The National Women’s Law Center used to be actually about women and law. No more.

Lia Thomas deserves all the celebration for her success this season, but instead is being met with nationwide misogyny and transphobia.

Lia, we need people like you. Not only as a swimmer, but to inspire women athletes—cis and trans—everywhere.https://t.co/RfynyiWYq4

— National Women's Law Center (@nwlc) March 18, 2022

I would love to know how the fuck they think Thomas can “inspire” women. Inspire women to do what? Quit sport? Stay home? Learn to smile politely while men steal their opportunities and wins and medals?

And why does he deserve “celebration for [his] success”? Why would he deserve celebration for “success” he owes to a … Read the rest

This person is an applied health scientist, with a primary focus on injury prevention and safeguarding in sport settings.

https://twitter.com/shereebekker/status/1504899936843935746

Rude. Rude way to begin. It’s not a “narrative.” That’s an insulting label.

https://twitter.com/shereebekker/status/1504899940497170442

No we don’t. She offers a few illustrations but they’re all (of course) from the few sports where size and strength don’t make a difference.

https://twitter.com/shereebekker/status/1504899944049688586

Shooting…where size and strength don’t make the difference.

https://twitter.com/shereebekker/status/1504899959098904586

Endurance and balance: size and strength not the deciders.

“Narrative” yourself.… Read the rest

More testimony:

UPDATE: the Penn teammate of Lia Thomas I spoke with sent me her thoughts on Lia’s win last night. She has given me permission to post this: https://t.co/IqKvIKQ0Gy pic.twitter.com/HCcrBU8THo

— Rich McHugh (@RichMcHugh) March 18, 2022

… Read the rest

Oh good, a statement on “transphobic abuse.” We need more of those.

Herstory Festival is a two-day celebration of women’s lives and experiences, bringing together different backgrounds, voices and experiences to support women’s rights and the historic progress made. The festival will incorporate the contributions and voices of over 400 women, and will feature the work of 17 poets, 8 musicians, 8 speakers and 30 artists.

Following online promotion of the festival, one of the artists featuring in the festival has been subjected to transphobic abuse on social media. Poet in the City has also been criticised for including this artist’s work as part of the range of perspectives that feature.

What this dishonest “statement” leaves out of course is … Read the rest

A discussion of NATO and Putin and how we got here on Fresh Air yesterday:

My guest, Mary Elise Sarotte, is the author of a book about the history of NATO in the years just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s called “Not One Inch,” and it helps explain how NATO, Ukraine and Russia got to where they are today. It’s based in part on papers she got declassified after fighting for years to get them released. Sarotte is the Kravis professor of historical studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and she’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She’s also the author of an earlier book about the collapse

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Noticeably quiet.

Here’s an idea.

A whole group of people should go to each of Thomas’s meets dressed as Napoleon, all demanding to be addressed as “Your Majesty” and that they all be seated in the Emperor’s Box for the event. They could, each and all, identify themselves as Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. A special press representative could accompany the Band of Bonapartes, explaining how each of them identifies as the Emperor, and that this true, sincere identification clearly overrides trivial material details such as the fact that the supposedly “real” Napoleon is dead. (Without an identity, that first guy’s just a corpse anyhow.) It can be explained … Read the rest

What about the human rights of child abusers? Like the right to keep abusing the child? What about that, huh?

A major Boise hospital went on lockdown for about an hour Tuesday after far-right activist Ammon Bundy urged supporters to go the facility in protest of a child protection case involving one of his family friends.

Ammon Bundy isn’t just an “activist.” He’s a violent intruder and occupier and vandal and intimidator.

Earlier in the day, Bundy released a statement on YouTube warning that if an acquaintance’s young child was not returned to the family after a hearing Tuesday afternoon, that “Patriot groups” would take action.

Bundy later released another video telling people that child protection workers were poised to

… Read the rest

Oh that rape.

A hospital has finally admitted a woman may have been raped by a transgender patient after denying the possibility of an attack for almost a year, the House of Lords has heard. 

When police were called to the unnamed hospital in England, they were allegedly told by staff that ‘there was no male’ on the single-sex ward, ‘therefore the rape could not have happened’. 

And that was a lie.

Now they’re admitting one of the patients was trans, i.e. a man.

The details of the case were shared by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne during a debate on single-sex wards in the Upper Chamber yesterday. 

She claimed: ‘They forgot that there was CCTV, nurses and observers.

‘None the

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/monsalore/status/1504755167631233036… Read the rest

Arty on the New Yorker’s embarrassing collapse:

The New Yorker has finally chimed in on the Lia Thomas debacle, and it’s a disgrace. The cult-like language used throughout is a stain on its reputation. Remember, The New Yorker is renowned for having the most prestigious and respected fact-checking department in the world.

Exactly. They’re famously, even notoriously picky. FACTS.

They make a blunder on the fact front.

The N.C.A.A. allowed a path for people like her to join the women’s team, but it was not quick or easy. In general, élite male athletes have considerable physical advantages over élite female athletes.

Whoops, you’ve just acknowledged that “people like her [sic]” are, in fact, “élite male athletes” who “have

… Read the rest

ESPN reports on Lia Thomas’s “win”:

Thomas, who is a transgender woman, touched the wall in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday night to become the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I national championship in any sport.

Yes but the issue isn’t “transgender” but man playing in women’s sport. We weren’t waiting eagerly for the first male athlete to win a woman’s national championship. We don’t see that as a breakthrough, or as a good thing in any way. We see it as cheating. We see it as brazen theft of a woman’s win and a woman’s spot in the race. We’re not impressed, we’re disgusted.

Thomas finished 1.75 seconds ahead of

… Read the rest

There were some observers on the scene.

