The reason it is so important to people that these athletes are "not trans" is because they know when they are lying about trans identified men they are just flat out lying on purpose. It does make them uncomfortable, at some level, to do that.
So it feels really good to them to crusade on behalf of these boxers without the ick of politically motivated lying. It really makes them feel super self-righteous about the rightness of their cause, they think: I can't believe you TERFs are mad at me even over THIS.
Of course for us terfs we just really are concerned with biological sex, so to us these cases are not importantly different. A man is entering women's space.
My mom forwarded an email from a friend of hers that included an explanation by a biologist (a prof at UNC-Asheville) that was "really clear". It was all the bafflegab about how things like Klinefelter's Syndrome mean sex is a spectrum and that anyway you don't have to totally understand all the intricacies of complex biology to be kind! All you have to do is know that is Complicated and also Be Kind!
(My mom is not fooled by this for a minute, but her friend clearly is)
Then there was the CBC journalist who opened his thinkpiece telling us we needed to concentrate on the 'actual protagonist' of the story: Khelif. In other words, if you just remind yourself of the eternal verity that women are emotional support animals for stories where men are the heroes, everything about how you should feel and respond to this situation falls into place!
Finally, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar today had a piece about how this is a story about people being mean to "two women" (the two boxers). So in his version, these are women who don't conform to society's expectations of womanhood and thus to be a Number One Cool Male Feminist (who has slept with 20k women by his own account) you need to lecture everyone else to relax and be cool about it.
I think the first example is someone who wants to be sophisticated and "kind". I think the second example is someone who does viscerally get that these are men, but *for that reason* hasn't looked into it any further to understand it better. The third example is someone who wants to be cool.
These are motivated misunderstandings but they aren't examples of "I know these guys are male and I am going to lie about it on purpose". I actually wonder if the Olympic situation is going to be bad for the TRA side in the long run, because many "allies" have found it such a delight to argue these instances and they may remember that feeling when they are back to arguing Lia Thomas style examples, which give you much less sciencey sounding self righteous bafflegab to work with.
I think the IOC position is closest to your second example. They resent the requirement to support women's events in the first place because that's not what women are for. They are dead set on including TIMs in women's sports so they can't enforce eligibility criteria beyond self ID.
There's also the "one is a tragedy. One thousand is a static" problem. Focus on a single person's sob story, not the faceless hundreds or thousands who may be harmed if he gets his way.
A useful test of whether those caping for Khelif are being disingenuous (i.e. saying to themselves "I know these guys are [likely] male and I am going to lie about it on purpose") would be to see how they react to the mounting evidence against him. The truth will out one day. How many 'mea culpas' are we likely to get from the Morgan Campbells, Wilt Chamberlains and Martin Samuels of the world? None, I expect. They have already shown us that they are not honest brokers. Anyone who cared about the truth, out of an abundance of caution, would have resisted saying that Khelif belongs in the female category until the question of his sex is resolved.
"The female category will end up an internal-testicle fest." Lol - brilliant! But sadly also the very probable, horrible scenario that is laid out now. Thank you, brave women, for taking the fight heroically to the streets of Paris! We will not let this injustice to women stand
Many great new words in there! Testicle-fest, copypastafarians, intersexphobia. One change: Khelif's and Ting's small gametes. It's good to know there're still males out there, such as Dr. Ioannis Filippatos, who don't hate women. I do believe we would better serve the young girls around the world by starting an international female sports league. As long as female athletes are at the mercy of misogynistic males and females, this will go on forever. Let the Olympics go back to being all male (which is their goal anyway), while girls and women have The Athena Games.
Superb idea! Of course you wouldn’t get much money, all our governmental support (ie our tax money) for sport goes to men’s sport with their “inclusive” inadequate men’s consolation prize category (called the women’s category to shut us up). But hey, maybe after we have paid our taxes we could each donate some of our 60%-of-men’s-wages money to the Athena Games (except the goddess Athena voted to allow men to murder their mothers because she decided she was “born of man”. Small detail but let’s choose a better name).
