Another strange thing to think.

I have signed this letter along with 1600+ others. Transphobia has no place in our classrooms, offices, or libraries. Universities & colleges should be sanctuaries, not spaces where staff & students are exposed to oppressive attitudes from those charged to teach them. Pls sign👇🏻 https://t.co/hq9rSTjDZ4

— Jo Grady (@DrJoGrady) June 17, 2019

Universities & colleges should be sanctuaries, not spaces where staff & students are exposed to oppressive attitudes from those charged to teach them.

Really? Universities and colleges should be sanctuaries? What about being places where people on the edge of adulthood learn things they didn’t know before, and learn how to learn new things, and learn to question things they thought they knew, and to ponder why they thought they knew them?

In short, no, universities and colleges should not be sanctuaries. They should of course be places where people are treated decently, and where the older professionals in charge don’t use their status to bully or abuse students or other underlings…but sanctuaries, no. Education isn’t always soothing; it doesn’t always even feel “safe” in the sense of cozy and reassuring. New ideas and new ways of thinking can seem threatening, but they’re worth the discomfort.

Also, I suspect Grady’s claim rests on the pervasive trope that trans people, mostly meaning trans women, are especially “vulnerable” and fragile and in need of protection…which is odd when you remember that trans women are not literal women. Yes, boys and men can be bullied and abused for not being Manly enough, but male bodies are still not fragile as cobwebs.

Several people share my skepticism of the idea that universities should be sanctuaries.

What does it mean that universities and colleges should be "sanctuaries"? Should they become silent meditation spaces devoid of critical thought, kept separate from anything which anyone decides is an "oppressive attitude"? How about discourse, dialogue & conversation takes place

— Tom Smith (@SmithTGeo) June 18, 2019

https://twitter.com/_JustOri_/status/1141095864464621569

https://twitter.com/rattlecans/status/1141015369273888768

Trump loves to say US air quality is getting cleaner and cleaner thanks to him. Is he right?

Pfffffffff. Of course not.

Over the last two years the nation had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data shows. While it remains unclear whether this is the beginning of a trend, health experts say it’s troubling to see air quality progress stagnate.

There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when America had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980.

Some of that has to be because of the summer wildfires problem, I would think.

Air quality is affected by a complex mix of factors, both natural and man-made. Federal regulations that limit the emissions of certain chemicals and soot from factories, cars and trucks have helped dramatically improve air quality over recent decades. In any given year, however, air quality can be affected by natural variations. That may be what’s behind the stalled progress, scientists say.

…

Scientists say that it is too early to see the effects of changes in environmental policy of the Trump administration, which took office in January 2017.

But they say looser restrictions and lax enforcement would almost certainly reverse the gains that have been made in recent decades, potentially turning what has so far been a modest, two-year backslide into a dangerous trend.

…

In an email, the EPA told The Associated Press the increase in unhealthy air days in 2017 “is largely associated with wildfires” in the west and it is studying 2018 before officially announcing its annual air trend data.

Air pollution experts agree wildfires likely have had a role, along with random variation, a stronger economy which leads to more consumption of fuels, and a changing climate. Higher temperatures increase the chances for fires and smog.

But moves to deregulate industries that pollute do not make the air cleaner.

Hope Hicks is refusing to answer questions. They think they’re gods, don’t they.

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is not responding to any questions about her time at the White House in a closed-door congressional interview Wednesday, angering Democrats who say they expect to go to court to force her to answer their questions.

White House attorneys are objecting to all questions related to the White House, Democrats say, all the way down to where Hicks sat in the West Wing. But Hicks is answering questions about her time on the Trump campaign, which is not covered by executive privilege.

None of it is covered by “executive privilege.”

The White House is not asserting executive privilege, but arguing that Hicks has absolute immunity from testifying as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump. Democrats called that legal claim “ridiculous” and “absurd” as they signaled they will likely challenge it in court.

“There is no such thing as absolute immunity that prevents someone from answering questions about any subject related to their work in an administration. It just doesn’t exist,” said Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat. “This is an ongoing effort by the president of the United States to obstruct, to prevent Congress from finding the facts and behaving as if he’s above the law.”

Well he feels like someone who is above the law. Don’t we have to respect that?

The White House’s objections to Democrats’ questions were expected, as White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent the House panel a letter Tuesday evening arguing that Hicks was immune from testifying about her time at the White House as one of the President’s senior advisers, citing executive privilege protections.

