Wait, what? There’s a Riley Gaines Center?
Meanwhile, the Leadership Institute, a nearly 50-year-old nonprofit that trains conservative activists, launched a project it called the Riley Gaines Center. In fundraising materials, it promised to send Gaines to speak on college campuses and recruit other student athletes who had been “harmed by zealots of transgender ideology.” The Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation—one of the biggest funders of the conservative movement—donated $100,000 to the project in 2023. In the first five months of the center’s existence, the Leadership Institute paid Gaines more than $126,000, according to tax filings. As more student athletes began to forfeit matches with trans players, Gaines awarded them medals stamped with the Leadership Institute logo and emblazoned with the name of her center.
A 23-year old woman with no accomplishments, other than coming in 5th place at a swim meet, has an organization named after her, gets a cushy salary, and flits about the country making speeches (at $25,000 a pop) about how oppressed she is? I am impressed and disgusted. I should have lost more athletic competitions, I’d be rich now.
This story has more sleazy elements. Gaines is a loud supporter of her college swim coach, Lars Jorgensen, praising him as a wonderful person.
Gaines, who was seen as one of Jorgensen’s favorites, seemed to weather the pressure on the team better than most. “I never saw Riley cry because of something Lars said,” Ward recalls. “I never saw her have like a mental breakdown or show that any of this was getting to her.” In her book, Gaines writes that, despite his “utter savagery,” Jorgensen “became, and still is, one of my best friends.”
She’s also used her appearances on far right-wing media to strongly support him.
The Daily Wire article catapulted her into the feverish world of right-wing media. On March 28, 10 days after her race with Thomas, she appeared on the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show; on April 1, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn hosted Gaines on her podcast; on April 6 she was a guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight, where Carlson lauded her for “bravery.” “I’m just fortunate enough to where I have such an amazing support system at the University of Kentucky, whether that be from the athletic director all the way down to my head coach, Lars Jorgensen,” she told him.
It seems he needs that support, because she’s turning a blind eye to his atrocious behavior.
While Gaines continues blasting her message, another lawsuit is making its way through the courts more quietly. In the spring of 2024, two former members of Gaines’ University of Kentucky swim team filed a lawsuit alleging that Lars Jorgensen, their coach, had sexually assaulted them.
Both swimmers are former students whom Jorgensen hired as assistant coaches. In their complaint, they allege he groomed them by pressuring them to lose severe amounts of weight, emotionally abusing them in front of team members, and making sexual comments to them. The assistant coaches, who believed their careers were dependent on Jorgensen, allege he invited them to his home and sexually assaulted them.
One swimmer alleges Jorgensen forcibly raped her multiple times between 2019 and 2023, telling her he would “ruin her reputation” if she told anyone. The other says that in 2022, he groped and kissed her despite her protests. Their complaint also alleges that Jorgensen raped a third assistant coach at his home after a coaching staff Christmas party several years earlier. They claim that university employees were aware of some of Jorgensen’s abuse and discouraged them from reporting it when they came forward. (“UK has consistently acted upon and investigated allegations when they were known and when complainants have opted to pursue allegations and participate in the investigative process,” a university spokesperson says.)
That disregard of rapists in the locker room reminds me of Jim Jordan, who similarly ignored the sexual abuse going on in the locker room where he was a coach. Is this a thing now? Maybe we should prohibit coaches with a history of hysterical ranting at athletes from running for political office. It’s clear that Riley Gaines is a poor judge of character.
She also exaggerates and lies.
Soon the locker room became a central theme, as she accused the NCAA of having “forced” the swimmers to change with Thomas and allowing “any man” to walk in—though both the men’s and women’s locker rooms had been opened to the competitors at the women’s championship. “If you walked in and saw Lia and you didn’t want to be in there, you could walk next door to the other locker room, or go in the stall,” says one of Gaines’ teammates. Though a handful of swimmers at the meet also went public to say that Thomas’ presence in the locker room made them uncomfortable, Gaines’ version of the story was more lurid: “We turned around and there’s a 6-foot-4 biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia,” she told Fox News. “Not even probably a year, two years ago, this would have been considered some form of sexual assault, voyeurism.”