I can only speak about the USA and women in the same careers as men have comparable wages to the men. It was not always this way, but some things have changed. If we were taxed less than we could apply our earned $ to things we support, so we to push for lower taxes. The name doesn't matter so much to me but there are strange stories about all of the Greek Gods. The Artemis Games?
Excellent, Roisin; funny & excoriating by turns. I can’t understand why people don’t see what’s in front of them & why they don’t smell the shit they’re shovelling. WTF will it take to open their minds? I suppose there’s too much big money driving this abomination.
I have lost all hope in the power of the human intellect as I have observed people (especially women) who I considered to be intelligent falling for this "be kind" shite. The erasure of women from birth and breastfeeding (which like sports, is dependent on sexed bodies, not self-chosen identities), the mutilation of children's bodies and minds... And the reluctance to do a rethink and realise that hey, I need to change course here is exhausting to deal with. https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/escalation-of-commitment-to-a-losing
I could not agree more. I'm losing friends at a rate of knots because my respect for them has vanished.... poof.
Did you read the linked article in the substack you linked, about Commitment Bias? I wonder if all these ball-palming handmaidens are in the grip of Commitment bias because they have lived their entire lives subjugating themselves to men that they can't stop now? In any case, anyone who thinks what's happening in the Olympics now is in any way justifiable is delusional, and they can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.
Lots and lots here in Australia are getting drunk on Be Kind Koolaid but in my circles it's the men that are pissed off about it. Let's never shut up about it!
Hopefully we'll be able to say "remember when the IOC tried to gaslight the entire planet, and all those journalists got fired and when they came on Substack no-one would subscribe?
I wonder why nobody has asked the question as to why Imane as a Muslim is not wearing the hijab or dressing modestly as is required in Algeria for all Muslim women. Women are arrested for baring flesh and not covering their hair. The Egyptian volleyball team is mocked for wearing "burkinis" and yet, here is this Algerian dressing as a man and going about their daily business, including in Algeria, with no coverings whatsoever. Special dispensation or something else?
Thanks for making noise about this. I just now saw an AP headline about how Khelif "has faced misconceptions about her gender." For fuck's sake, we don't care about Khelif's *gender.* You don't punch people in the face with your passport. But it's not polite to acknowledge that differences in sexed bodies exist. Once again, TERFs are the only ones with the right of things. We don't care WHY a male thinks he's female, or if telling him otherwise makes him sad. We're here for women.
US conservatives haven't made this shitshow any better. They've gone fully mental asserting that these boxers are trans, allowing all the nice liberals to snark and sneer--even though they'd be making the same arguments for inclusion if they WERE trans. That they have the gall to spend years piggybacking off DSDs in order to legitimate trans and the "sex spectrum" and now declare they're completely unrelated is not surprising.
There's loads of filthy lucre for the controllers of our controllers Big Pharma (for life), plus scraps for the hacks, and it has divided the "left", (though note well it's mainly the faux left, so at least we can see who's been faking it), as well as families and society in general. So this is very important to these diabolicals as well as their useful idiots, and they are not going to let go, no matter the nonsense they find themselves spouting, though it's usually the hacks, some of whom once dreamt of being journalists, who have to make idiots of themselves.
Great piece. My opinion anyhow, is that men have never wanted women to participate in sport, any sport. We got accepted after a long struggle basically, and now, thanks to all this gender rubbish, they can officially get rid of us. I have no objection to a man wanting to be a women, stuffing themself with female hormones, having bits cut off and altered, calling themself Annie, etc etc, but they will still be, in every cell of their body, a man.
A while ago there was an era of great argument about whether "transwoman" or "trans woman" was the correct terminology within the progressive movement. You have finally hit on the correct term: "transwo-man" does both - gives the activists what they demand while also making it perfectly clear the sex of the person being referred to...
Wonderful protest, brava.
The reason it is so important to people that these athletes are "not trans" is because they know when they are lying about trans identified men they are just flat out lying on purpose. It does make them uncomfortable, at some level, to do that.
So it feels really good to them to crusade on behalf of these boxers without the ick of politically motivated lying. It really makes them feel super self-righteous about the rightness of their cause, they think: I can't believe you TERFs are mad at me even over THIS.
