of hormones or surgeries can actually change a boy into a girl or vice versa.

By early 2023, my 15-year-old was sure they wanted to start puberty blockers, so we followed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards to get them started, including getting a letter of support from a doctorate-level mental health clinician after a thorough evaluation. At first, my child felt relief and joy; they were glowing, and so happy that they could do something to slow the changes to their body that did not feel congruent with who they actually are. But that lightness would soon be crushed by a statewide ban on care for transgender minors.

Note that this was 2023, and while the author is blaming all of this on Donald Trump, he was not President at the time, and at the time, it appeared improbable that he’d ever be President again. Federal and state prosecutors were seeking some way, any way, to lock him up and keep him from ever running for President again. In 2023, Joe Biden was President and he and his woke staffers were pushing every possible means of supporting the cockamamie notion the girls could be boys and boys could be girls.

Kalen Zeiger, from Psychology Today.

The fact that children would be denied medically necessary, age-appropriate care did not matter to the fact that children would be denied medically necessary, age-appropriate care did not matter to the Iowa legislators who passed the ban. It did not matter to Iowa legislators that this ban didn’t change the fact that my child was trans—something I think they believe (or at least hope) they can control. It did not matter that this ban meant my child would have to wait three more years to access a well-researched, basic standard of care supported by multiple professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society, and more. It also did not matter that this ban means my child will have to undergo far more expensive and invasive procedures down the road than they would have if they had been able to stay on puberty blockers at 15. After years of unnecessary stress and pain, that child started gender-affirming care the week after they turned 18.” target=”_blank”>Iowa legislators who passed the ban. It did not matter to Iowa legislators that this ban didn’t change the fact that my child was trans—something I think they believe (or at least hope) they can control. It did not matter that this ban meant my child would have to wait three more years to access a well-researched, basic standard of care supported by multiple professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society, and more. It also did not matter that this ban means my child will have to undergo far more expensive and invasive procedures down the road than they would have if they had been able to stay on puberty blockers at 15. After years of unnecessary stress and pain, that child started gender-affirming care the week after they turned 18.

In the summer of 2025, we were packing our bags yet again. Less than a month after my child was finally able to access trans care, my two kids and I moved to Colorado. I had just spent the last five years completing a Ph.D. in Couple and Family Therapy and a Master of Arts in Educational Measurement and Statistics. My now-18-year-old, a summer baby, had one more year of high school left. Where originally we wanted to make sure they were not moved mid-high-school, we now desperately did not want them coming of age in the state whose legislature had just voted to roll back civil rights protections from trans people like them and myself, including the right to be free from discrimination when it comes to education, employment, housing, and existing in public.

There’s a lot more in the article, and I don’t want to quote it all, but note from that final paragraph, in which Dr Zeiger referred to rolling back civil rights protections from trans people “like them and myself.”

Dr Zeiger was very careful in her article to avoid any indications of whether she was male or female, whether her “partner” or “spouse” was male or female, and whether her child was biologically male or female, though it’s obvious from her professional photographs that the author was born female. I haven’t seen any photos of her now 18 or 19-year-old child, but if it is obvious that Dr Zeiger is biologically female, regardless of how she chooses to present herself, and the guy at the right is male, regardless of his clothing, hair, and earrings, one would hope that the author told her child that “they” would almost certainly be recognized as “their” biological sex rather than the sex “they” pretended to be.

Try a little experiment the next time you are out driving or walking around. When you see an adult 80 yards away, a person with his back turned to you and wearing just blue jeans and a shirt, can you tell if that person is male or female just from that? If your eyesight is good, of course you can, because males and females are built differently. Males are normally taller than females, but proportionally women have longer legs and shorter upper bodies than men. The ability to distinguish between sexes of their own species is something that every bird, every reptile, and every mammal has instinctively; only liberal humans have managed to ‘educate’ that ability out of themselves.

Henry Berg-Brousseau is seen with his politician mother Karen, father Bob, a marketing director, and sister Rachael, a rabbi. Photo from the Daily Mail. Click to enlarge.

We previously noted, in December of 2022, the suicide of “Henry” Berg-Brousseau, the daughter of Kentucky state Senator Karen Berg, who thought that she really was a man. She was given every opportunity, with a supportive father and quack physician mother, and apparently supportive friends.

