hecheated.org is great. I'm sure the reason the males are able to get away with this is that female sports have less funding than male sports and can't really pursue legal action? Also, why aren't the feminists marching on Washington over this?
Go march on Washington! Who’s stopping you? Oh, you have work and family and a busy schedule and need to spend limited disposable income on finally getting a vacation at some point? And you already educate and fight the good fight online, as the pen is mightier than the sword?
Yep. Same with nearly everyone else.
The men with all the resources are welcome to jump in and help. Considering how hard feminists work already, it is not ok to accuse them of “not doing enough”. Washington is owned by the rulers, anyway.
Fighting the powers directly point by point will only burn you out. Build parallel structures and communities (online included) and render the rulers irrelevant.
They become irrelevant when we build parallel structures that only include people of good character, who will not compromise projects or community. We need greater numbers of those people, hence the online truth-telling. Of course, rulers (papacy, monarchs) attack such operations, but the more of us there are, the more unlikely their success at stopping us becomes. So, less focus on stopping them in congress and more focus on boosting ourselves in business and philosophy.
I understand why many fight against the legistlation that screws over young female athletes and it's good for the sake of expediency, but the big picture is more like above.
Feminism doesn’t change no matter who “identifies” as whatever. Those who don’t adhere to feminist tenets are not feminist. They can call themselves what they like, and we are under no obligation to indulge their delusions.
Yikes, what a disappointing article. I have always been a feminist, fighting for women’s rights, and I have always known who women are, and I will never grant men women’s rights, regardless of their gender identity. I don’t wanna give up the word feminist either, just because feminist is still used by these women who are putting men first. How about you? What’s your relationship with the word?
Agree about the word. NEVER relenquish definition/use of a word to the enemy. Words have etymologies and their meanings are non-negotiable. They evolve over time, but do not naturally flip and mean their own opposite. If a word changes meaning overnight, we can be sure it’s the work of think tanks, who give marching orders even to the leading dictionaries. Give up a word, and next they will come for your other words and you will be left, for all intents and purposes, voiceless. Operation Tower of Babel.
Those last few words should be lingered over: ‘less skilled boys’. They remind us that sport should be a test of skill more than of natural advantage, which is the whole reason for having separate female and male categories
I am very bad at math, so I’m probably not a very good person to bring up this kind of objection. But here goes: you can’t measure fairness just by how often men compete or how often they win. what matters is what PERCENTAGE of athletes are men, and what percentage are women. If men are 5% of all athletes competing with women, and they are only winning 5% or less of the prizes, there is nothing unfair about that. If on the other hand, they are winning 10 or 20% of the prizes, that would indicate that their maleness is giving them an unfair advantage. Medical physicist Joanna Harper used an even more effective control by comparing trans runners both before and after their transitions. She discovered that their ability to win against females after transition was no higher than their ability to win against males before transition. This is strong evidence that hormone therapy removes the advantage that male runners usually have over female runners.
The advantage is not as easily eliminated in other sports however. Swimmer Lia Thomas was ranked in the lower 500s in various events before transition, and among the top 10 after transition. this is why the Olympic committee rightly disqualified Lia from competing against women. These kind of factors have to be considered if trans people are permitted to compete against women. These advantages can’t be measured however, if you only list the number of males competing and pay no attention to the percentages. I may not have figured out the best way to calculate the significance of those percentages. I would appreciate it if anyone with better math skills would do a better job than I did. Nevertheless I know for certain that these advantages can’t be determined if all we have is only one number measuring the quantity of athletes. More on this here: https://substack.com/@teedrockwell/note/p-157588382?r=l7a9l&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Why do we have to be mathematicians to know that men competing and winning prizes in women’s sports are cheating? It’s unfair no matter how you do the math! That’s just obfuscating the facts.
The only reason it is unfair is that men have physical advantages over women which enable men to win, even if they have put less effort into developing their skills.
if there were no such advantages, there is really no reason to have men and women compete separately. Why do it otherwise? Because God doesn’t want men and women competing against each other? Even if I were Christian, which I’m not, I’m reasonably sure there is nothing in the Bible one way or the other on that topic.
One way to prove or disprove this is to compare their victories before and after transitioning. There is strong evidence that any given man will lose certain kinds of strengths after HRT. There is less evidence that these losses will actually level the playing field. In some sports it appears to, in other sports it doesn’t. The math is helpful in determining whether that advantage is still there.
Teed, I see you working hard to understand the problem of males in female sports (I read the post you linked to and 3 of your comments on my work), and see that you're looking at it from a variety of angles. I appreciate all of that.