But other swimmers who saw Thomas in the locker room say she changed facing a corner, wrapped in a towel. “She was just in the corner, changing normally, keeping to herself,” says one competitor.
Lying. That’s how conservatives get paid the big bucks.
The allusion to Jordon as a coach at OSU raises the specter of team physician Richard Strauss sexually abusing young men. And that raises the specter of Lex and Abigail Wexner and their involvement with…guess who…Jeffrey Epstein. Several former OSU wrestlers who were sexually abused by Strauss contend that the Wexner’s helped Epstein abuse a woman named Maria Farmer. It’s a vicious circle of evil people.
As more student athletes began to forfeit matches with trans players, Gaines awarded them medals stamped with the Leadership Institute logo and emblazoned with the name of her center.
So Republicans absolutely HATE “participation trophies,” but they’re totally okay with non-participation trophies? Maybe they should give Republicans medals for dropping out of races.
“I never saw Riley cry because of something Lars said,” Ward recalls. “I never saw her have like a mental breakdown or show that any of this was getting to her.” In her book, Gaines writes that, despite his “utter savagery,” Jorgensen “became, and still is, one of my best friends.”
If someone is bragging about how they “never had a mental breakdown” because of what their coach said or did, that should raise HUGE concerns about what that coach is doing.
Also, it really looks like Gaines took all that coach’s abuse, and then instead of standing up to the coach and at least trying to call him out, she passed all that abusive hate on to anyone else weaker than her — specifically, trans people, who were already hated and marginalized by enough people that Gaines could feel safe in bullying them. Looks like a classic “chain of abuse.” The most charitable thing I can say about Gaines is that she’s another horribly broken, messed-up person whom Republicans can use as a tool for their insane, messed-up agenda.
As a counter point, the anti trans sportswear company XX-XY Athletics has offered $35K to any woman in the NWSL who is willing to speak out against trans and intersex individuals playing professional women’s soccer and has gotten exactly zero takers so far.
https://www.out.com/gay-athletes/trans-sports-xx-xy#rebelltitem2
Robro @ 1
This is gross.
This makes me wonder…is there any way to scam these super-MAGAites from the $$$ that has been donated to them by the usual subjects.
-I certainly need a stipend to finish my four-volume work “Why Mussolini was right”, alongside my tour speaking about Ayn Rand and why my cryptocurrency will help them become the real-life John Galt.
Can’t decide if this or the Grok post is the most depressing, either way, the combination has set me on a gloomy path for the day…
To add to my gloom, US news includes Congress passing a motion to condemn “socialism” with support of 86 “Democrats”; DOJ pretending Venezuela stole the 2020 election from Trump;.and the US pressuring Ukraine to submit to Russia in a deal that would destroy them and reward Russia.
What a wonderful world.
1) She is apparently quite stupid. She describe exhibitionism but mistakenly calls it voyeurism.
2) This reminds me of another story I read recently. It’s not a direct analogy, but shows that her understanding of applicable law is quite possibly wrong.
Faced with naked man, DoorDasher demands police action; they arrest her for illegal surveillance
1) no, Reginald. ‘watching us undress’ is indeed voyeurism.
John @ #8 — She claims that the “6-foot-4 biological man” did drop his pants and then watched them undress. Maybe a combo term: exhibitionist voyeurism?
Robro, of course. They are not mutually exclusive, though of course ‘voyeurism’ carries the connotation of hidden perving.
On the subject of unearned celebrity and authority, I want to link to this episode of Scathing Atheist :
“Scathing Atheist 664 Cried Wolf Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kgIWwVD1Kgg
-At the 32 minute mark Michael Marshall tells the story of Naomi Wolf, disgraced intellectual.
It’s predictable that Ms Gaines was not at the very top of the competition; those at the very top (even the ones who “only earned a silver medal” or equivalent) usually don’t expend a lot of effort Othering competitors who were “blocking” them from obtaining what they were entitled to because of who they were: Acclaim as the very bestest of all.
They can’t have the pony without working for it, either. But that’s another extended diatribe.