But I included a photo of the Berg-Brousseau family. In it, “Henry” — I have been unable to find her real name — is shown, seemingly shorter than her mother and sister, and certainly shorter than her father, as well as significantly overweight. Were she an actual boy who grew up that way, “he’d” have been the last picked for a team in Phys Ed, and been dateless as high school girls, real girls, would have rejected “him” for more masculine guys. As an adult, she might somehow ‘pass’ as a male, if no one asked any questions, but she’d have been the least impressive of ‘guys’.

Dr Berg claimed that Miss Berg-Brousseau believed that she was at risk, I assume from violence, walking out in public, but, in the end, the person from whom she wasn’t safe was not evil tormenters, but from herself. Had she been an actual boy who grew up to look the way she looked, she’d have had to get used to the kinds of insults that all boys growing up not masculine enough hear. But Dr Berg wants to blame her daughter’s suicide on people who recognize that her “transgender son” was actually her daughter, and refused to lie about it.

The truth is simple: no matter that the Kinks sang that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, it’s simply not true. As “a Ph.D. in Couple and Family Therapy and a Master of Arts in Educational Measurement and Statistics,” Dr Zeiger ought to be able to recognize that, but as a female who thinks she’s male, she has subordinated reality to what she apparently wants. Normal people just don’t do that.

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.
Posted on by

That thing that never happens has happened again

We’re just a week from the mass murders by a mentally ill boy who thought he was a girl, yet here we go again. From the New York Post:

Trans dad Robert Dorgan shoots wife, 3 kids in horrid ‘family dispute’ at crowded RI hockey arena as players and fans are seen scrambling to safety

By Chris Nesi and Caitlin McCormack | Monday, February 16, 2026 | 11:46 PM EST

A twisted trans father shot his wife, three kids and a family friend in the stands at a high school hockey tournament in Rhode Island on Monday — sending the panicked crowd screaming and fleeing for the exits.

Two people were killed and three others are in critical condition at a hospital after the gunfire erupted at Lynch Arena in Pawtucket around 2:30 p.m., according to cops, who described the incident as a targeted family dispute.

The shooter, identified as 56-year-old Robert Dorgan — who also went by Roberta Esposito — died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Dorgan was the father of a senior at North Providence High School, one of the six schools participating in the co-op games, WPRI reported. He shot his son’s mother, their three children and a family friend who were all spectators at the game, according to reports.

Robert Dorgan, from Libs of TikTok, via the New York Post.

But don’t you dare think that being transgender, being a man male who thinks he’s a woman, is a mental illness, or you’re a h8er, a transphobe, a thoroughly mean person, and, of course, an evil reich-wing Donald Trump supporter!

And don’t you dare think that “Roberto Esposito,” pictured to the left, wasn’t obviously a woman, wasn’t the very flower of femineity. How could you ever doubt that he truly felt like a woman?

The Post continued to note that another man in the stands grabbed a gun away from Mr Dorgan, but “they” had a second weapon. Yes, the article used the plural pronoun.

The New York Times? Well, the Grey Lady, our nation’s most famous and respected newspaper, did cover the story, but simply said that a “motive for the shooting was not known, though it appeared to arise from a family dispute.” The newspaper stated further that the killer “went by two different names,” but did not report what those names were, nor the fact that the murderer was transgender. Way to bury the lede!

Why, it’s almost as though our nation’s foremost example if journalistic integrity wanted to hide the facts from it’s readers! I guess those things aren’t really News That’s Fit to Print!

The dead? That would be Mr Dorgan’s wife and one of his children. The survivors were reported to be in critical condition.

From the Post again:

A woman who was seen leaving the Pawtucket Police Department following the deadly rampage told reporters, “My father was the shooter” and claimed that he was plagued by “mental health issues.”

“He shot my family, and he’s dead now,” she said, adding that he was “very sick.”

There’s an old rag that New Yorkers buy the Times so people on the subway will think that’s what they are reading, when in actuality they’re using the Times to cover up the fact they’re reading the Post. Given the quality of reporting from the Grey Lady, perhaps they should use the Post to hide the fact that they’re reading the Times.