“Because of this constitutional immunity, and in order to protect the prerogatives of the Office of President, the President has directed Ms. Hicks not to answer questions before the Committee relating to the time of her services as a senior adviser to the President,” Cipollone wrote.

Because of this constitutional immunity that doesn’t exist.

I am watching Obstruction of Justice in action, as @TheJusticeDept is objecting to everything that Hope Hicks wants to say during her tenure in the White House. The Administration's position is absurd & they will lose in court.

What is the @realDonaldTrump Administration hiding? https://t.co/BqhkJJlbU5

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 19, 2019

Trump is desperate to avoid having Hicks answer questions about crimes-obstruction of justice & campaign finance violations. She isn’t his wife or his priest & no privilege covers her knowledge of criminal conduct. https://t.co/Ls9lsbMqoj

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 19, 2019

Trump is now asserting that there is a privilege that permits his former staff & allies to avoid testifying about his potentially criminal conduct. There's no pretense that this is about deliberative activities in the WH. And no such privilege exists. https://t.co/SCLpPceL4m

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 19, 2019

Three little words.

"Obstruction of justice," Pelosi says when I asked her about WH saying Hope Hicks cannot answer questions about her time at the WH pic.twitter.com/CLdUERqsxq

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 19, 2019

Alice Roberts, Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham and President of Humanists UK, has been Twitter-arguing with people who found the Natural History Museum’s tweets about queer giraffes and non-binary gorillas absurd.

This one is particularly interesting to me:

How I feel in myself has no bearing on what someone feels. If someone who looks like a man and has XY chromosomes tells me he feels female – I cannot tell her she is ‘wrong’. Would you?

— Prof Alice Roberts💙 (@theAliceRoberts) June 19, 2019

It’s her reply that interests me, but I’ll just note about the quoted passage from her book…I wonder if she would write that now. I wonder if now she would stop, and think, and frown, and then censor herself. I wonder if she would stop to think about it and then decide that it would be “transphobic” to allow that sentence to appear.

That’s a hypothetical though. Her actual reply today says “If someone who looks like a man and has XY chromosomes tells me he feels female – I cannot tell her she is ‘wrong’. Would you?” That’s what interests me.

Of course, first of all, it depends what she means. (I asked her but don’t know if she’ll reply.) Maybe she just means it’s not comfortable or polite and usually probably not even ethical to tell strangers they’re wrong about what they “feel” about themselves. But if she means it more generally and abstractly, that we can never think people are wrong about what they “feel” about themselves – that’s nonsense, and it’s antithetical to a scientific outlook. Why? Because people can be wrong about themselves, even if it’s an inner feeling, even if they feel the inner feeling strongly. Treating self-feelings as absolutely true and immune to rebuttal is sheer dogmatism.

That is, naturally, all the more germane when people are making factual claims that contradict what shows on the surface. Trump “feels” he is a stable genius, but there is much external evidence that points to a different conclusion.

Roberts’s hypothetical someone who looks like a man and has XY chromosomes may not be wrong about what he feels, but he’s probably wrong that what he feels=what he is. What we “feel” we are doesn’t necessarily determine what we actually are. It’s not that easy.

A woman expresses passionate eagerness to erase the very category of women and girls.

https://twitter.com/VetNurseVibes/status/1130584532237856768

So after all these years of trying and trying and TRYING to get marketers to stop dividing humans into strong bold brilliant boys and weak pretty stupid girls were a big mistake? So we actually shouldn’t be trying to tell girls they can be strong and bold and brilliant? We should actually stop doing that because her “trans son” wants to rise above the muck of being a female person? Well fuck that for a game of soldiers.

The Smithsonian Magazine notes that concentration camps started long before Hitler took power.

Spain was having trouble persuading the Cuban people to stop rebelling, so they decided to round up the peasants who were supporting the rebels.

Civilians were forced, on penalty of death, to move into these encampments, and within a year the island held tens of thousands of dead or dying reconcentrados, who were lionized as martyrs in U.S. newspapers. No mass executions were necessary; horrific living conditions and lack of food eventually took the lives of some 150,000 people.

…

These camps did not rise out of nowhere. Forced labor had existed for centuries around the world, and the parallel institutions of Native American reservations and Spanish missions set the stage for relocating vulnerable residents away from their homes and forcing them to stay elsewhere. But it was not until the technology of barbed wire and automatic weapons that a small guard force could impose mass detention. With that shift, a new institution came into being, and the phrase “concentration camps” entered the world.