I think she is right to have objected, the ncaa has also agreed with her. Lia Thomas had been competing as a male and living as a male into her 20’s and gone through full male puberty. For the sake of fair competition, it wasn’t right to award Lia Thomas the championship. I think the issue is now she is being paid to speak out on every issue of trans athletes. Not every trans athletes is the same story.
My opinion is that there should be a tran athletic board to determine which gender the athlete should compete in.
It’s also unfair to say that Gaines is just a complainer who didn’t want to compete but Lia Thomas isn’t?
‘My opinion is that there should be a tran athletic board to determine which gender the athlete should compete in.’
But that’s the status quo!
@ducks
Duck-off shithead
A modest proposal, orthogonal to yours, ducksmcclucken.
Achieving fairness is easy enough; just apply Harrison Bergeron rules: cripple the strong, hobble the fast, dull the sharp.
Every edge clipped, every gift punished, competition reduced to pure fairness.
Best of all, it’s gender-neutral since it’s purely performance-based. Age neutral, too.
(One could include handicapped athletes with a bit of aggressive surgery, I suppose, it’s that good a suggestion)
Athletic boards already handle this. And looking at participation rates, transwomen are under represented in sports given the number in the general population.
I seem to have missed out on these supposed superpowers that going through male puberty is supposed to give you. I’d get worn out getting changed for swimming, let alone the thing itself.
And if trans people were to dominate in all sports… so what? Aren’t the best people supposed to win the sports?
@ ducksmcclucken – 21st November 2025 at 5:53 pm :
No, not really. Lia Thomas gets more complained about than complaining herself and the nature and validity of the complaints differ. It is valid to complain about – or call out bigotry in all its forms including transphobia.
Its not really fair to complain that your bigotry isn’t determining the lives of others and isn’t allowing you to win because other people in groups you are bigoted against also get to compete.
think she is right to have objected, the ncaa has also agreed with her. Lia Thomas had been competing as a male and living as a male into her 20’s and gone through full male puberty.
There’s a lot of politics and political pressure from the transphobes and Trumpists and the reichwing’s gender wars affecting what sporting bodies do and say now. As for Lia Thomas going through male puberty, she has also transitioned and gone through that process too which I note you’ve ignored :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas
For the sake of fair competition, it wasn’t right to award Lia Thomas the championship.
Lia Thomas won it – she wasn’t “awarded” it. She had to earn it by swimming better than the others. Like any and every other champion swimmer has to. You think Thomas turned up and they just said “Oh you’re trans” and then just gave it to her? Like Riley Gaines wants to just turn up and be awarded and handed things because she isn’t trans.
Is that really an issue? Or is it something she’s being forced to do because of all the culture war transphobic shit that is inflicted on her and other trans people? I’d say its the latter. Sports people generally are, rightly or wrongly, held in high esteem by many in our society and paid to say a lot of things – usually advertising but not always and have every right to express their views as everyone else. You think this is wrong because why?
Indeed. Some supposed trans athletes eg Imane Kehleif, Caster Semanya, Amélie Mauresmo etc. aren’t even trans but cis women or intersex thatare accused of not being sufficiently feminine. Because transphobia hurts cis women and others too.
So you think current bodies are failing to deal with the “Transes in sportses!! Oh noez!!” issue badly and want to set up a gender policing board or authority to tell individuals what they can and can’t do with their own bodies and personal identities. How would your proposed board deal with the three individuals – Mauresmo, Semanya and Khelief that I just noted? What if the athletes told this gender policing board of yours to get stuffed and mind their own business? Who would appoint this board and what powers would it have and why do you think it is actually necessary?
My opinion is that your opinion here is transphobic as fuck and you should reconsider it and your views on this generally.
Lia Thomas had been competing as a male…
At what level? Did she win championships in whatever category or level in which she competed? Your failure to even mention this is telling, ducks.
…and living as a male into her 20’s and gone through full male puberty.
Like cartomancer, I did not get superpowers as a result of full male puberty. Did you? Did any other AMABs here? I wouldn’t have blown many guys out of the water in all-male events, and I see no reason to believe I’d have blown past many women if I’d transitioned and competed against them as a woman.
