Tag Archives: #Transgender

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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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The Philadelphia Inquirer props up transgender swimmer Will Thomas

I was surprised to see that The Philadelphia Inquirer allowed reader comments on this article. Since it is, supposedly, a sports article, and the Inquirer didn’t close sports articles to comments when they did so on everything else, maybe an editor hasn’t figured it out yet. As I start this article, at 9:10 AM, there are ten comments up, including two of mine; I wonder how long that will last.

    Lia Thomas swims on for Penn amid controversy

    Lia Thomas competed at home for last time in her Penn swimming career.

    by Scott Lauber | Saturday, January 8, 2022

    Penn swimmer Lia Thomas waits before competing in the 500m free race during a meet at UPenn’s Sheerr Pool in Philadelphia on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. Thomas is a transgender athlete who is among the nation’s top swimmers in her events. Photo by Heather Khalifa, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

    In the final home meet of her college career Saturday, Penn swimmer Lia Thomas won two freestyle races and continued along a path to the NCAA championships in March.

    And that would have been the end of the story except for this: Thomas is a transgender woman who is defeating most of her competition.

    So, as Thomas swung her right arm and touched the wall 1.47 seconds before Penn teammate Anna Kalandadze to win the 500-yard freestyle in a tri-meet against Yale and Dartmouth (Yale won the team competition), two female protesters held a “Stand Up 4 Women” sign on the sidewalk on Walnut Street and shouted about an unfair competitive advantage and a tilted playing field – or in this case, Sheerr Pool.

I do not normally like to include photos from the Inquirer, over plagiarism and copyright points, but this one falls under obvious Fair Use guidelines, in that it illustrates the point: does this swimmer look like a woman to you?

There are three other photos of the swimmer in the Inquirer article. The first is mostly unrevealing, but the second and the third show Will Thomas — The First Street Journal always refers to the transgendered by their real names and biologically appropriate pronouns — next to the women in the UPenn swim team, and the differences are obvious; Stevie Wonder could see that he isn’t a woman.

I did have to craft my two comments to not refer to Mr Thomas by his real first name or use the real gender pronoun to escape probable deletion. I asked:

    Did Thomas purposely drag out times to win, but not by so much? In the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio, the one which attracted the greatest attention due to the staggering difference in times, Thomas won the 500- yard freestyle event in 4:34.06 to 4:48.99 for second-place finisher Anna Kalandaze, a 14.93 second margin. 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 Kalandaze’s second-place time.

For someone used to writing in a more formal style, that paragraph is painful, as is my second comment:

    Several articles have noted that Thomas’ wins have been met with crowd silence, while the second-place touches of cis-women swimmers have been greeted with loud cheers. It may be politically correct to assert that the transgendered are the sex they claim to be, but, at least in the natatorium, the crowds appear to see it differently.

    I note that Scott Lauber, the article author, was very consistent in using the name “Lia” and the feminine pronouns to refer to Thomas. I know, I know: that’s the Associated Press’, and the Inquirer’s, stylebook, but it’s a subtle attempt to slant the debate in the politically correct direction.

Doing such is the telling of a deliberate lie — and Mr Lauber knows full well that Mr Thomas isn’t a real woman, but in a newsroom full 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 he can’t say anything unless he has another job lined up — to push the politically correct notion of gender transition. Every bird, every mammal, and every reptile, can distinguish between males and females of their own species, but somehow, today’s left have educated that ability right out of themselves.

I am shocked that the Inquirer is even allowing such a discussion; none of the readers comments that exist as of the time of this writing accept the notion that Mr Thomas is a woman, and everyone sees the basic unfairness of allowing someone who went completely through puberty, and was fully developed as a male, to just decide he’s female and compete against female athletes in sex-segregated sports.

That’s just basic common sense, but common sense is in very short supply when it comes to the left and their acceptance that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

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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A couple of updates

We have previously reported on the arrests of three men for the murder of Mykel Waide in Lexington. However, it seems that the Commonwealth’s Attorney was unable to present sufficient evidence to get the grand jury to indict any of the three men accused of the killing:

    Lexington men no longer face murder charges in death of former Tates Creek student

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Monday, December 27, 2021 | 3:50 PM EST

    Three Lexington men are no longer facing murder charges in the death of a college student after a grand jury declined to indict two of them and prosecutors dropped the charge for the third.

    Antwone Davenport, Tayte Patton and Antonio Turner had all been charged with Mykel Waide’s death. Waide, who was 18 when he was shot and killed in August 2020, was set to start school at the University of Louisville the same week he died. He was also a former basketball player at Tates Creek High School.