At the NCAA swim championships at Georgia Tech pic.twitter.com/np0r5dCemH

— Miss Havisham (@MissHavisham10) March 17, 2022

They got support.

Lots of thumbs up from passers by including athletes and parents. #SaveWomensSports #ncaaswimimg #NCAASwimDive pic.twitter.com/2T2Jjc35wN

— Miss Havisham (@MissHavisham10) March 17, 2022

The 500 meter final race just ended. Lia Thomas came in first. Saw some tears in the audience that weren’t tears of joy. Immediately afterward Lia was interviewed and displayed on the big screen. pic.twitter.com/hIbtuHxIf7

— Miss Havisham (@MissHavisham10) March 17, 2022

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/coachblade/status/1504511468422770689

The @NCAA is exclusive.
It has excluded @tylormathieu.
Just like the IOC excluded Roviel Detenamo.
This is an exclusionary policy, it excludes people who have a right to compete.
The people who it excludes are talented sports women.
Their exclusion is unfair.#LiaThomas https://t.co/on770dyuvl

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) March 17, 2022

Why is it fine to exclude Tylor Mathieu in order to include Lia Thomas? Why does Lia Thomas matter more than Tylor Mathieu – so much more that he’s allowed to race against a team of women in order to steal a place from one of them?… Read the rest

Lia Thomas stole a woman’s place today. Brave stunning Lia living the dream.

Thomas took the place her friend worked hard to get. #SaveWomensSports #PennCheats pic.twitter.com/yAqG2UkqjZ

— Let Women Speak Official (@StandingforXX) March 17, 2022

He really took control of the race.

Female swimmers. Truly the second sex. Of two. Patriarchy at it's finest. https://t.co/c9eLCQC96o

— Cathy Devine (@cathydevine56) March 17, 2022

NCAA Title For Lia Thomas Is Joke With Biological Women As Punchline, And Hardly a Laughing Matter – https://t.co/Nh0EKRPtH8 @Hogshead3Au @Martina @Caitlyn_Jenner @runthinkwrite @sharrond62 @ChrissieEvert @jk_rowling @coachblade @Scienceofsport pic.twitter.com/TyCoIgz6Zc

— Swimming World (@SwimmingWorld) March 17, 2022

… Read the rest

Even the New Yorker…which is famous for having a rigorous fact-checking department. Even the New Yorker tells us these stupid lies.

Lia Thomas has been swimming since she was five years old. As a high schooler, she was one of the top swimmers in Texas, an All-American. She followed her older brother onto the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania, and established herself as a strong competitor in distance races; in her sophomore season, at the Ivy League championships, she finished second in three events.

Six factual errors (actually lies) in that one paragraph, because William “Lia” Thomas is not a she but a he.

We get the unconvincing story of how he felt unaligned with his body … Read the rest

Ok I made it back to yesterday morning at the tribunal without interrupting myself again. They started with a discussion of company policy on social media – it was quite common for employees to be Outspoken on Twitter.

AG: your response you said you were concerned and it'd get you into policing people. So you recognise you senior researchers who heavily use SM in a way that is robust and humorous, yes
AG: yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 16, 2022

Senior researchers get to be robust and humorous on social media so policing Maya would be…odd. They talk about that at some length.

BC=Ben Cooper QC, Maya’s lawyer. AG=Angela Glassman a GDC executive.

BC: sorry to interupt but I'm

… Read the rest

I didn’t get to the tribunal yesterday so I need to catch up. Here’s one segment from today which explains how and why the whole issue of what “trans woman” means is relevant to the think tank Maya was working for:

BC: Your view at this point was that claimant *could* discuss the beliefs she holds freely and openly
MP: that's what I'm saying there yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 17, 2022

BC: Global education programme by CGD: says focussed on girls schooling and women's empowerment
MP: yes
BC: repeated later in programme text
MP: yes

— Tribunal Tweets (@tribunaltweets) March 17, 2022

BC: Nobody is saying CGD had to publish the blog but you couldn't ever this debate

… Read the rest

Listen don’t even think about it, ok? Everybody is trans. Move on!

Hate to tell you, but in a way, everyone is trans. As writer T Cooper observed, all of us in life’s competitive arena are on the way to becoming someone profoundly different than we were, and keeping score is just a way to track the arc of a person from youth to prime to past it. If you subtract the aim of becomingness from competition just because you’re afraid of a Lia Thomas and make it strictly about the chance to win a prize, then you might as well go to an amusement park and shoot a squirt gun at a clown face because it will have

… Read the rest

More on that Herstory Festival thingy.

https://twitter.com/PoetintheCityUK/status/1502335838524432390 https://twitter.com/PoetintheCityUK/status/1503784417998917634

“Celebrating the unique experiences of womanhood”…by celebrating a man. Women women women, celebrate celebrate celebrate, begin with a man and end with a man, hooray hooray hooray.

Updating to add [h/t Mike]

https://twitter.com/UwuUwuUwu2000/status/1504156881979252737

His Twitter is locked.… Read the rest

The news media just lie to us about this.

A 79-year-old woman has reasonable grounds to claim that a Maine assisted-living facility discriminated against her for being transgender when it rejected her as a potential resident, the Maine Human Rights Commission found. 

In other words a 79-year-old man wants to force himself on a women-only assisted living facility.

The commission’s 3-2 vote on Monday sets in motion a process that could result in a lawsuit being filed against Sunrise Assisted Living in the town of Jonesport on a claim of violating state nondiscrimination law by denying Marie King’s application for residency.

King’s attorneys say the case has already made legal history as the nation’s first known discrimination complaint filed by

… Read the rest