In Markham Ontario
I’m not keen on Rebel News as a source but you know how that goes – news outlets that aren’t right-wing don’t touch the subject. (Therefore I must be wrong about it, yeah? No. The left has disappeared up its own backside.)
So I won’t bother with the Rebel News story but here’s the gist:
Why did the swim competition allow this? The wrong sex and the wrong age? It won’t say.
Maybe he identifies as a teenager.
I wonder what would have happened had a 50 year old woman requested/demanded to swim with the girls? At least she would have actually been female. Would they have allowed a man to swim with the boys? If not, why not? Why does this creep (and he’s self-identified as a creep just by doing this) get to go against both sex and age divisions in this swim? What’s so special about him? How does he rate? What about the girls? Why don’t they merit protection. Yes, protection. Someone seeking to violate rules and boundaries is a threat. If they are male, they are even more of a threat. Any one enabling that violation is an accomplice.
Doing this sort of thing invites all of these questions. If this facility accepts any tax funding whatsoever, it should be compelled to answer for its decisions. If it’s completely privately funded, then parents should have been given a warning before having their girls exposed to someone like this. You don’t get to allow this sort of grotesque violation of dignity and then stay quiet about it. It doesn’t matter if this guy changed on his own in the men’s facilities. He’s a creep. He sought to swim with girls in a situation in which anyone (particularly parents) would have expected only girls to be present. That makes him a risk. Nevertheless, he was allowed to swim with the girls. Even doing “nothing but swimming” is not doing nothing. Ogling, leering, and voyeurism requires “nothing” from the perpetrator than open eyes in the presence of his victims. Where’s the safeguarding? Why didn’t anyone tell him “No”?
Did the man claim to be a little girl? Whether or not he did, the conveners of the event could have barred him on the grounds of age regardless. Or were they such chicken-shit cowards that they let him enter because they were deathly afraid of being called “transphobic”, sacrificing the safety and dignity of children, of girls, to save their own feelings of moral superiority?
Is there some sort of rule or hierarchy in identity claims where the “female” “gender identity” allows the “age identity” to be overlooked? The utterly creepy Stefonknee Wolscht was one of those doubly delusional dual identity guys. I wonder how many children’s spaces he was allowed to violate by people afraid of being branded as “phobic”?
I clicked on the æink, but I’m not watching YouTube videos to get the info.
So I do not know the details, however when my boy was into competitive swimming I worked as another official at swim meets.
Most are separated by age groups, except club championships. However a swim meet is a swim meet.
We often had an older swimmer participate because they needed an official time, and you have to set that at a competirion.
If there was a category for the type of swimming they would be in one of the sparsely filled heats so there could be distance between them and the young swimmers.
A 20 year old man is on another planet from say the 11 year olds!
Often they would just swim alone between two heats.
The official rule is that while you can mix swimming styles in the pool at the same time, say butterfly on lane 1 through 4, and breast stroke on 5 to 8,you cannot mix sexes.
So we could have 5 10 year old boys front crawling, while a 21 year old man did the butterfly.
All in all I don’t find it alarming that they shared the pool.
I cannot see how they could have been in the same competition. I’ve never experienced that different age groups swam against each other, they might swim in the same heat, but it would be different leader boards!
We always followed the fisa rules as close as possible, since we wanted to record all times. They are used for qualifying for competitions, for awards, for placing swimmers in the correct level within the club etc!
He calls himself “Melody Wiseheart.”
I know, isn’t that adorable? [snort]
I watched the video. It is pretty bad, all about the cringe factor without actually discussing any of the issues involved. I did find a bit of information from it, though:
The competition was mixed age. The heat he swam in had competitors ranging from 13-17. The meet was supposedly “non-competition”, whatever that means; perhaps does not qualify anyone for further competitions.
His age was listed as “50” in the heat sheet. I know the competition was mixed age, but that level of mixing seems extreme. However, it doesn’t appear he was claiming to be a teenager.
His time placed him near but not at the top of his heat.
Rebel News couldn’t be bothered to try to find this kind of basic information. The fact that league officials were not available to talk on a Sunday afternoon was taken as them hiding something, not them having normal lives where they work M-F like many other people. The meet was described repeatedly as a “travesty”, in breathless tones, the report aghast and not understanding why the meet manager was not also aghast. They added a bit about “Wiseheart’s” swim club, referencing a puff piece on the swim club web site about his family; the reporter went on about how disgusting they were, rather than talking at all about the mixed sex swimming and adult vs child swimming. So, almost no attempt at doing actual journalism.