    “A grand jury dismissal is without prejudice, meaning if new and or additional evidence is found the charges may be resubmitted to the grand jury for indictment,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn said. “Our office considers this to be an open case and those responsible for killing Mykel Waide will be held accountable.”

There’s more at the original.

We have also reported on the University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Swimming and Diving Team’s Will Thomas, a male who believes he’s female, and has been allowed to compete on the women’s team after having taken testosterone suppressants for a year. It seems that the real women on the women’s team considered a boycott:

    Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’ teammates considered boycotting final meet in protest

    By Yaron Steinbuch | Wednesday, December 29, 2021 | 1:49 PM EST | Updated: 3:42 PM EST

    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.

    A group of UPenn swimmers were so upset by transgender athlete Lia Thomas’ advantages that they mulled boycotting their final home meet — but decided not to for fear they’d be banned from the Ivy League championship, according to a report.

    Thomas, 22, who has smashed several records at the University of Pennsylvania this season, has sparked outrage for being eligible under NCAA rules to swim in women’s collegiate events after taking one year of testosterone suppressants.

    A source close to the team of 41 women who considered the boycott told the Daily Mail that “they’ve been ignored by both Penn and the NCAA.”

    The source told the outlet that “there is a feeling among some of the girls that they should make some sort of statement, seize the opportunity while they have a spotlight on them to make their feelings about the issue known.”

However, in the end, they athletes decided against the boycott, because they viewed it as likely to end their ability to participate in the Ivy League championships in February.

    Another source told the Daily Mail that Thomas will likely blow away the upcoming competition.

    “It’ll be like the last couple meets. Lia will finish and nobody will give a s—. Then when the first biological female finishes, there will be a huge eruption of applause,” the source said.

Of course, the women on the team all have to worry about their futures, and whether they’ll be blacklisted for being “transphobic.” They could get kicked off the team, or even kicked out of school, because even in an Ivy League school, where everybody is supposed to be oh-so-smart, they can’t tell the difference between males and females . . . or if they can, they aren’t allowed to tell the truth about it.

But while the real women on the team have to keep quiet, it seems as though the spectators have made their views known, with their silence as Mr Thomas wins his races. The common people, it seems, have some common sense.

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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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And what could have happened had the school district done otherwise?

The idiocy of ‘transgenderism’ strikes again:

Missouri school district on the hook for $4 million for not letting transgender student use desired restroom

by Adam Sabes | Wednesday, December 15, 2021 | 9:52 PM

A Missouri school district has been ordered to pay a former student $4 million after a jury ruled that the district discriminated against a transgender student by not allowing him to use the boys’ restroom.

A jury in Jackson County, Missouri ruled on Monday that Blue Springs School District discriminated against a transgender student by not letting him use the boys’ restroom or locker rooms at several schools, including the middle school and the Freshman Center.

In 2014, the family of RJ Appleberry, the student, filed a lawsuit against the Blue Springs School District after the district allegedly blocked him from using the boys’ bathroom and locker room, according to Fox 4 Kansas City.

The article states that the student transitioned from female to male at the age of nine years old.

According to the lawsuit, after amending his birth certificate in 2014, he was still denied access to the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms at several schools, including Delta Woods Middle School and the Freshman Center.

In total, the jury awarded $175,000 to the former student in compensatory damages in addition to $4 million in punitive damages, and the plaintiff has also requested that the school district cover the attorney fees as well.

A spokesperson for the Blue Springs School District said that they disagree with the verdict and will be “seeking appropriate relief from the trial court and court of appeals if necessary.”

There’s more at the original.

Miss Appleberry was a minor, when her parents and she filed the lawsuit, and the obvious question is: had Miss Appleberry had sexual mutilation procedures sex reassignment surgery performed at the time? Missouri has seen legislation which would make such illegal on minors, but it is not clear that such would have been prohibited when she began her ‘transition’ nine years ago. The question that no one seems willing to ask is: what are the dangers of allowing someone with female genitals into the bathrooms and locker rooms full of hormone-riddled real teenaged boys? We already know what happened when the Loudoun County public schools allowed a boy who sometimes wore a skirt to freely use the girls’ bathrooms. There is a risk of sexual assault!

The Blue Springs School District would have been equally liable if Miss Appleberry had been allowed to use the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms if some real boy decided that the chance to see, and perhaps use, some female genitals in such settings. That such would have constituted rape on the part of the assailant would not relieve the school district of the liability of allowing such a set up to occur.