Of course for us terfs we just really are concerned with biological sex, so to us these cases are not importantly different. A man is entering women's space.
My mom forwarded an email from a friend of hers that included an explanation by a biologist (a prof at UNC-Asheville) that was "really clear". It was all the bafflegab about how things like Klinefelter's Syndrome mean sex is a spectrum and that anyway you don't have to totally understand all the intricacies of complex biology to be kind! All you have to do is know that is Complicated and also Be Kind!
(My mom is not fooled by this for a minute, but her friend clearly is)
Then there was the CBC journalist who opened his thinkpiece telling us we needed to concentrate on the 'actual protagonist' of the story: Khelif. In other words, if you just remind yourself of the eternal verity that women are emotional support animals for stories where men are the heroes, everything about how you should feel and respond to this situation falls into place!
Finally, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar today had a piece about how this is a story about people being mean to "two women" (the two boxers). So in his version, these are women who don't conform to society's expectations of womanhood and thus to be a Number One Cool Male Feminist (who has slept with 20k women by his own account) you need to lecture everyone else to relax and be cool about it.
I think the first example is someone who wants to be sophisticated and "kind". I think the second example is someone who does viscerally get that these are men, but *for that reason* hasn't looked into it any further to understand it better. The third example is someone who wants to be cool.
These are motivated misunderstandings but they aren't examples of "I know these guys are male and I am going to lie about it on purpose". I actually wonder if the Olympic situation is going to be bad for the TRA side in the long run, because many "allies" have found it such a delight to argue these instances and they may remember that feeling when they are back to arguing Lia Thomas style examples, which give you much less sciencey sounding self righteous bafflegab to work with.
I think the IOC position is closest to your second example. They resent the requirement to support women's events in the first place because that's not what women are for. They are dead set on including TIMs in women's sports so they can't enforce eligibility criteria beyond self ID.
There's also the "one is a tragedy. One thousand is a static" problem. Focus on a single person's sob story, not the faceless hundreds or thousands who may be harmed if he gets his way.
I think you're mixing up Kareem with Wilt Chamberlain, but otherwise top comment.
Oh my gosh you are right. Embarrassing and karmic apologies to KAJ!!!!!
A useful test of whether those caping for Khelif are being disingenuous (i.e. saying to themselves "I know these guys are [likely] male and I am going to lie about it on purpose") would be to see how they react to the mounting evidence against him. The truth will out one day. How many 'mea culpas' are we likely to get from the Morgan Campbells, Wilt Chamberlains and Martin Samuels of the world? None, I expect. They have already shown us that they are not honest brokers. Anyone who cared about the truth, out of an abundance of caution, would have resisted saying that Khelif belongs in the female category until the question of his sex is resolved.
I think they will move on without remark
"The female category will end up an internal-testicle fest." Lol - brilliant! But sadly also the very probable, horrible scenario that is laid out now. Thank you, brave women, for taking the fight heroically to the streets of Paris! We will not let this injustice to women stand
Balls in the Belly Fest.
“…my sense of self-preservation has evolved over a million years and it cannot be fooled by a couple of bows in a bloke’s hair.” Fucking brilliant. ❤️
Many great new words in there! Testicle-fest, copypastafarians, intersexphobia. One change: Khelif's and Ting's small gametes. It's good to know there're still males out there, such as Dr. Ioannis Filippatos, who don't hate women. I do believe we would better serve the young girls around the world by starting an international female sports league. As long as female athletes are at the mercy of misogynistic males and females, this will go on forever. Let the Olympics go back to being all male (which is their goal anyway), while girls and women have The Athena Games.
Superb idea! Of course you wouldn’t get much money, all our governmental support (ie our tax money) for sport goes to men’s sport with their “inclusive” inadequate men’s consolation prize category (called the women’s category to shut us up). But hey, maybe after we have paid our taxes we could each donate some of our 60%-of-men’s-wages money to the Athena Games (except the goddess Athena voted to allow men to murder their mothers because she decided she was “born of man”. Small detail but let’s choose a better name).
I can only speak about the USA and women in the same careers as men have comparable wages to the men. It was not always this way, but some things have changed. If we were taxed less than we could apply our earned $ to things we support, so we to push for lower taxes. The name doesn't matter so much to me but there are strange stories about all of the Greek Gods. The Artemis Games?