Posted on by

Now you know why I call it Journolism! ** Updated! 9:05 PM EST ** #FreedomOfThePress includes the right not to publish what you don't want to publish, but concealing uncomfortable facts hurts the media's reputation

In the wake of the roughly 300 layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been a lot of blame spread, both among the subscribers who quit for owner Jeff Bezos refusing to endorse Kamala Harris Emhoff in 2024, and the paper itself for it’s very liberal leanings. The Post managed to piss off both the conservatives who might have been willing to subscribe, and the liberals who cancelled their subscriptions. Mr Bezos, in trying to fix a long-ongoing problem, fouled up.

But let me be clear here: the Freedom of the Press includes the freedom not to publish something. That should be obvious: there are only so many pages a newspaper can print, though with digital publishing these days, those limits have expanded.

And now we see just what isn’t being published, when it doesn’t fit Teh Narrative. When the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in a small town in northeast British Columbia occurred, the Associated Press told us, at 8:59 AM EST, that the (alleged) killer was a “woman” and a “female suspect.” At 9:32 AM EST, CNN simply identified the killer as “they,” being careful to not use a pronoun to specify the killer’s sex. At 9:32 AM EST, The New York Times told us nothing about the shooter.

But, as early as 6:48 AM EST, Matt Van Swol was telling us on Twitter the news which was not politically correct, that the killer was a mentally ill boy who thought he was a girl. I checked the credentialed media, and found several instances of the media concealing the knowledge that the (alleged) killer was transgender.

The killer’s name is Jesse Van Rootselaar, though initially identified as Jesse Strang, 18 years old, and yes, he’s transgender.

I don’t get it. The credentialed media want to build trust in their accuracy, so why conceal information that they know will come out soon enough?

My 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. And now you know why I spell it that way.

Well, eventually even The New York Times had to admit what had previously been revealed, that young Mr Van Rootselaar was the killer, and that the “suspect” was born as biologically male and chose to identify as a female about six years ago. That acknowledgement was time-stamped at 2:45 PM EST, just three minutes short of eight hours after Mr Van Swol’s tweet. The Times also revealed that the “suspect” had quit school four years earlier, which would have meant he wasn’t in school since age 14.

From the Times at 3:19 PM EST:

“Police had attended that residence on a number of occasions over the last several years dealing with concerns of mental health with our suspect,” Dwayne McDonald, the deputy commissioner, said, referring to the home where the suspect’s mother and stepbrother were found dead. On one of those occasions, “firearms were seized.” The most recent police call to the residence was in the spring of last year.

So, the local police already knew that young Mr Van Rootselaar was just plain nuts. Isn’t being biologically one sex but believing you are the other one definition of just plain nuts?

Of course, the newspaper continued to use the feminine pronouns to refer to the killer, as did local officials, because for some stupid reason they think a guy calling himself a girl really is a girl; are the editors and writers at the Times just as nuts as Mr Van Rootselaar?

Yeah, I think that they are!

Posted on by

The left keep attacking Riley Gaines Barker for everything except her real argument The left are deathly afraid of discussing the real issue, that 'transgender women' are very different from real women

Judging from my Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — feed, the talking points memo has gone out: the left must attack Riley Gaines Barker, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who is now a vocal advocate for protecting women’s sports from men males who think they’re somehow women. It’s no surprise to me that the very lovely Amanda Marcotte had to join in; hat tip to Carol Marks of The Victory Girls for pointing out this article.

How Riley Gaines and the trans panic steal from horror films

Fake victims like Gaines evoke the little girls of “The Exorcist” and “The Conjuring”

By Amanda Marcotte | Monday, October 27, 2025 | 6:45 AM EDT

On paper, former swimmer Riley Gaines is a puzzling choice for MAGA’s appointed “victim” of trans people. Gaines has built an entire career on a single incident when she was a college swimmer, when she tied for fifth place during the 200-yard freestyle at the NCAA swimming championship in 2022.

As a senior at the University of Kentucky, she finished in the middle of the pack with Lia Thomas, who had drawn national attention for being trans. Logically, Gaines’s woe-is-me tale doesn’t make much sense as a moral outrage over trans women in sports. Four other swimmers outswam Thomas, which seems to be proof against conservative claims that trans women have an unbeatable advantage. Nevertheless, Gaines portrays the moment as when her “dreams” were “shattered,” but most people would hardly use such heavy language for the difference between tying for fifth place versus having that also-ran trophy by yourself.