You’ll never guess who resorted to them next.

After defeating Spain in Cuba in a matter of months, the United States took possession of several Spanish colonies, including the Philippines, where another rebellion was underway. By the end of 1901, U.S. generals fighting in the most recalcitrant regions of the islands had likewise turned to concentration camps. The military recorded this turn officially as an orderly application of measured tactics, but that did not reflect the view on the ground. Upon seeing one camp, an Army officer wrote, “It seems way out of the world without a sight of the sea,—in fact, more like some suburb of hell.”

The US “liberated” Cuba and the Philippines and promptly unliberated them by taking over the colonial rule. Just kidding about the anti-imperialism thing!

The Boer War, Namibia, and on it went. The Nazis drew on a long and much-used tradition. Trump is reviving it, because that’s the kind of evil sack of shit he is.

Many people have reacted to Liz Cheney’s “internment camps for migrants are not the Holocaust, learn some history” tweet.

https://twitter.com/KatzOnEarth/status/1141028078468128770

Enuf w/ “ICE camps are concentration camps but they’re not gassing people” or “we should take action before things get worse.”

Concentration camps aren’t good enough?? Even if Auschwitz was never built the Warsaw Ghetto wasn’t reason enough to tear down the Third Reich??

— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) June 18, 2019

GOP seems to be embracing the "it's not as bad as Auschwitz" defense for their concentration camps on the border. That's a bad defense.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) June 18, 2019

I'm sure others have told you this but the use of concentration camps predates the Holocaust by decades, having been in use in Cuba, the Philippines, and South Africa and Namibia. https://t.co/MCeLNBrf6t

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) June 18, 2019

And in the “massively missing the point” category, step up Dinesh D’Souza.

Nazi concentrarion camps were forced labor camps. They were not for illegal immigrants but rather for war captives, internal dissidents and Jews. Some like Auschwitz had extermination facilities so they also functioned as death camps. So where is the valid analogy here? https://t.co/vrjFNavyWy

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) June 18, 2019

Nazi concentration camps weren’t for “illegal immigrants” because oddly enough Germany wasn’t a hugely popular destination for immigrants during the Third Reich. They were for despised people the Nazi regime wanted to control and, with any luck, destroy. Putting migrants and asylum seekers in camps is not radically different from putting dissidents and Jews…and gays and gypsies and the disabled in camps. The whole idea fits in the category Putting Despised People in Camps. It’s not a good look. We did it with the Japanese internments, we’re pretty much doing it now with mass incarceration, and putting migrants and asylum seekers in camps will be the same bad look and the same horrendous disgraceful brutal way of carrying on. Don’t bother trying to defend it.

Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, thought she had a gotcha on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this. https://t.co/NX5KPPb2Hl

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 18, 2019

It’s Cheney who needs to learn some history. The Nazis didn’t go from zero to Auschwitz in 30 seconds; it took them years to get to Auschwitz. It was a process, with stages. Herding people into camps was an early stage. Trump is putting us at that stage. There is no magic mechanism guaranteeing that we won’t go on to further stages. That’s AOC’s point, and it’s dishonest and malevolent of Cheney to pretend not to get it.

It’s strange how men who assault women, or defend other men who assault women, keep turning up in Trump’s administration. The acting secretary of defense just resigned.

The Washington Post pressed the button to launch this story at 12.58PM ET today, one minute ahead of the time logged when Donald Trump announced Shanahan’s withdrawal from the process to find his forever home at the Pentagon.

It’s pretty raw, beginning:

In the months that he has served as President Trump’s acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan has worked to keep domestic violence incidents within his family private. His wife was arrested after punching him in the face, and his son was arrested after a separate incident in which he hit his mother with a baseball bat. Public disclosure of the nearly decade-old episodes would re-traumatize his young adult children, Shanahan said.

The son hit his mother in the head with a baseball bat, and fractured her skull. Shanahan defended the son.

Welcome to Club Trump.

A philosopher sent Brian Leiter a guide to Philosophical Discussion of Trans Identity.

Members of the profession have doubtless seen the recent letter from MAP, objecting to the participation of Kathleen Stock at a recent meeting of the Aristotelian Society. As the letter writers thoughtfully advised: “scepticism about the rights of marginalised groups and individuals, where issues of life and death are at stake, are not up for debate. The existence and validity of transgender and non-binary people, and the right of trans and non-binary people to identify their own genders and sexualities, fall within the range of such indisputable topics”.