Speaking of exaggerations and lies, claims Thomas was exceptional and therefore must have some advantage are not supported by evidence:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html
Oh, and…
Lia Thomas had been competing as a male and living as a male into her 20’s and gone through full male puberty.
Well, if we let teens who come out as trans take puberty-blockers before transitioning, that won’t be so much of a problem, will it?
A cis woman who’d had Lia Thomas’s exact same scores in the exact same competitions would have been considered a good but unremarkable athlete, but to hear conservatives tell it you’d think she was Michael Phelps.
Personally, I’d love to see some of these dudebros who insist that being AMAB gives someone an unbeatable advantage over anyone who’s been AFAB actually put their money where their mouth is and step into a ring with a women’s boxing champion.
But they won’t, because 5th place in a college swim meet is gold in the Oppression Olympics and a cushy gig on the Right Wing Grift Circuit.
@23 she was a division 1 national champion. In the men’s she ranked in low 400’s
@24 I am not sure who you refer to when you write “she was a division 1 national champion,” since Lia Thomas seems to have been ranked no higher than #36 among women college swimmers:
“According to the swimming data website Swimcloud, Thomas was ranked 36th among female college swimmers in the United States for the 2021–2022 season” (Wikipedia)
Full disclosure: I have no idea how such rankings work, or are established…..
@24– Well now this is plain dishonest. Here are Lia Thomas’s actual rankings:
In D1 Mid-Major men’s swimming, she was ranked 15th in 2016/17 and 9th in 2017/18.
She transitioned, missing 2019/20 for all but a few races and didn’t get a D1 ranking.
She returned to swimming in the women’s events in 2021/22 and got to 1st in the D1 Mid-Major rankings, but only 34th in Div1 and 44th in the US.
In her time swimming for the women’s team, she never set a record. That is, all existing and subsequent records are held by cis women. Not a single record is held by a trans woman despite being eligible to compete for years now (under certain conditions, such as being on HRT for a minimum time), which rather strongly argues against inherent biological advantage of being assigned male at birth.
Before you repeat any other misinformation you’ve gleaned from right-wing culture war sources, I suggest you read this Independent piece about Lia Thomas and the actual statistics behind her swimming performances, especially this:
davetaylor@25–
Lia Thomas won one race at the 2022 NCAA Div 1 national championship, the 500m freestyle, so technically that makes her a champion. Along with many other swimmers who won events. That meet included 13 solo and 5 relay races, so 33 women swimmers became champions.
ducksmclucken is parroting RW talking points to imply that Thomas, as a champion, had a sudden, gender-transition surge to dominance. She did not. She won one race at that meet, came fifth in another, and eighth (i.e. last) in another. This is, of course, a very strong result at a high-level athletic event. But it is not dominance. One of the other swimmers at the meet, cis woman Kate Douglass broke eighteen records. Now that’s dominance. Even in the race Thomas won, she finished more than 9 seconds behind the record set by Katie Ledecky, also a cis woman.
@27 chrislawson — thanks for the explication, which confirms my impression from a quick glance at a few online sources.
(I’m also amused that people would regard a win in one race as a “champion” performance, rather than simply being a winner in a race. I once beat my little brother in a race to the mailbox at our childhood home, so I suppose “ducks” would call me a “champion” as well!)
I was in a campground shower in Sweden. Basically a hut with rows of shower heads and a wood plank floor. You pulled a string and got blasted with about a liter of cold water. I heard voices, turned around and faced three women of various ages. They waved. I waved. And we went about our business. Not a big deal. Nobody gave a rat’s.
In this country I could imagine the police report: We went into the shower and there it was. Man nor beast could we tell the difference. The hideous creature was short, round and covered with grey fur. It gazed at us myopically and issued a faint grunt that could have been a greeting or a warning. Presently, it wrapped itself in a tattered terrycloth rag and shambled off into the gloom. We never saw it again nor would we want to.
I lived as a male into my 40s, puberty included, and was reasonably fit for most of that time. HRT drastically reduced my physical strength within 15 months of beginning transition. I couldn’t begin to move out the furniture that I’d previously moved into my studio, even though I was taking it downstairs instead of upstairs. Had to get some cis moving guys to take care of it.