As we note in our Stylebook, this site always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their proper names and pronouns, the names and pronouns which reflect their actual sex, not the gender they claim to be. Thus, the person who Miss Marcotte referred to as “Lia Thomas” is actually Will Thomas. However, as our Stylebook also specifies, we do not alter direct quotes from others.

We have previously noted how Mr Thomas completely destroyed the real female competitors in the pool before he learned to hold back a bit. He won one women’s NCAA championship, and then started bagging the other races.

Despite the underwhelming facts of her tale, Gaines turned her unmemorable swim meet into the entire foundation of her career as a MAGA figurehead. She never had the chops to be a professional swimmer, but she has done well as a professional victim, devoting her life not just to eradicating trans women from sports, but to opposing trans rights altogether. Gaines compares trans women to rapists and pedophiles, and claims that LGBTQ rights activists wish to “fully eradicate women as a whole.” She even calls trans people and their allies “demonic” and aligns queer rights with Satanism.

It is absolutely true that Mrs Barker finished only fifth, tying with Mr Thomas for the NCAA 200-yard freestyle championship in 2022, but it is also true that she has a good record in Southeastern Conference championships. I am especially impressed with her gold medal in the 200-yard butterfly; I’d guess that none of her critics could swim the butterfly stroke for even a single length of the pool, 50 yards, without having a stroke, or a heart attack, themselves.

So, OK, Mrs Barker was good, but not quite good enough to become a professional swimmer or make an Olympic team. It seems that most of her critics like to slam her for that, because they don’t really want to address her major point, that males and females are not alike, and are in fact very different in ways that make a difference in competitive athletics.

There are some mixed sex teams in sports in which the size, speed, quickness, endurance, and strength differences between males and females does not make a significant difference, such as rifle teams and curling. But only a fool doesn’t recognize that those differences do exist.

That, and not her fifth place trophy, is why Gaines has become the face of the anti-trans movement. Simply put, she looks the part. Every demon possession story requires a cherubic — and ideally blonde — little girl to be the face of the “innocence” threatened by Satanic forces. Think Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” Heather O’Rourke in “Poltergeist” or the family of all daughters in “The Conjuring.” Although Gaines, at 25, is a grown woman, she has a round face and a girlish demeanor, making her able to evoke the trope of the demon-terrorized child that has captured the Christian right’s imagination for decades. . . . .

Wittingly or not, Gaines seems to understand that her ability to play the “victim” of these supposedly demonic trans forces depends on presenting herself as girlish. She favors fluffy lace, pink outfits. Despite promoting her athleticism, she avoids being seen as strong and capable, preferring sports photos that emphasize how “cute” and “lil” her clothes are. Gaines and her MAGA audience love to talk about how petite she is; in June, she even posted a video of her much-taller husband measuring her to “prove” she’s only 5 feet 5 inches tall. Since female swimmers, like their male counterparts, tend to be tall, the video only served to make Gaines look childish and came at the expense of her athletic image. Even her purported ambition — to have a swimming trophy — can be seen as childlike, especially as she never pursued a post-collegiate career as a professional swimmer.

So, Miss Marcotte is attacking Mrs Barker for her physical appearance, but not even doing that very well. The first two links take us to Instagram files and pictures which do not support the claims the author made, while the measuring the height video was in response to a tweet from gymnast Simone Biles. Of course, our fearless feminist from Philadelphia hasn’t been shy about writing disparagingly concerning other women’s appearances before, so this is not new ground for her.

Toward the end of her article, Miss Marcotte tells us that:

On a rational level, her story doesn’t make sense. Trans people haven’t taken anything from her. And with her swimming days behind her, they certainly aren’t a danger to her now.

Well, that’s technically true, but it’s like saying that, on a rational level, Miss Marcotte’s continual advocacy for abortion rights doesn’t make sense, because she’s 48 years old now, and her potential child-bearing days behind her. We all know she’d never accept that argument! That Mrs Barker is fighting for other women is a concept thar she can’t seem to grasp.

Will “Lia” Thomas, 26, accepted the “Voice of Inspiration Award” at the 2025 Violet Visionary Awards in Los Angeles on Thursday night. (Alejandro Avila/OutKick). Can you pick out the 6’3″ male?

