Taking all the medals
There’s a new report from the UN.
Female athletes worldwide have lost nearly 900 medals to transgender-identifying male competitors who have intruded into women’s sports.
Titled “Violence against women and girls in sports,” the August study conducted by the United Nations found that by March 30, 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 women’s division events across 29 different sports were defeated by transgender-identifying men. Male athletes have taken over 890 medals from female athletes, the report said.
“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the report said.
Created by U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, the report was presented to the U.N. General Assembly last week. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International was also at the U.N. with prominent female athletes to demand that the body protect safety and fairness in women’s sports. The event featured Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, U.S. collegiate athlete Lainey Armistead, ADF International CEO Kristen Waggoner, and Alsalem.
Addressing the General Assembly, Alsalem noted that male intrusion into women’s sports has raised the risk of sexual harassment, assault, and voyeurism not just in the sporting arena but in the locker room and bathroom.
Meanwhile, men who consider themselves enlightened and progressive say all this is perfectly fine.
Alsalem argued that the international and national sports governing bodies have abdicated responsibility over the issue by allowing transgender-identifying men to compete in women’s categories, with the only restriction usually being that male entrants meet testosterone requirements.
“Impunity fosters the culture of silence and injustice, and that is brought about in part by the autonomous regulatory frameworks of sports organizations that we have, which non sufficiently incorporated human rights lens or framework in the work, and they tend to prioritize reputation and winning over justice and accountability to victims, she added.
They also tend not to give a flying fuck about women.
But 900 is still “only a few”, right?
The numbers look odd to me. If 890 medals were taken by men, how were only ‘over 600’ female athletes affected? Even if we are only including those women that were next in line for each medal, that should amount to 890 women. But even that is only a starting point. Realistically, every woman downstream of every male competitor was robbed of one position per man ahead of her. In an event with say 20 competitors on the day, a male competitor placing first has displaced nineteen women by one, or eighteen if placing second, or seventeen if placing third, and so on through the list; only if he places last can he be said to have affected no women in that event*.
This is further complicated if more than one male competitor has entered the event, but in summary, every female competitor has been displaced by one position per male competitor placing ahead of her. Let’s say the same 20 person event involves a man placing second plus another placing tenth. The man in second has displaced seventeen female competitors, the man in tenth has displaced ten; every woman placing between third and ninth has lost one position, everyone placing eleventh and lower has lost two.
I can’t understand where the number ‘over 600’ comes from, but I need to get to the shops. I’ll have a look when I get back.
*And then there are the women that didn’t even make the event because they lost to a man in an earlier qualifying round…!
It’s possible that the number of medals exceeds the number of women because there are multiple competitions, multiple events, and multiple medals but many of the same competitors. Say, one runner cheated out of several medals in two or three events at several track meets.
My heart breaks to see the Alliance Defending Freedom in there alongside the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s horrifying that the ADF and Reem Alsalem are mentioned side-by-side so casually. And it’s sickening to see so many men and women I thought were allies participating in ADF-organized events.
The ADF are hardcore Christian nationalists who devote massive amounts of effort into recriminalizing homosexuality, and throughout the world, trying to prevent the decriminalization of homosexuality. I don’t hesitate to analogize them as an anti-gay parallel to the KKK. I think they are vile, ignorant bigots of the very worst kind.
There was a time just a few years ago when many — if not most — people online who were vocal critics of gender identity ideology cited their allegiance with gay rights and their fear of a backlash against us as one of the primary reasons they were in this fight.
I guess they had what NASA and the intelligence community call a “failure of imagination“: they didn’t foresee that THEY THEMSELVES would be the ones whose principles would wear down and erode to the point that they became soft on gay rights. But in hindsight it seems kinda obvious: who else would the backlash manifest itself through?
Within GC circles lately I’ve seen gay men called the f-word (the homophobic slur one); I’ve seen arguments that we don’t deserve HIV prophylaxis because AIDS is some kind of necessary moral punishment for promiscuity; that we shouldn’t be allowed to raise children because we’re abnormal and it’s bad for kids; that we’re innately immoral; that we’re pedophlile-adjacent “perverts”…
I don’t know what’s worse, the hardcore GC people who directly engage positively with this bullshit, or the next rung out who shrug and keep their heads down when they see it. I think I might be literally the only person in the GC sphere to be loudly pointing out these awful anti-gay developments that are infiltrating into the core of the movement. And it’s been suggested to me more than once by progressive people that the best way to deal with it is to simply ignore it, lest all that bigotry against gays disillusion me and drive me away from the “greater cause”. The thinking seems to be, don’t call attention to it, or you might make it stronger, because our enemies are watching. But MY thinking is, if you don’t call attention to it, it dominates all by itself no matter who’s fucking watching — y’all are literally giving the game away.
(And as if the natural state of right-wing assholes is to stomp around and make themselves heard, and the natural state of GC liberals is to quietly tolerate them, like to demonstrate our remorse over woke extremism or something?)
My primary cause is gay rights. I’ve suffered so much abuse — even homelessness in my teens and unspeakable other abuses — for no reason other than that I’m a feminine gay man. I cannot ever chill out about anti-gay bigotry and bias. It riles me up. It makes me mad, and it makes me speak my mind. So sue me!
It is in fact my passion for gay rights — as well as women’s rights, having been raised by a feminist single mother who taught me well — that informs my criticism of gender identity ideology. So I get sick to my stomach when I see groups like the ADF holding hands and throwing parties with people who I thought were my fucking friends.
And I’ve just now learned that the ADF are apparently the very group who succeeded in overturning Roe. So I don’t know what anyone is fucking thinking anymore, getting in bed with these assholes.
It seems everyone is being incredibly short-sighted these days. The mind reels…
Agreed.
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