My bones are still typical-dude-shaped, but there are cis women with broader shoulders than mine. And I face roughly the same osteoporosis risk as a cis woman with the same hormone profile. I am not at all physically exceptional compared to my cis girlfriends of comparable age.
@22. Raging Bee :
Quoting for Truth and excellent point.
@28. davetaylor : “I’m also amused that people would regard a win in one race as a “champion” performance, rather than simply being a winner in a race. I once beat my little brother in a race to the mailbox at our childhood home, so I suppose “ducks” would call me a “champion” as well!”
Had a great little jack Russell x Fox terrier – Harry Harry hamster – once. Called him a little champ all the time. Far as I know (had owners before me – rehomed) he never actuallywon athing. But such a great lil’champ & dog anyhow!
It seems disingenuous to say she just won one little race. She won a national championship in her event. She might have been ranked lower than number one,(which in some events she was ranked number one) because she went to a smaller conference. She won that conference and got to compete for the championship, which she won.
I’m fine with trans athletes competing, but I think we have to consider fair competition. There should be a board, a medical board to evaluate if there a physical advantage from that individual having lived as a man. I don’t think its an unreasonable thing to do. If you can’t acknowledge that there are physical advantages of having lived as a male for 21 years, I think you are not be genuine. If there aren’t any differences there would be no need to transition.
What’s disingenuous is pretending that Lia Thomas is somehow competing with an unfair advantage when there are many cis women who are better than she was. Should they be evaluated by a medical board?
“I’m fine with trans athletes competing, but I think we have to consider fair competition. There should be a board, a medical board to evaluate if there a physical advantage from that individual having lived as a man.”
Ahem. If one cis woman is stronger than another cis woman, how is that not a physical advantage?
Where’s the fairness?
Tsk. Already told you the fix.
Ducky, your entire heap of bogus transphobe blither-points has already been refuted using actual records of what did and did not happen in real sporting events. Plus a bit of lived experience from some of us here, which of course you totally ignored.
There should be a board, a medical board to evaluate if there a physical advantage from that individual having lived as a man.
Are you sure there wasn’t any such board doing any such review? Lots of professional sports do have governing bodies, you know. So how can you be sure there was no governing body overseeing any of the venues or events in which Lia Thomas was ever involved? I mean, someone organized those events, otherwise they wouldn’t have happened at all, right?
If you can’t acknowledge that there are physical advantages of having lived as a male for 21 years, I think you are not be genuine.
Yes, but experience shows there AREN’T always physical advantages. You’re not asking us to “acknowledge” such things, you’re asking us to ASSUME them, with no attempt to verify any of it. There’s a difference.
If there aren’t any differences there would be no need to transition.
Um…do you actually believe that differences in muscular strength are the ONLY meaningful differences between genders? If so, you’re even more ignorant of these matters than we’d thought you were. You really should stop blithering about subjects of which you CLEARLY know nothing. Shamefully stupid PRATTs dismissed.
It seems disingenuous to say she just won one little race.
How is it “disingenuous” if it’s factually correct?
I vote we discuss Duck’s right to participate in parts of society instead. Should they be allowed to go out to dinner? Clearly not, because their terrible conversation would ruin it for surrounding tables
They should be required to be medically certified as “fair” before being allowed to go out to dinner where other people might be eating.
I browsed a bunch of Google Scholar articles on HRT and athletic performance changes just now. To summarize, it looks like the average trans person on 1-3 years of HRT (male or female) is stronger than the average cis woman but weaker than the average cis man. Lots of overlap, of course.
Now, the mean differences between all four gender categories, in both strength and cardiopulmonary capacity, are almost entirely explained by differences in estimated lean body mass. So we could pretty much just divide athletes into LBM classes and forget about gender entirely, if that seemed “fair” to us. (Trans women would apparently have a slight disadvantage against other gender categories if we did so, but whatcha gonna do.)
Of course, within each weight class there would still be winners and losers, and presumably the winners would have some physical characteristics that helped them win a particular event, and then we could worry about whether that was unfair, and so on ad infinitum. (Or, per John, ad harrisonem bergeronem.)