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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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Hold them accountable! The Loudoun County school officials who covered up a rape all need to go to jail

I had actually ignored this story for awhile, figuring that Robert Stacy McCain would include it in his ‘Violence Against Women’ series, but, alas! he’s been working on other things. From Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion:

“Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Us?”: Angry Loudoun County Students Stage Walk Outs Over Sexual Assaults in Their Schools

Every student that participated in today’s walkouts should take their activism directly to the next school board meeting and demand answers and mass resignations.

Posted by Teri Christoph | Tuesday, October 26, 2021 | 07:00 PM

Students in Loudoun County have had enough. They’ve endured lockdowns, distance learning, all-day masking, and attempts to teach them a radicalized curriculum, all while their county’s partisan and inept school board declared war on their parents and failed to keep schools safe.

What finally moved the students to action, though, was the revelation that one of their own — and possibly two — was sexually assaulted inside a school, the very place kids should feel safe and secure. To make matters worse, the superintendent, Scott Ziegler, failed to inform parents and students that attacks had taken place, thus jeopardizing every student in the county.

Today, hundreds of Loudoun County students walked out of their classrooms, protesting the treatment of the victims, the victims’ families, and the student bodies of every high school, who were kept in the dark about the danger looming in their schools.

There’s more at the original.

Why didn’t the school inform the students what had happened? A couple of reasons spring to mind:

  1. The school administration were afraid that, if the rapes were made known to the students, some students might have administered a ‘hands on’ lesson to the rapist. Even if the administration didn’t reveal the identity of the rapist, once the ‘incidents’ had become known about, there’s no way that the identity of the perpetrator would not have become known.
  2. The rapes were perpetrated by a male student who may have been claiming to be a ‘transgender’ girl.

Heaven forfend, we can’t have the students or the public in general know that a student assigned male at birth but identifying as a girl[1]Regular readers of this site will realize that I formulated that description mockingly. Sex is not ‘assigned’ at birth, but determined at conception, and no amount of drugs, hormones or … Continue reading  committed these crimes. After all, that might lead to discrimination against the ‘transgendered,’ and that would be wrong!

Reports in the credentialed media have played down the transgender angle. In the article noting the rapist’s conviction, all we get is:

`The victim was assaulted in a women’s restroom at Stone Bridge High School by a male allegedly wearing a skirt.

One of the main arguments among conservatives, though not an argument I have chosen to make, is that males claiming to be female are doing so to gain access to female-only public restrooms and locker rooms, for voyeuristic purposes, and possible even for sexual assault. The Loudoun County case reinforces the arguments of conservatives that biological males should not be treated as females for such purposes, and the left cannot have that!

Would other students have beaten the crap out of administered a ‘hands on’ lesson to the perpetrator? Perhaps they would have, but that possibility could easily have been avoided had the school district done the right thing and removed the perpetrator from school entirely. But the school district’s actions, to ‘protect the rights’ of the rapist, and a possibly ‘transgendered’ student, resulted in a second girl getting raped.

The article concluded:

Every student that participated in today’s walkouts should take their activism directly to the next school board meeting and demand answers and mass resignations. This isn’t about petty partisan politics anymore, it’s about safety.

Yes, but that’s not enough. In the Keystone State, former Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, all went to jail — albeit not for long sentences — for child endangerment and other charges in the Jerry Sandusky case, because they failed to call the police to report Mr Sandusky’s rape of a young boy when informed about it.

Loudoun County did worse. Mr Sandusky was, at least, banned from the Penn State athletic facilities, but in Virginia, the school district simply transferred the rapist to another school, where he was free to rape again. I’ll put it bluntly: every member of the school board and administration who was aware of the first rape, and allowed the perpetrator to simply be transferred, needs to be criminally charged and sent to prison! Hold them accountable for their actions!

More, they should all be, individually, sued into penury. Their actions allowed a second girl to be raped! The school board and administration personnel are all adults, and are all responsible for the safety of students. The now-convicted rapist is only 15 years old, so he’ll receive a juvenile sentence. Knowing how northern Virginia has been ruined by the influx of federal government workers, a slap on the wrist would not surprise me.

But at least the adults can be prosecuted as adults, and face adult time in prison. It is only by holding people like them accountable for their actions that we can deter other officials from doing the same things.