Junior members of the profession may be wondering what sorts ideas may be discussed and debated by philosophers, and which may not. Which may be subject to skeptical inquiry and which may not.  Which may be discussed at the Aristotelian Society and which may not. Following is a helpful guide.

You MAY question whether race exists and whether gender exists, you may question whether social kinds exist.  For that matter, you may question whether any kinds at all exist, and for the measure, whether abstract objects or even whether the external world exists.  You may NOT, however question whether people can identify their own genders.

You MAY question whether other minds exist, or whether anything at all exists except for yourself.  You may even question whether time exists and space exists.  You may ask whether all change is illusion.  You may NOT, however, question whether people can identify their own genders.

You MAY also question whether you yourself exist or are a social construct.  You may question the existence of the Cartesian ego and you may even wonder if there are such things as Cartesian egos.  You may reject them or endorse them.  However, you may NOT question whether people can identify their own genders.

The same for God, God and evil, mathematics…

You MAY feel free to argue that everything is made of water or air or apeiron or numbers or soul stuff or mind or matter or whatever.  You may ask whether cats are robots from mars, whether there are zombies, whether everyone you know is a zombie, whether you might be a swamp man and if so whether you have any thoughts at all, but you may NOT question whether people can identify their own genders.

You get the idea. You can argue about the ontology of anything and everything…except gender.

But you can argue about how we know that? Yes?

No.

I hope you agree with me that you ought not question whether people can identify their own genders.  It is, after all, just an indisputable fact and not up for debate!  But you might think it is an apt philosophical exercise to ask how we how we came to have this knowledge that people can identify their own genders.  This would be an error.  You may not query the source of this knowledge.

You may ask how we know we are not brains in vats, or how we know there isn’t an evil deceiver or how we know we are not in the Matrix with Neo and Morpheus.  You may ask if we are in Plato’s cave, not really seeing things as they are.  You may ask how we know that we don’t live in a land of fake barns and how we know that the zebras in our zoos are really zebras.  You may NOT ask, however, how we came to know that people can identify their own genders.

You can argue about the epistemology of anything and everything…except gender.

Hopefully you agree that one should not question whether people can identify their own genders.  It is just an indisputable fact after all.  And hopefully you are also thinking that it is wrong to question how we came to KNOW that people can identify their own genders.  But perhaps you are thinking it is your job as a pedagogue to teach material that considers these obviously harmful questions.  Well, wrong again.

There are many much more worthy doctrines to teach.  For example, you should feel free to teach Aristotle, who said that women are “more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive … more compassionate … more easily moved to tears … more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike … more prone to despondency and less hopeful … more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive.”  You may write papers about this idea and you may teach the passage to your students.  You may name your prestigious societies after Aristotle.  You may NOT, however, teach Kathleen Stock on the subject of whether people can identify their own genders.  You may not invite her to conferences. Especially not to meetings of The Aristotelian society.  Professor Stock is to be deplatformed.

For that matter, please do not informally question the source of our knowledge that people can identify their own genders. If a philosophy blog should raise these issues it is to be shunned.  Do not link to such a blog.  It must go dark. It is a fact that people can identify their own genders, and it is not to be interrogated, or discussed, and the source of such knowledge is not to be queried, challenged, or in any way shape or form investigated or discussed as an act of pedagogy or as a matter of curiosity amongst philosophical peers.  Doing so would constitute an act of violence against trans people.  I’m sure it is clear why.

I trust that this has been helpful.

Can we discuss the meta question of why there is this one exception?

Don’t be silly.

The NY Times is still normalizing breast-mutilation.

A recent Times article on chest binding prompted a discussion among readers about the practice, which some transgender and gender-nonconforming people use to compress their breasts and treat body dysphoria, as well as how we covered it.

I bet it did.

So the Times asked readers to report on their adventures in binding. They got more than 200 responses, mostly from very young people (of course – this wasn’t a fashion ten years ago).

I am 31 and have been wearing constrictive sports bras since I developed breasts in high school. I didn’t know about binders until well into my 20s. I wish I had. Without the availability of binders, many people like me spent years wearing Ace bandages around our chests. This practice was harmful and made it difficult to breathe. Now that binders are more widely available, I wear one most days.