@33. ducksmcclucken :
Really? So you think it is unfair for trans people tocompete at sports? How was Lia Thomas winning “unfair” exactly? Do tell.
You don’t. Most others do. You are outvoted. maybe think about why that is.
Yoiur failure toaddrss the points I raised in #19 is noted.
You want a board policing gender and femininity of atheltes huh? Fuck that shit. No.
Not evryone does transition. For many reasons. That don’t stop them being who they are or mean we shouldn’t accpet they are who they say they are.
Again, from my #19 you ignore the impact that her transition did have on Lia Thomas :
I’d like to think in good faith and charitable interpretation that you just overlooked & missed that point and didn’t do so deliberately but..well, did you?
@41 I’m just looking for a solution. I think a medical board with set standards, of what levels of testosterone or estrogen, bone density need to be for someone transitioning in order for them to compete. I don’t know all of what it should be, but should be in the range of others competing at that level, it would give a stamp of approval and hopefully dispel the concerns of other athletes.
I’m not entirely sure how it was unfair beyond the optics because there was no real medical board. There was the ncaa eligibility board but that is far from what would be needed, they also overturned their own ruling once it was unpopular and had no facts of the case to defend allowing her to compete.
She might of lost muscle and bone density, but to what levels? she also trained and competed as a male for most of her life, it’s like if a woman took steroids all her life and then came off them for the swimming season. There are legitimate concerns about trans women competing in women’s sports, I think it will better serve everyone to try and find a compromise and a standard than it would be to just call everyone transphobes and denying the reality of the situation. I think sports and competition are important for everyone to be able to participate, but it should be regulated so it maintains the fairness that it is required for it to serve its purpose.
Since when has college sports in the US been about fairness? Just look at the spread of success amongst college football teams. I would assume college swim teams also vary in success based on how much money their schools have to throw at them.
Lines up with my thought we should divide sports into something like weight classes instead of gender. And a lot of that is because I look forward to seeing cis manchilden whine and whine about being beaten by talented women, cis or trans.
Reminded of an episode of court TV (Judge Mathis?). Some guy (non-professional) who got in line for a match with a “foxy boxer” and tried to sue her for “mental anguish” when she pummeled him. The judge was having none of that. So much for male superpowers.
I don’t know all of what it should be, but should be in the range of others competing at that level, it would give a stamp of approval and hopefully dispel the concerns of other athletes.
Exactly: you have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about, you just want to see some sort of gatekeeping that accepts the worst prejudices — oops, excuse me, CONCERNS — of (a consistently small and thin-skinned minority of) other athletes.
I’m just looking for a solution.
You’re not “looking” anywhere. We’ve been offering you ACTUAL FACTS AND DOCUMENTED EVENTS relevant to this issue, and all you do is ignore it and keep on repeating the same old blither-points over and over. You’re just another bigot “just asking questions” over and over and never listening to or acknowledging any of the answers you’ve been given.
@45: Ducky doesn’t care about facts because they hurt their feelings.
Also, this entire belief that sports was somehow perfectly fair, rational and “pure,” before trans people came and ruined everything, is absolute bullshit. Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that people come in all shapes, sizes and constitutions; and those variations determine our opportunities, or lack thereof, in all the various sports. Taller people have an advantage in basketball, bigger and more muscular people have an advantage in US football, longer-legged people have an advantage in running and cycling, etc.; and people born with less-than-optimal constitutions are DISadvantaged in nearly all physical sports, however much they may love a sport or want to play. Is ANY of that “fair?” Is any of that really more “fair” than letting, or not letting, trans women play in women’s sports?
Reminded of an episode of court TV (Judge Mathis?). Some guy (non-professional) who got in line for a match with a “foxy boxer” and tried to sue her for “mental anguish” when she pummeled him. The judge was having none of that. So much for male superpowers.
Maybe mental anguish was his superpower?
I once had to spend a full 3 months telling YouTube to not recommend channels of all the anti-SJW/anti-Woke crybabies that kept popping up in my feed because I’m into Star Wars and video games. Nearly all of them had the crybaby pulling their hair out over some innocuous detail.