But Miss Marcotte and all of the others seem to flee from one question: are males and females, men and women, boys and girls different, different in ways that actually make a difference in sports? The author noted that Mrs Barker’s husband is “much taller,” which is something that adult men and women normally are. She also noted that “female swimmers, like their male counterparts, tend to be tall,” which is noting that, since adult males are normally several inches taller than adult females, they have a physical advantage. Sexual dimorphism is a real thing.

Will Thomas is 6’3″ tall.

Swimming is a sport in which strength, quickness, and endurance are key . . . and men, on the whole, are stronger, quicker, and can develop greater endurance than women. I know that such a point outrages our friends on the left, but, sorry, their argument is with God, or evolution, or Mother Nature, however they wish to put it.

Miss Marcotte made a great deal about Mrs Barker’s Christian beliefs, mocking them as much as she could, but she never addressed the real question.

The supporters of transgenderism want us to believe that #TransWomenAreWomen, but to make that claim they have to ignore the physical differences between males and females. If they acknowledge those differences, their entire worldview of transgenderism falls apart.

__________________________________
Related Articles:

Posted on by

Mikie Sherrill Hedberg believes you can’t handle the truth! The candidate will not address an issue she sees as a vote loser

Remember the kerfuffle over former Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff’s admission that she considered then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, but decided against it because he is openly homosexual? Mr Buttigied admitted to being “surprised” to read that.

The divergence comes as their party is grappling with its approach to diversity, as the Trump administration slashes through diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Democrats disagree about how much to emphasize such values after the GOP successfully painted the party as too “woke” — and now face new questions over how to field winning candidates.

Now The Philadelphia Inquirer is telling us how one candidate is handling that. The Editorial Board endorsed Representative Mikie Sherrill Hedberg (D-NJ) in her campaign for Governor of the Garden State, but now the newspaper is telling us not to worry, she’s #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, but she has to keep that on the down-low to get votes:

These parents wish Mikie Sherrill would defend their transgender kids. They understand why she doesn’t.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill has been quiet on transgender rights in the New Jersey governor’s race as Republican Jack Ciattarelli has spoken out against protections for trans youth.

by Aliya Schneider | Sunday, October 16, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

C.B. can’t even comprehend her transgender daughter being required to use the boys’ bathroom at her South Jersey school.

That’s OK, because most of us cannot comprehend how “C.B.” or any other rational human being could think that her son is actually a girl, or how the newspaper can use terms to pretend that he is a she.

“If you went into her classroom and someone said, ‘Pick out the trans kid out of these 25 kids,’ you would not be able to,” C.B. said. “You might very well get it wrong.”

So, “C.B.” is saying that her son can ‘pass’ as a girl

C.B., who asked to be identified by her initials to protect the privacy of her child, said she loves the Garden State. She has a “very Jersey family.”

But, like other parents of trans children, she’s considering packing her family’s bags depending on the results of the Nov. 4 election, and whether the next governor maintains the state’s LGBTQ+ friendly policies.

As opposed to getting her son mental help, to accept that he’s really a boy and learn how to be a male.

The stakes of the election are stark for C.B. and other parents. Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee for New Jersey governor, opposes state policies implemented under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy meant to protect transgender children. Ciattarelli says he would require schools to tell parents about their children’s gender identity and stop transgender girls (sic) from participating in girls’ sports. He also opposes gender-affirming care for minors and believes parents should be able to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ related topics in school.

Shocking! You mean that Mr Ciattarelli believes that public schools should not be able to conceal a child’s mental illness from his parents? You mean that the Republican candidate believes that parents should have the choice to opt their children out of lessons they consider to be immoral and contrary to their religious beliefs?

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee, has largely voted in support of transgender rights throughout her nearly seven-year legislative career. She was endorsed by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups as well as her friend U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D., Del.), the first openly transgender member of Congress. But Sherrill has not publicly defended trans rights when criticized by Ciattarelli and has declined to answer reporters’ questions on the matter.

Of course, “U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride” is actually Tim McBride, yet another male who thinks he’s a woman, whom the good people of the First State foolishly elected to Congress, but the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. would never tell you that, because you can’t handle the truth.

Reporter Aliya Schneider noted that former and future President Donald Trump attacked Mrs Emhoff for supporting the strange notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, and that Mr Ciattarelli is doing the same thing in his campaign.

Sherrill has not just ignored the attacks. She has avoided talking about the issue altogether.