I’m currently training to run the New York marathon for the second year in a row, and I’m starting graduate school at Columbia University in the fall. These are things that I would not have been able to do without a binder.

— R.J. Russell, 31

Eh? I wonder why Russell would not have been able to start grad school at Columbia without a binder.

I first had a desire to bind toward the end of middle school, when I came out as non-binary. Because of online articles that said binders would mutilate your body, my mother firmly decided against getting me one. It was only when I had my doctor and therapist assure her binding was safe that I was able to get my first binder, which drastically improved my self-image and mental health without any sacrifices to my physical health.

Binders tend to be used as a temporary solution to the problem of having breasts and cannot be worn at all times. During exercise they can restrict breathing, and back and chest pain can come from wearing them for more than about eight hours at a time. You should also never sleep with a binder on.

Erin Hurst, 17

So, binders are safe, but they cannot be worn at all times, during exercise they can restrict breathing, and back and chest pain can come from wearing them for more than about eight hours or to sleep in. How are we defining “safe” here?

I have been binding for four years, starting at age 16. I discovered binding through the internet as I began following more transgender individuals and navigating my own gender identity.

When I slipped on my first binder, well, it didn’t slip on. Despite my small frame, I could not fit into a medium. I ended up returning it and ordering a size up. Even that was still extremely difficult to put on. You get used to it, though. The tightness is a double-edged sword — sometimes you feel like you’re being suffocated, but at other times a binder feels like a close hug.

The longer I used binding, the more I could feel my body deteriorating. The physical pain got worse but so did the emotional. Slowly I began living a life where I couldn’t not bind. The initial euphoria of flatness turned into never being able to get flat enough. My body aches every day, I no longer have the lung capacity I once had, and my ribs have inverted. I fear breaking one when I sneeze. I am getting surgery this year and it can’t come soon enough.

— Caleb B. Sanders, 20

This must all be the fault of TERFs, right?

There’s a counter-letter to yesterday’s letter to the Times. Of course there is.

The title is “University support for LGBTQIA+ people”…as if the letter to the Times were about refusing to support people.

The letter is bad. It’s bad the way these things are always bad – it’s all buzzwords and rote phrases that are abstract and not defined. Academics shouldn’t be writing bad letters of that kind.

As academics and other colleagues working in higher education, we are writing to register our support for policies and practices which are inclusive and supportive of our trans colleagues and students.

What does that mean? Inclusive in what sense? Supportive how?

There is reasonable inclusion, which means not excluding people from events, institutions, lectures, classes, and the like that are meant for everyone. Then there’s unreasonable inclusion, which means not excluding people from events and institutions and the like that are intended for a specific category of people, not in order to “exclude” or “discriminate against” people not in that category, but for an array of other reasons, which can include an opportunity to talk freely without having to struggle to be heard. The powerless sometimes need to gather away from the powerful in order to organize and discuss. Women are a powerless group, and they sometimes need to organize with other women, and they may not want to “include” trans women in that category, and no one should force them to.

Workers don’t have to be “inclusive” of bosses when organizing. The Sioux don’t have to be “inclusive” of oil company executives when they’re organizing against a pipeline on tribal land. Atheists don’t have to be “inclusive” of Catholic bishops when organizing against the bishops’ efforts to force women to continue pregnancies they don’t want to continue. Universal blanket no-exceptions “inclusion” is not an ideal, and the damn fools who wrote this stupid letter should understand that.

Criticism and critique of policies and programmes that promote inclusiveness, such as Stonewall Diversity Champions, is not in and of itself unwelcome.

See above. See it as many times as it takes to get the point.

Such things are products of dialogue and discussion, and they evolve over the course of this dialogue. However, the primary concern must be with the wellbeing of the people subject to those policies. The vulnerability of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially young people and those who are transgender or gender-diverse, is well documented.

Is it? Is it well documented in any sense other than the sense that letters like this keep repeating it? And even if it is, does it follow that other “communities” are not vulnerable? No it does not. The “LGBTQIA+ community” does not have a monopoly on vulnerability.

As educators, we have a duty of care to our students and colleagues. Respect for their gender identity and/or sexuality is an integral aspect of that duty of care.

Why? How? In what sense? Meaning what? Why that rather than anything else? Is respect for their taste in music an integral aspect of that duty of care? Why should we buy into this notion of the special sacred status of a fictional gender identity? Why do we have to pay any attention to it at all?