A lot of white cis men think they’re gold medalists in Oppression Olympics and that entitles them to my attention.
@ ducksmcclucken, #42
No, what you are looking for is a problem to justify your bigotry. One trans woman won one race, and lost several others to cis women, and from fact this you have decided that trans women competing against cis women is a problem because sometimes a trans woman might win because of some nebulous idea of inherent male superiority.
You are not making a rational argument, and no amount of cherry-picked data will change that fact. You are starting with the conclusion that men are just plain better than women at sports across the board, and therefore it’s unfair to allow one trans women to compete with cis women. It’s incoherent, it’s inconsistent with the science on the subject, and it’s completely ridiculous even within the context of the one example you’re working with.
Simply put, it’s bigotry, and you need to stop.
And, just to be clear: no, I don’t care if you can find other examples of trans women winning contests with cis women. I don’t care to wade into whatever data you want to misrepresent to support your cause. It’s all dishonest bullshit. It’s always dishonest bullshit whenever someone comes along “just looking for a solution” for an imaginary problem that, coincidentally, ends up denying a marginalized group basic human rights and dignity.
@Ragingbee
My experience, this is mostly a thing pushed by cis bigots who aren’t involved in the sports as a wedge issue against trans women. They’re trying to establish that we’re not women in some capacity, so they can then push that out to other areas
All the babble about bone density ect is just their attempt at finding a scientific justification for their bigotry
Also shades of misogyny, because transphobia is deeply entwined with that
dangerousbeans, it’s always trans women.
Because, um… fairness. Never trans men.
vucodlak nailed that salient asymmetry, I reckon.
You are starting with the conclusion that men are just plain better than women at sports across the board, and therefore it’s unfair to allow one trans women to compete with cis women.
@ducksmcclucken
I notice that you are bringing a lot of ‘I think . . .’ while other people are bringing facts. In the spirit of meeting you where you are I think you are transphobic, but don’t like to think of yourself as such, and so have grasped at ‘oh noes trans women in sports is unfair to real women’ thing to excuse your transphobia. I know I have rather more evidence from your own posts for my ‘I think’ than you have given for your ‘I thinks’, so does that seem fair to you?
All this talk of being fair takes me back to being a toddler and crying the cry of so many siblings “but it’s not fair!”, to which my delightful father’s answer was always a scornfully gleeful “it isn’t meant to be fair”. Perhaps that’s your problem? You’re a toddler?
Ducksmcclucken @42,
Oh, lord. None of this makes sense.
1) When a trans woman is on HRT, her testosterone and estrogen levels are usually more female-typical than a cis woman’s levels are, because that’s literally how they fine-tune our hormone dosage. We get blood panels every few months, so we know exactly what our levels are. Most cis women don’t.
2) Volumetric bone density is basically the same between cis men and cis women until middle age, although it’s slightly higher in cis women for specific regions of specific bones. Men have higher average bone mass than women simply because they tend to be larger, not because of differences in bone density.
3) As several others have asked you, what does the “for someone transitioning” part even add to this? If a cis female athlete has unusually high testosterone or low estrogen or dense bones–and most athletes have dense bones, because resistance and impact training increase bone density–then why wouldn’t she get banned as well under your proposal?
It is literally not like that, since she was on HRT for two years before she started swimming on the women’s team. Wikipedia is right there, you know?
And, again: why only trans athletes? It’s perfectly legal for a cis person to take steroids all their life and then go off them before competing. Athletic drug tests can’t even detect steroid use if it happened more than 18 months ago, max. For testosterone and its derivatives, the detectable window is less than 3 months. So why should we worry about Thomas’ testosterone levels from over two years before competition?
Nobody would call you a transphobe if you didn’t insist on treating trans and cis people differently. That’s just what the word means.
What is that purpose, in your opinion?
John Morales @51,
Yeah, it’s always like that, re: restrooms and locker rooms and whatnot. Trans women are scary perverted men invading women’s spaces, and cis women need to be protected from them. Trans men are just silly confused women trying to be men, and they need to be protected from themselves.
Conservatives assume that men are innately more powerful, forceful and competent than women, so trans women get demonized while trans men get erased or infantilized.