“(N)obody in the other camp knows which brainless slogan to shout”. Priceless!
Excellent, Roisin; funny & excoriating by turns. I can’t understand why people don’t see what’s in front of them & why they don’t smell the shit they’re shovelling. WTF will it take to open their minds? I suppose there’s too much big money driving this abomination.
I have lost all hope in the power of the human intellect as I have observed people (especially women) who I considered to be intelligent falling for this "be kind" shite. The erasure of women from birth and breastfeeding (which like sports, is dependent on sexed bodies, not self-chosen identities), the mutilation of children's bodies and minds... And the reluctance to do a rethink and realise that hey, I need to change course here is exhausting to deal with. https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/escalation-of-commitment-to-a-losing
I could not agree more. I'm losing friends at a rate of knots because my respect for them has vanished.... poof.
Did you read the linked article in the substack you linked, about Commitment Bias? I wonder if all these ball-palming handmaidens are in the grip of Commitment bias because they have lived their entire lives subjugating themselves to men that they can't stop now? In any case, anyone who thinks what's happening in the Olympics now is in any way justifiable is delusional, and they can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.
Couldn’t say it better than myself.
Best story I've read all year!
You pulled that off magnificently!
Lots and lots here in Australia are getting drunk on Be Kind Koolaid but in my circles it's the men that are pissed off about it. Let's never shut up about it!
Hopefully we'll be able to say "remember when the IOC tried to gaslight the entire planet, and all those journalists got fired and when they came on Substack no-one would subscribe?
I wonder why nobody has asked the question as to why Imane as a Muslim is not wearing the hijab or dressing modestly as is required in Algeria for all Muslim women. Women are arrested for baring flesh and not covering their hair. The Egyptian volleyball team is mocked for wearing "burkinis" and yet, here is this Algerian dressing as a man and going about their daily business, including in Algeria, with no coverings whatsoever. Special dispensation or something else?
Thank you
Thanks for making noise about this. I just now saw an AP headline about how Khelif "has faced misconceptions about her gender." For fuck's sake, we don't care about Khelif's *gender.* You don't punch people in the face with your passport. But it's not polite to acknowledge that differences in sexed bodies exist. Once again, TERFs are the only ones with the right of things. We don't care WHY a male thinks he's female, or if telling him otherwise makes him sad. We're here for women.
US conservatives haven't made this shitshow any better. They've gone fully mental asserting that these boxers are trans, allowing all the nice liberals to snark and sneer--even though they'd be making the same arguments for inclusion if they WERE trans. That they have the gall to spend years piggybacking off DSDs in order to legitimate trans and the "sex spectrum" and now declare they're completely unrelated is not surprising.
'Copypastafarians'! 'Freds in fishnets using conditioner as shampoo' thanks for the laughs, better than crying I suppose
There's loads of filthy lucre for the controllers of our controllers Big Pharma (for life), plus scraps for the hacks, and it has divided the "left", (though note well it's mainly the faux left, so at least we can see who's been faking it), as well as families and society in general. So this is very important to these diabolicals as well as their useful idiots, and they are not going to let go, no matter the nonsense they find themselves spouting, though it's usually the hacks, some of whom once dreamt of being journalists, who have to make idiots of themselves.
Great piece. My opinion anyhow, is that men have never wanted women to participate in sport, any sport. We got accepted after a long struggle basically, and now, thanks to all this gender rubbish, they can officially get rid of us. I have no objection to a man wanting to be a women, stuffing themself with female hormones, having bits cut off and altered, calling themself Annie, etc etc, but they will still be, in every cell of their body, a man.
This is one of the most deliciously excoriating pieces I've read about the travesty of these Olympic Games - thank you :-)
Transwo-men=males who claim to be women
Imane=male claiming to be a woman.
Both are 🐂💩
A while ago there was an era of great argument about whether "transwoman" or "trans woman" was the correct terminology within the progressive movement. You have finally hit on the correct term: "transwo-man" does both - gives the activists what they demand while also making it perfectly clear the sex of the person being referred to...