Desk job
The head women’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College in Ohio was removed from her position this week, more than a year and a half after she posted her personal views on social media criticizing the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
The news of Kim Russell’s reassignment to a different position in the athletics department follows her release late last month of a mini-documentary explaining her side of the story, through the Independent Women’s Forum, or IWF, a national conservative organization.
The documentary includes audio clips of lacrosse players and university officials, which were recorded by Russell during what she called “disciplinary meetings” following her social media post. An Oberlin spokesperson says the other individuals involved were not aware that recordings were being made.
They wanted to do their bullying in secret.
“I have been taken out of the role of coach, which is what I’ve done for 27 years,” Russell said in an interview with Fox News this week. “I’ve been a PE teacher, a coach and a teacher of programs of wellness, yoga, all sorts of things, kickboxing … and [been] asked to take a role as employee wellness program manager, which would have no contact with students and be creating things—which is paperwork.”
…
Oberlin College said in a statement via email that the decision to reassign Russell to a new role pertains to a “breach of trust rather than any views she has expressed.”
I don’t believe Oberlin’s statement.
Discussions over whether transgender women, those who were assigned male at birth, should be allowed to participate in women’s sports have become a lightning rod for conservative criticism.
Oh fuck off. It’s not just conservatives who think letting males take over female sport is bad and wrong.
The Biden administration is currently rewriting Title IX rules to allow individual athletes to decide which team and/or locker room suits their gender identity.
That makes no sense. If men decide women’s teams and locker rooms best suit their “identities” then those teams and locker rooms will no longer best suit the women who have to use them.
The Oberlin controversy began back in March 2022, when University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an event at a Division I NCAA championship. Russell took to Instagram to weigh in on the news, reposting a headline that facetiously congratulated the silver medalist, Emma Weyant, for being the “the real woman who won” the event.
Facetiously?!! God these people are so stupid it takes the breath away. This is no joke. Emma Weyant should have been the gold medalist, but a man stole it from her. There’s nothing funny about that.
Travers, a sociology professor at Simon Fraser University who uses a single name, said Russell’s belief that transgender athletes “unfairly erase” the hard work of cisgender female athletes is a “myth” used to “provoke” and “propagate” a sense of public “moral panic.”
“For a coach at a college like Oberlin to make such an antitrans and ignorant statement is deeply disturbing,” Travers said. “If someone won the gold medal, you never say that the silver and bronze medalists, or any other competitors, had their hard work unfairly erased by being beaten. It’s particularly transphobic.”
Oh for god’s sake. Of course you don’t, because there was no cheating. If there is cheating, then you do say so. Capeesh?
Also that “uses a single name.” Notice how everyone has to stop and waste a few seconds on having this name explained, so that people will thinking about the guy who uses the single name. Notice the ever-spreading fog of ego, and the absurdity that it’s being mistaken for peak progressive-think.
Of course he does. *3000 rpm eyeroll*.
One bit I noticed on reading the original article:
“But the professor—who studied transgender participation in sports, even before their own transition—praised Oberlin’s response.”
It’s pretty easy to flag the whole thing is a conservative cause if you insist on joining the Face Eating Leopards when they’re eating other people’s faces. You can say, well they’re eating the faces of invasive rabbits (which is true) but saying “no, I’m not currently wearing spots” but you’re still eating those rabbits faces.
Having anti-trans shit as your raison d’etre to the point where you’re willing to work with the Christofascists means you were never a principled leftist/progressive/liberal/whatever.
…and I say this as someone who despises the gender goblins.
*Using the generic “you” but also in reference to this coach who should’ve known better.
Maybe the “lying down with pigs” metaphor is more apt… point stands though, there’s no men in the Handmaidens’ stable but that world is hardly an improvement.
BKiSA,
I don’t understand you. Are you talking about the TRA’s more concerned with the feelings of “AMAB” convicted rapists who say they’re women than they are about the female prisoners they’ll be housed with? Are those TRA’s the “Handmaidens” you speak of???
No, I’m talking about women who work with the rightoids because they care more about the trannies (and I use this slur to make my position clear) than they do about women as a class. Telling that lot of AGPs to go fuck themselves doesn’t require working with the Enemy; it just taints any efforts to communicate that “men obviously as fuck are not women”.