@Prax
Of course there have been instances of high T being used to persecute Black cis women…
Perhaps technical, perhaps over-analytic, but I think that at less than elite level, this thing called ‘aptitude’ and this other thing called ‘skill’ and maybe even other factors (endurance, weight/power, dedication, etc) also apply.
Put it this way: I spent a couple of decades playing club squash. It was fun, it was healthy, it was social.
Gender was not a thing (well, subtext aside), it was ranking and performance that mattered.
It was pragmatic. Smallish club, can’t turn people away on bullshit grounds.
Thing is, a div2 female player would certainly demolish a div4 male player, and hardly have to try to beat a div3 player. Fact.
Then you get to div1, then to State level, then to professional level. Bear that in mind.
Not linear in skill/performance/outcomes, not simplistic like fitness of muscle mass.
Logarithmic (though a low base), multifactorial.
Anyway, this is both my lived experience and perception.
I’m pretty sure it applies along every sport short of the elite level.
Or, to be blunt, skill and attitude and dedication matter as much as muscle in all sports, but particularly in technical sports. And the playerbase is only recently beginning to level out.
Women’s teams in traditional male sports.
(Hey, who knows basketball was deemed too vigorous for women, so that netball was created?
I for one :)
Strategy and precision and decision‑making are rather significant in most sports.
And, well, a sport where skill doesn’t factor kinda loses the point.
I also note that the claims at hand by deniers are not just arbitrary, not just hypocritical in context, not just inconsistently applied, but premised on an unstated mutatis mutandis.
[sorry, should have specified, all teams were mixed. only so many people to fill the ranks!]
Yes indeed! Anyone with a natural built-in advantage, such as runners with longer legs or larger lung capacity than average, should be excluded!
@57 KG
I don’t think medical interventions can reasonably be considered “natural built-in” advantages.
Better to argue that no medically obtained advantage exists, which the olympics have apparently concluded.
This anti trans stuff is getting beyond horrifying, and its gaining traction. I have half a dozen close friends who are trans and its taking a toll.
Here in Australia a bunch of politicians have gone apeshit with anti trans stuff. Drew Hutton got booted from the Greens over it but now he is reinstated (!). I argue with him about it but I just can’t any more. Its too constant. Too much shifting goal posts, circular reasoning and outright lies. I need a break.
DanDare, take a break!
Basically, it will rejuvenate your motivation and tolerance for your self-imposed task. Short-term concession for medium and long-term gain.
(Of course, easier to give advice than to take it)
—
BTW, erik333, I think you misapprehended KG’s sarcasm, and most certainly your ‘medical interventions’ criterion was introduced by you not he. cf. https://msmagazine.com/2024/09/12/transphobia-womens-sports-trans-women-imane-khelif-man/
@ 60 Resident Troll
Sure! Come back later! See how many friends have committed suicide! It’s all good!
Fuck me, Morales you are an utterly reprehensible human being. Way beyond disgusting.
The assault on the human rights of trans people is literally the worst assault on the rights of a “protected” (legally) minority in living memory in the “first world” as far as I’m aware. Far worse than homophobia. Far worse than the anti-Muslim backlash following “9/11”. Neither of those involved forced conversion or such comprehensive ostracism from society.
@ DanDare
Thank you for your arguing so far. Trans people are about half a percent of the population and cannot possibly be expected to defend themselves single-handedly. All cis people are morally obligated to defend them and repudiate transphobia whenever and wherever it rears its vile head.
@DanDare: Find some positive things to recharge, celebrate small victories when they come. Unfortunately, it sounds like you can’t afford to take a full day off. Be there when your friends need you, but do what you can to take care of yourself.
Thanks for the feedback. I did need a break, as do my friends. Just dropped it all for a day. Clarified my mind. Starting to look for more local, IRL allies.
The constant nightmare in the US doesn’t help, but its so far out of my circle of real influence.
@ ^ DanDare :nature therapy and pet therapy i.e.. spending time in nature & with pets works for & helps me FWIW. Can relate.
@61. Silentbob : The “resident troll” here would be “beholder” the Trump enabler as you should know by now.. BTW did you answer my questions for ya?