References

References
↑1 Regular readers of this site will realize that I formulated that description mockingly. Sex is not ‘assigned’ at birth, but determined at conception, and no amount of drugs, hormones or surgical interventions can change a person’s sex.
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The cannibalism of the left They are eating their own!

I am not normally a fan of Andrew Sullivan, but he’s definitely got one thing going for him: he is a strong defender of freedom of speech and of the press, and he is willing to say what he thinks regardless of potentially being ‘cancelled’ by the left.

The Betrayal Of Our Gay Inheritance

How has the new trans left come to resemble the old religious right?

Activists hold banners and placards as thousands attend the Reclaim Pride march in London on July 24, 2021. (Guy Smallman/Getty images) Click to enlarge.

by Andrew Sullivan | Friday, October 22, 2021It was, as it turned out, a bit of a non-event. The walkout by transgender Netflix employees and their supporters to demand that the company take down and apologize for the latest Chappelle special attracted “dozens,” despite media hype.

But the scenes were nonetheless revealing. A self-promoting jokester showed up with a placard with the words “We Like Jokes” and “We Like Dave” to represent an opposing view. He was swiftly accosted by a man who ripped the poster apart, leaving the dude with just a stick, prompting the assailant to shout “He’s got a weapon!” Pushed back by other protestors, he was then confronted by a woman right in front of him — shaking a tambourine — and yelling repeatedly into his face: “Repent, motherfucker! Repent! Repent!”

“The scenes”, huh? While the image at the right was not taken at the “bit of a non-event” Mr Sullivan describes, it is the image that he chose to illustrate his article. While I do not normally use images from articles like that, in this case it falls under Fair Use guidelines, because it illustrates my point: Mr Sullivan is, himself, pointing to an image which is not going to gather a lot of support for the homosexual or transgender rights he supports, not among people who don’t already support such. While London can be a city of clowns when it comes to the anti-establishment population, the image Mr Sullivan chose is not one which is going to persuade a lot of normal people that homosexuals and transgenders are, themselves, normal, but which will leave people thinking that they are a bunch of clowns.

Remember, Mr Sullivan’s column is published on Substack, which means that he chose the image, not Substack editors.

Of course, if there are Substack editors, and they chose the photo to illustrate the article, then Mr Sullivan just might blow his top, because it wholly undercuts his positions.

This is the state of what’s left of the gay[1]As noted in The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not use the word “gay” to refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, but we also do not alter quotations from other people when … Continue reading rights movement in America. Judgmental, absolutist, intolerant, and hysterical, it looks to shut down speech it dislikes, drive its foes out of the public square, compile enemies’ lists of dangerous writers, artists, and politicians, and cancel and protest anything that does not comport with every tiny aspect of their increasingly deranged ideology.

The generation that now leads the movement does not seem to know the actual history of the gay rights movement, or the centrality of free expression to gay identity. They also seem to have no idea of the history of the movement against gay rights. Because if they did, they might be shocked at the ironies involved.

Anti-gay forces, hegemonic for centuries, were just like these trans activists. They were just as intent on suppressing and stigmatizing magazines, shows, and movies they believed were harmful. They too targeted individual artists and writers for personal destruction. They too believed that movies and comedy needed to be reined in order to prevent social harm. They protested in front of movie theaters. They tried to get shows canceled. And if you’d marched in any gay demo or Pride in the 1990s, you’d always be prepared to confront a grimacing Christianist yelling “Repent! Repent!” in your face.

In the 1990s, living in the relatively, though not thoroughly, conservative Hampton Roads region of Virginia, I never witnessed a homosexual rights march, so I certainly never saw what Mr Sullivan was claiming happened happen. But even if it did, it would not have been the marchers’ supposed-to-be allies who were doing so.

This was never, ever the spirit of the gay rights movement in the past. In fact, it was America’s guarantee of free expression and free association that made the gay rights movement possible. It was the First Amendment, and the spirit of the First Amendment, that was easily the most important right for gays for decades.

It’s also what allows the ‘transgender’ rights movement possible, but the ‘transgendered’, like much of the rest of the left, don’t like it when people exercise their freedom of speech to challenge their movements. We have already noted that Twitter, and the left in general, do not like Freedom of Speech. When it comes to the subject of ‘transgenderism,’ Twitter has already banned ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering.’[2]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; … Continue reading The New York Times, which so strongly defended its right to Freedom of Speech and of the Press in New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), gave space in the OpEd section to Andrew Marantz to write “Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence.” Mr Marantz, while exercising his First Amendment rights, clearly does not like the unregulated speech of others. The Times had earlier given OpEd page space to ‘transgender’ activist Chad Malloy to claim that Twitter’s ban on ‘deadnamimg’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes the Freedom of Speech.[3]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their … Continue reading

And now? Twitter, Facebook and other social media are censoring or altering posts which question COVID-19 vaccinations and vaccine mandates, and sometimes suspending if not wholly banning people from their sites for pushing such views. The freedom of speech and of the press are under attack from the left, the people who used to be its most strident defenders.