I don't have time to walk you through the three years I've spent thinking about this, but most of your conclusions are wrong due to lack of information; trusting the research of Joanna Harper, whose work has largely been discredited due to tiny sample sizes and historical self-reports - and even Harper recently admitted that there's no way to remove male advantage and is now proposing "meaningful competition" instead); and this assumption: that men can somehow earn their way into women's sports events if they take meds (69% do not) or don't win too often.
Each male in a female event replaces a female participant. There's no reason for any of them to be there. And why should ANY men win women's trophies? We don't care if it's just five percent (your example) or just one man. The male category is for males. All the males. The female category is ours, for obvious reasons.
Please try to see this from a female perspective, and it should get clearer.
I do appreciate your thoughtful and considerate responses, to both my post and to many others on this subject. That's a rare thing. There is almost no communication going on in this "debate". What we have are two echo chambers that constantly reinforce their animosity to each other. Check the comments on this post. This is the only one that offers anything resembling a critical response. Every other comment is cheerleading. That is true of every other post on this subject I have seen on Substack. (That may be a fault of the algorithm, of course). However if you go to Medium or Daily Kos, you get nothing but the other side, with all the comments cheerleading that position. And if you dare to take the forbidden side in either echo chamber, you get showered with abuse. Again, I am thankful that you have tried in some of your posts to combat this problem. I will continue to read your posts for that reason.
Part of the problem is that there isn't any agreement on acceptable language. I have to refer to Transwomen as women if I'm talking to one side, and as men if I'm talking to the other. How can there be dialog on the important issues when we are quibbling over word choice? I have to rewrite everything for each side to make sure I don't trigger my readers over this issue.
Both sides of this debate need to compromise. This issue needs to be resolved as quickly as possible, because the MAGA fascists are riding it to victory. That's the only reason I'm studying this issue. I have almost no interest in sports, and so I don't really care either way. That makes it hard for me to empathize with either side, of course, which is a handicap. But it might increase my chance of being able to see both sides with relative clarity. (It's not a matter of one side being the female perspective, however. The majority of people who call me transphobic are women.)
Yes, the MAGA fascists are riding it to victory, and that's the fault of liberals who have handed it to them on a silver platter.
Mariah and I -- and millions of other women -- are liberals. But we're not ideologues and we're not idiots. And we are furious with the Democratic Party and with people who clalim they're liberals for their insane stance on this. They are wrong. They are harming people, especially women and children. They are falsely framing trans ideology as a civil rights issue when it's nothing of the sort.
People can't change their sex. Men can't become women, and women can't become men. Period.
Single-sex spaces exist for a reason. For the safety of women and girls. And unless the Dems wake up and come back to common sense, they're going to keep losing and losing and losing.
Check out DIAG -- Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender:
Yes. Thank you, Lisa! I love how you write. In a review, Robert Lipsyte of the New York Times once wrote that I write "with both elbows flying." I'll pass that compliment on to you. :-)
I refer to this as “men imitating women” then “imitating victory”.
I’m surprised there are not more Fraud lawsuits. It’s easy to construct. By the looks of it there are 10’s of thousands of opportunities.
You pay to sponsor a women’s running event.
A man participates.
You sue the event for fraud.
You pay to enter a women’s bicycle event.
A man participates.
You sue the event for fraud.
You are on a women’s college volleyball team.
A man participates.
You sue the school for fraud.
You pay to attend a women’s soccer match.
A man participates.
You sue the event for fraud.
The class action case of fraud is trivially easy.
All the women participating sue each and every sports body claiming female sports.
They sue for each man present.
They sue the governing body.
They sue each board member individually.
They sue the sponsors.
All assuming women’s sports event and governing bodies are run by businesses and associations, they have D&O insurance - Directors and Officers, in case those people make poor decisions they are covered for personal liability. I’ve been on boards and run non-profit research institutions, I have had the legal briefings and paid for the insurance.
Sports associations become non-insurable if they begin having lawsuits against the club for fraud, and against the officers.
I’d recommend advocating for fraud suits since they are absurdly simple to litigate.
I would also send threatening letters en mass to associations and institutions notifying them that women’s groups are assembling legal teams to consider how much damage they have endured from past fraud cases, and that they should retain any and all records relating to the due diligence they took at ensuring no males entered the competition, as men imitating women have become pervasive in the sports.
I’ve been trying to understand why this even happens.
Eek! I feel so… conservative. Well that was 4 months ago. It would also just be approached by empathetic people like teen girls. Paxton is a real piece of work but nobody would feel poorly about young female athletes.
I agree that fraud is an intriguing approach to the problem of males in female sports. In the Texas Attorney General's suit against the NCAA, "The lawsuit alleges the NCAA engaged in deceptive business practices by promoting women's sporting events that are actually "mixed sex sporting events where men can compete against women."