It is inconceivable that this duty should be considered antithetical to “academic freedom”. Rather, ignoring or denying it precludes our fellow academics and colleagues — be they undergraduate students, postgraduate candidates, early career researchers, lecturers, professional-services staff or innumerable others — from experiencing a secure and supportive environment safely to pursue their own freedom.

Blah blah blah wuff wuff wuff – it’s all just tedious boilerplate, that doesn’t mean anything but sounds like what the commissars want them to say.

I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.

Ok ok yes I know I can’t force people to believe ridiculous things…but I sure as hell can bully them into pretending to believe them!

i know, but i can apply social pressure to at least make them act like they believe it, which is good enough for now

— David_Nagy (@davidanagy3) June 17, 2019

Useful, in a way, to see one of them admit it. “Come here, bitch, I need to apply some social pressure to you.”

false comparison. by denying trans people's identities, you are materially and emotionally hurting them.

— David_Nagy (@davidanagy3) June 17, 2019

Well, by claiming that sex/gender is an identity, trans dogmatists are intellectually and politically harming feminists. Impasse? How about we call it based on which claim is more fucking ludicrous.

He’s a philosophy grad student, by the way, which seems kind of sad.

The Natural History Museum – the one in South Kensington, next to the V&A –  has lost its mind.

The opening shot was June 1.

https://twitter.com/NHM_London/status/1134746531955916800

A rebellious member of the public asked what they were talking about.

'Queer' is used to refer to every aspect of LGBT+, and is predominantly used by the LGBTQ community to stake a contrast from the mainstream or heteronormative. We believe it best fits the scope of our discussion as one celebrating the full diversity of sexuality, sex & gender.

— Natural History Museum (@NHM_London) June 17, 2019

So “we” have suddenly stopped being the Natural History Museum and become a branch of Pink News instead?

https://twitter.com/NHM_London/status/1134766763852357633

Gorillas don’t know from “queer.”

The Red Beryl sums it up.

Our intention is not to validate anyone's existence, but to highlight the diversity of the natural world that has often been over looked. Queer is a term that encompasses the full diversity of sexuality & gender, and we believe it's one that best fits the scope of our discussion.

— Natural History Museum (@NHM_London) June 17, 2019

Bollocks. “Queer” is a political term, and it’s increasingly seen as one that’s antagonistic to women.

The museum shop has fabulous natural history postcards though.

This is great. Mere human dares to cough while Trump is talking.

Just over 20 seconds into this clip Trump gruffly asks Mick Mulvaney to leave the room because he coughed. No, seriously. Watch it for yourself.

Well adjusted people with a shred of empathy simply don’t behave this way. pic.twitter.com/5aKfTVruRK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 17, 2019

Sean Ingle at the Guardian:

The International Olympic Committee’s guidelines for transgender athletes are unfair on female athletes and should be suspended while more research is carried out, according to a group of former and current Team GB athletes surveyed by an academic.

In the survey of 15 female British Olympians, most of them answering anonymously, 11 also agreed with the view that “it can never be fair for transgender athletes who have been through male puberty to compete in female sport”, with another declining to answer.

…

Among those questioned – who came from track and field, swimming, rowing and modern pentathlon – were Tessa Sanderson, the 1984 Olympic javelin gold medallist, and Sharron Davies, who won a swimming silver in 1980, both of whom have already made their views known.

Devine also found widespread frustration among athletes with the IOC over a perceived lack of consultation before it published its latest transgender guidelines in 2015. The guidelines allow any transgender athlete to compete as a woman without undergoing surgery provided they have reduced their serum testosterone to 10nmols/L for at least 12 months.

Gee, why would female athletes find that frustrating?

The transgender academic Joanna Harper, who advises the IOC, accepts more research is needed. However, she argued: “Transgender women after hormone therapy are taller, bigger and stronger on average than cisgender women. But that does not necessarily make it unfair. In high levels of sport, transgender women are substantially underrepresented. That indicates that whatever physical advantages transgender women have – and they certainly exist – they are not nearly as large as the sociological disadvantages.”

Got that, kids? It’s magic! Transgender women are taller, bigger and stronger but they totally won’t win all the prizes or break women’s bones, because they have sociological disadvantages. Trans academic Joanna Harper knows this for sure and has no bias of any kind whatsoever, and the reporter Sean Ingle is also completely impartial and uninfluenced by his testicular investment in the subject. Women on the other hand can never be objective. That’s a scientific fact.