As I noted in the beginning, I am hardly a fan of Mr Sullivan, or the homosexual and ‘transgender’ rights movements, but in this case, he is right: freedom of speech is too precious a thing to lose, and too necessary a right for all of our freedoms, and our individual liberty in general. It is a far less dangerous thing to allow those with whom we disagree to have their say than it is to allow the suppression of speech and ideas; to allow that is to allow other people, if they gain power, to suppress our own speech and ideas.

References

References
↑1 As noted in The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not use the word “gay” to refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, but we also do not alter quotations from other people when they use it.
↑2 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.
↑3 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
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#Transgender activism and #FreedomOfSpeech

I start to worry when I agree with both Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, both in the same week! Heck, I’ve even been listening to Glenn Greenwald.

Dave Chappelle Is Right, Isn’t He?

The comedian defends reality. Which is currently under siege.

by Andrew Sullivan | 2:21 PM EDT

There’s an understandable tendency to view the debate about transgender ideology today as a marginal issue, affecting a minuscule number of people, and at most, a trivial matter in the larger culture wars. And I can see why. It does seem on the surface to be about maybe 0.2 percent of humanity. And if you venture an opinion on it, the consequences are intense — so why bother?

And, overwhelmingly, the elite media in the United States prevents readers from knowing that a debate is even happening, let alone what it is really about. If the argument about gender theory is mentioned at all, it is dismissed as a bunch of “anti-trans” bigots — aka “TERFs” — hurting a beleaguered and tiny minority, for some inconceivable, but surely awful, reason.

And so when the greatest living comedian, Dave Chappelle, bases almost an entire Netflix special on the subject — alternately hilarious and humane, brutal and true — and wades into the debate with wellies on, the exact same piece about the special will be written in much of elite media.

You could write it yourself, couldn’t you? 1. He’s a bigot. “The phobic jokes keep coming — and Chappelle’s efforts to ironise them, to dance around rather than wallow in the boorishness, are derisory,” says the Guardian review. 2. He’s out of date: “All that’s left is the same tired observations delivered behind a bizarre form of commiseration, this time with an added dash of JK Rowling solidarity and using someone else’s death to validate his half-decade of public stubbornness,” according to IndieWire. NPR adds a “multi-racial whiteness” edge: “Too often in The Closer, it just sounds like Chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia.”

Both the “stubbornness” and the “bigot” theme are reiterated in Vulture: Chappelle is full of “outdated excuses masking a refusal to update a worldview … his head is up his ass. He needs new ideas.” And, with respect to the marginalized: “He’s just asking for you to take up less space, to usher in progress by giving other people time to come around to you.”

There’s much more at the original, but it has to be asked: why would a conservative Catholic like me be agreeing with three famously liberal homosexuals?[1]Miss Weiss is actually bisexual, though she eschews that label. Shockingly enough, all three of these famous commentators believe in some very, very radical things like freedom of speech and individual liberty.

In his recent column on substack, Mr Sullivan notes the rather objective truth: despite what today’s left and the ‘transgender’ activists want you to believe, only females can carry a child through gestation and give birth. We noted, last Monday, The Washington Post’s stylebook change to reference “pregnant individuals” rather than “pregnant women”, due to the left’s cockamamie notion that men can be pregnant.

A transwoman cannot give birth as a woman gives birth. She does not ovulate. Her vagina, if it exists, is a simulacrum of one, created by a multiple array of surgeries. Sex in humans is binary, with those few exceptions at the margins — mixtures of the two — proving rather than disproving the rule. Until five minutes ago, this was too obvious to be stated. Now, this objective fact is actually deemed a form of “hate.” Hate.

This means that the debate is no longer about 0.2 percent of humanity. It’s about imposing an anti-scientific falsehood on 99.8 percent of humanity. It means that we have to strip all women of their unique biological experience, to deny any physical differences between men and women in sports, to tell all boys and girls that they can choose their sex, to erase any places reserved exclusively for biological women, like shelters for those who have been abused by men, and to come up with terms like “pregnant people” to describe mothers. Yes — mothers. The misogyny buried in this is gob-smacking. Is Mothers’ Day next for the trans chopping block?

