Profiles in cheating
Highly decorated track athletes Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell High School and Terry Miller of Bloomfield High School have been selected co-recipients of the 2019 Bob Casey Courage Award by the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance.
And why are they “highly decorated”? Because they have male bodies but race against girls and so they win all the races. I’m not at all sure I consider that “courage”…
Both juniors, Yearwood and Miller are transgender athletes in girls track who have won individual Connecticut state track championships in multiple sprint events. Miller, who previously attended Hartford’s Bulkeley High School, recently won New England indoor track championships in the 55 and 300 meters.
Yes, of course they have, because they are male-bodied. They won all these events by stealing the wins from the girls who would have won if it weren’t for “courageous” Yearwood and Miller.
The teenage girls have publicly and courageously championed the rights of transgender high school athletes. Yearwood and Miller continue to face criticism from opponents who have questioned the fairness of their inclusion in girls track events. Opposition has ranged from anonymous digital comments and social media posts from across the country to a petition to ban Yearwood and Miller from currently competing in girls track. The girls have brought national attention in support of all high school athletes’ right to respect and inclusion, including an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Notice the speed with which we rush right past those questions about the fairness of their inclusion in girls’ track events. What about that?
The words “teenage girls” brings up an image that is designed to make them non-threatening and charming to people. The idea that these teenage “girls” have the bodies of teenage boys is irrelevant once the language is in place.
They are not girls. They are boys. Not courage: cowardice, beating up on girls and crowing about it.
But wait, it says in the article
I’m confused. What about the actual girls these two “championers” ran against? How are they respected and included through their “championing” actions?
As for courage, I can see- at a stretch – that some people might think coming out as girls would be “courageous” for teenage boys because this group of peoplesees girls as lesser and icky, and that for boys to become girls and take this step “down” as it were, would take a lot of inner fortitude. Not to say nerve, or, to put it more crudely (though, literally, more acurately) balls. Trans activists would see them as brave and courageous no matter how many girls they trampled on the way to the finish line; the more the merrier. But sparkles and rainbows can hide only so much abuse and bullshit.
One article from last year claimed these two young men had begun hormone therapy, but in June 2017, an article in USA Today said of Yearwood:
So in the beginning the kid wasn’t even on hormones. Did he have gender dysphoria as a little boy, or did it develop in adolescence with the onset of autogynephilic fantasies? Maybe the journalists impressed by Andraya’s courage should ask.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with autogynephilic fantasies per se. But the reality of male gender dysphoria–as opposed to the heartstring-tugging myth of “born in the wrong body”–might at least put a stop to this journalistic fawning.)
Handy that she waited until after puberty to go through transition. And training while still in a male body? Yep, that takes a lot of guts to run alongside girls with that resume.
Look you’ve got to admit, it took balls for them to do that.
…
I’ll let myself out.