The article continues, and it is pretty heavily biased in favor of ‘transgenderism,’ so don’t be surprised if you choose to follow the link and read more of it, but it all boils down to one thing: the ‘transgender’ lobby believe that Mrs Hedberg will closely toe their line, but just can’t say so, because she needs the votes. The Democratic candidate won’t address the issue at all, because doing something really radical like telling voters the truth about her beliefs is a vote loser. Perhaps, if she loses, she’ll admit the truth as Mrs Emhoff did in her silly book, but the sad part is that, if she wins, she’ll tell you the truth about her policies with state action.

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.

↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
Posted on by

That thing that never happens has happened again At least ten high school varsity teams have chosen to forfeit games to protest presence of a boy on a girls' volleyball team

We noted, on September 26th, that six schools had forfeited games against the Jurupa Valley High School’s girls’ varsity volleyball team because a mentally ill male, A B Hernandez, plays on the girls’ team. Fox News has just reported how much the real girls are sacrificing:

California girls’ volleyball team with trans player sees 10th match forfeited amid controversy

The team can clinch first place in its league on Wednesday

By Jackson Thompson | Wednesday, October 15, 2025 | 3:45 PM EDT

Jurupa Valley High School’s girls’ volleyball team in California has now seen at least 10 games on its 2025 schedule forfeited amid a national controversy involving one of its players, who is transgender.

Los Osos High School forfeited a tournament game against Jurupa Valley on Saturday, while Patriot High School forfeited its Monday varsity match, marking its second forfeit to JVHS this season. Patriot High School previously forfeited a Sept. 26 match to Jurupa Valley.

Maribel Munoz, the mother of Jurupa Valley player Alyssa McPherson, provided Fox News Digital a copy of a message sent by JVHS head coach Liana Manu, announcing that the varsity match against Patriot was forfeited. The JV and freshman games were still played.

So, the schools are still playing the sub-varsity games, the games in which young Mr Hernandez is not participating.

It appears that by using a male player on the girls’ team, Jurupa Valley is in position to win the league title. However, JVHS is playing without Hadeel Hazameh and Alyssa McPherson, real girls who are refusing to play while Mr Hernandez is on the team.

Two of Jurupa Valley’s senior players, McPherson and Hadeel Hazameh, stepped away from the team this season in protest of trans teammate AB Hernandez.

McPherson and Hazameh have also filed a lawsuit against the Jurupa Unified School District citing their experience playing and sharing a locker room with Hernandez the previous three seasons. McPherson’s older sister and former JVHS girls’ volleyball player Madison McPherson is the third plaintiff in that lawsuit.

So, Misses McPherson and Hazameh, both of whom are minors according to the lawsuit filed — the age of sexual consent in the Pyrite State is 18 — wound up playing and sharing a locker room with young Mr Hernandez, though obviously uncomfortably, in previous seasons. Here we have to give credit to Riley Gaines Barker, who has been leading the effort against allowing males to compete on women’s athletic teams, and the several colleges which forfeited against San José State University last collegiate volleyball season, for showing the way. Because none of the actual adults would do the right thing and protect women’s sports, it has been left to teenagers and young twenty-something athletes to sacrifice willingly to make the point.

But I keep wondering what young Mr Hernandez is doing. I get it: he really, really, really thinks he’s a girl. Yet, a volleyball team is supposed to be a team, and even if he thinks that Misses McPherson and Hazameh are being ridiculous in not accepting him as a girl, he has also cost his team at least ten opportunities to play against competition. The forfeits are wins for the team, but they are not wins that the team has earned. Brayden “Blaire” Fleming did the same thing for San José State University.

If Mr Hernandez really wants to be seen and thought of as a girl, why is he doing things to draw ever more attention to the fact that he’s male? He recently competed in and won the girls’ triple jump track competition by eight feet! He won races by margins which left the other girls in the dust. At least Will “Lia” Thomas had enough sense to, after he won an NCAA championship in one event, to pull back and let real women win the others. Mr Fleming kept his ‘transgender’ status a secret, and, to be honest, he could actually ‘pass’ as a girl, where Mr Thomas could not.

Can someone explain this stuff to me, because I guess that I’m just not smart enough to figure it out on my own. If the ‘transgendered’ really want to be seen as the sex they claim to be, why do things to point out that they really are not?