The struggle is one of language, because language is the formative basis for thought. If the term “woman” can encompass both females and biological males who claim to be female, it has become meaningless. That the terms “cisgender” and “sex assigned at birth“[2]Wikipedia defines “sex assigned at birth” as: Sex assignment (sometimes known as gender assignment) is the discernment of an infant’s sex at birth. Assignment may be done prior to … Continue reading ever came into existence demonstrates the idiocy of modern life.

Mr Sullivan has no problems with homosexual or transgendered persons, but he is mocking the idea that current political correctness requires not only acceptance of transgenderism as something real and normal, rather than a mental illness, but that everyone must publicly conform to the demands of the transgendered for recognition of their claims.

Chappelle’s final Netflix special, “The Closer,” is a classic. Far from being outdated, it’s slightly ahead of its time, as the pushback against wokeness gains traction. It is extremely funny, a bit meta, monumentally mischievous, and I sat with another homo through the whole thing, stoned, laughing our asses off — especially when he made fun of us. The way the elite media portrays us, you’d think every member of the BLT community is so fragile we cannot laugh at ourselves. It doesn’t occur to them that, for many of us, Chappelle is a breath of honest air, doing what every comic should do: take aim at every suffocating piety of the powers that be — including the increasingly weird 2SLGBTQQIA+ mafia — and detonating them all.

I will admit it: I had to follow the link in the New York Post’s mocking article about Justin Trudeau to find out that 2SLGBTQQIA+ stands for “Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual”. As people keep adding letters to “LGBT” it kept getting sillier and sillier, to the point at which mockery is the natural response.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is being mocked on social media after he published two posts that mention the latest woke iteration of an acronym for people with different sexual identities — 2SLGBTQQIA+ — which some likened to an encrypted password or “headbutting the keyboard.”

“People across the country are lighting candles to honour Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people who are missing or have been murdered. We must continue to work together, raise awareness, and advocate to end this ongoing national tragedy. #SistersinSpirit,” the prime minister posted to Facebook and Twitter on Monday, referencing the Sisters in Spirit vigil, which honors women of specific racial or sexual identities who are missing or have been murdered.

The number and letter ‘2S’ in 2SLGBTQQIA+ includes people who identify as “Two-spirit,” ​referring to someone who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit. It is used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe their sexual identity.

The acronym, which used to be most commonly known as “LGBTQ,” sparked confusion among social media users.

I guess that some people just aren’t #woke[3]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 keep up with the silly acronyms.

I suspect that Messrs Greenwald and Sullivan, and Miss Weiss, despite the fact that they would not approve of my stance on transgenderism and homosexuality, would very strongly support my right to say and publish my beliefs. Fortunately, I’m retired, so I can’t be ‘cancelled’ from my job, but it’s pretty sad that I have to depend upon that protection.

Mr Sullivan’s subtitle claims that reality “is currently under siege,” which is certainly true, because reality and transgenderism are diametrically opposed. No one really thinks that Bruce Jenner[4]Mr Jenner has legally changed his name to “Caitlyn”, and I suppose that is what has to be used on legal documents now, but my website is not a legal document, and it is The First Street … Continue reading is actually a woman, but political correctness and the #woke left and the credentialed media all pretend that he is, because it’s practically required now.

At some point, the left, who were the champions of unrestricted freedom of speech not all that long ago, will have to recognize people’s freedom of speech. Miss Weiss and Messrs Sullivan and Greenwald have done so, but they are too far and in between these days.

References

References
↑1 Miss Weiss is actually bisexual, though she eschews that label.
↑2 Wikipedia defines “sex assigned at birth” as:

Sex assignment (sometimes known as gender assignment) is the discernment of an infant’s sex at birth. Assignment may be done prior to birth through prenatal sex discernment. In the majority of births, a relative, midwife, nurse or physician inspects the genitalia when the baby is delivered and sex is assigned without ambiguity.

But look at the interchanged terms: discernment is defined as assignment, but assign means, among other things, “to appoint to a post, duty or task,” something which is designated by the authority in question, as though it is that authority’s decision.

↑3 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.

↑4 Mr Jenner has legally changed his name to “Caitlyn”, and I suppose that is what has to be used on legal documents now, but my website is not a legal document, and it is The First Street Journal’s editorial policy to refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their given names and biological sex.