@BKISA – I’m not sure where you are but if you are American, it does put us Democrats in a quandary the way that the party has embraced gender ideology. I see on Twitter how many Democrats plan to vote Republican even though they’ve always been Democrats; over gender and the roles that men like Richard Levine and the guy here in Minnesota who said that detransitioners should be dismissed because they are very low in number, Leigh Finke. But in the meantime:
1. The Republicans voted to oust their leader in the House because he refused to let the government shutdown, after previously refusing to let the country default on its loans.
2. The Republicans cut heating assistance for those unable to pay for high gas and oil costs in the winter.
3. The Republicans are looking for ways to cut Social Security and Medicare even though they are not funded by the general fund.
4. The Republicans are trying to keep us beholden to carbon-based sources of energy.
5. The Republicans are going to nominate for President a man who is under indictment for several crimes, including interfering with election officials, and has stated that he will initiate a purge of Deep State Operatives in the Executive department (meaning anyone who is not a true-redTrump-loyal conservative.) He is a man who has stated that the punishment for shoplifting should be death, just shot on sight. Never mind the Constitution!
Should I go on?
Yes, many liberals will leave the Democratic party for their stance on gender, but not enough for the Democrats to get the message of why and will go on with it. Some of us will try to find allies within the party as gender skeptic to try to turn this leaky ship around because the alternative is far worse.
In all the years I have been an active member and apparatchik on the volunteer side of Democratic politics, I have found many things I don’t like about the party. Now that I own property, I can see why many people get sick of their mortgage escrow being raised every year by Democrats and property taxes. I’ve also seen many people get fed up with the failures of the party to see reason on a particular issue and go to the other party, and we really are stuck with just the two.
So, I see what you are saying on this, but if some women have been trying to get their fellow liberals to see sense and get met with charges of bigotry and hatred rather than be heard, and find an outlet for their issues in a conservative framework whose only issue of agreement is on the issue of how transgender ideology is bad for women, I can hardly blame someone for using Fox News or whatever outlet that will actually put them on the air. And the intransigence of many liberals on the gender issue is going to turn some women conservative, no doubt. But if you place yourself in their shoes, can you fully blame them? The trans capture has fucked things up, royally. But one thing that it demonstrates is that our idea of what’s left and what’s right is based on the fallacy that people can be pinned down to one of two ideologies. Left and right blurred long ago, when you saw people jump from Sanders to Trump in 2016 it was just an example.
So, I don’t think it’s justified to say “they were never principled leftists/progressives/liberals.” Banging your head into a wall can do many things, among those changing one’s perspective.
[…] a comment by Mike Haubrich on Desk […]
BKiSA,
Would have probably helped if you didn’t say “anti-trans shit” since that’s not what it is. It’s more “pro-woman stuff.”
Me@#8: I suspect that BKiSA meant it as, “Anti-(trans shit)”, rather than “(Anti-trans) shit”. So the trans ideology is the shit which is being opposed. BKiSA is just saying that focusing on that issue to the exclusion of all others, to the point where you start playing nice with conservative outlets and the GOP, is NOT going to advance a “pro-women” agenda.
Freemage, I’m not a one-issue voter, but the Democrats are soft on nearly every issue I care about. They are better on the environment, but not great, needing to cater to the ‘cheap gas’ demands to get elected. They are better on guns, but not great, compromising on nearly every issue to appease the gun factions in the Democratic Party. They are better on women’s issues, but not great, as the trans issue makes clear, as well as their inability to pass strong, forceful legislation even when they are in power. They are better on Medicare and Social Security, but that’s not hard – it’s a pretty low bar. They are better on insurance, but unwilling to thoroughly explain to people that it would ultimately lower the costs they are paying for insurance and medical care. Even Bernie didn’t do a good job of that.
This isn’t to say that I will vote Republican; that isn’t in my ability. But I can sympathize with people who see it as important not to support the Democrats. That being said, when we are offered Trump as the alternative, how anyone could take their one issue and go to the dark side is beyond me.
Being pro women is being anti-trans… but there’s nothing wrong with being anti-trans; it’s like being anti-flat earther.