There's a temporary injunction against Texas' call for sex texting, but the main argument could prevail, here or in other cases.
I read your book "The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football" when it first came out and thought it was brilliant! I've actually been wondering what you thought of this whole trans ideology business and the takeover of women's and girls' sports. Glad to see you're still out there punching!
:-) Hi Clemence, Of course I love hearing all of that. The phrase "Glad to see you're still out there punching!" made me laugh. But you're right: That is what it takes sometimes, even when one's boxing gloves are just fingers on a keyboard. Thanks so much for your enthusiastic support.
Athena is a hero. Thank you for highlighting her work and her words. This is scandalous. I will find a way to share the findings with my running and tennis friends. They choose to ignore this. How dare they?
One hole in the logic: We're told that sex isn't real and that there are more than two genders, yet a model that is arguably based on either/both binary sex and gender persists. That is, TRAs are not arguing for a change from the boys'/men's - girls'/women's teams dynamic -- why? Well, seems that's because, belying their claims about more than two genders and sex being a spectrum, they need there to be teams of female athletes for the male athletes to beat.
Yes - it still comes down to a binary, and sexist stereotypes about how women or men do or should look and behave. And yes, sometimes it's about defeating women. Other times it seems to be mostly about being publicly affirmed as belonging in the female category. If the sports rules say that you're allowed to compete in the women's category, then you must be "really" a woman after all. Same for women's private spaces. To go there is to insist that society treat you like a woman, with the same (limited!) privileges.
Yes—you're right, it is also about the "validation" of being on the "women's team." Can't get that on an "open team" or being welcomed on the men's team.
Maybe they (trans-identified) could get validation if they weren’t ostracized on the men’s side? Like they could wear ponytails or lipstick or women’s tank suits in men’s competition and that’d be OK? A solution? Differentiate ‘women’ from sex ‘female’? Would have to maintain the rules for transmen (they shouldn’t be ostracized if bearded, mastectomied & going bear chested (a swim event or some such)? We need solutions bad!
To be honest I couldn’t care less what men wear, if anything. I’ve lived in cultures where men wore “women’s” clothing - sarongs among the Malay and Dayaks. It’s such a non-thing. In western culture men wear women’s clothing as a statement, like clockwork, every 15 years to be gender bendy - it always appears on runways as being “edgy”. As edgy as a waistcoat or cravat. Ponytails are ubiquitous, and few women wear lipstick in competition (I find makeup by either sexes kabuki-like strange anyway). But we are not speaking of men wearing a Gaultier male kilt skirt. We are speaking of all aspects of an appearance calculated to mimic women.
Theis appearance is the signal that they are oppressed, and a woman, and it is supposed to then short-circuit aggressive impulses by activating protective ones, and gaining priveliges to female resources by deception and fraud, if only at an unconscious level.
You are a women, you may scan a room as you disrobe, you seem to register women, you trust women who have shared need for safety.
Trans are present. They are men mimicking women. They have manipulated the trust instinct to gain privileged access via disguise. They watch you undress. It provides a sexual kick of voyeurism. They have no shared need for safety from men as women. It is a corrupt trust they leverage.
You may detect them. Your instinct is to protect yourself from unwanted male attention. You protest their unwanted presence, as they have abused the trust instinct female-only safety.
You are told that what you feel is abusive and oppressive, these are women, you are mistaken.
No, their presence is abusive and oppressive. It has leverage female trust in the presence of women to feel safe. They are men mimicking women. You cannot trust what they say because anything they say is in service of perpetuating the mimicry. It’s is called compulsion.
Men mimicking women in any situation where women may mistake them for men is abuse and corruption of female trust for men to gain unwanted and unearned priviléged access to what society deems the special protective domain of women.
Critiquing the look then is seen as being aggressive and bullying, especially if you deny
I have yet to see any TRAs push for acceptance of trans women by men—except for straight men to see them as being the same as cis women and to date them.
Yes, much of the problem lies with rigid male sex roles. If men would welcome men who wear lipstick, ponytails, etc. into men's sports, that could go a long way toward freeing people to dress as they wish while competing in the proper sex category. We know from effeminate gay men's horror stories that this is not the case in many sports, but it's a vision for men to work toward.
On the women's side, there is no rush among trans-identified women to play with men. This highlights the fallacy that males who ID as trans "must" be "affirmed" in the women's category. Women stay in the women's category regardless of gender ID because that makes the most sense competitively (men are too big, too fast, too strong), and those who call themselves transmen are not reporting any massive gender dysphoria as a result.
Those women who appear somewhat "masculine" are already accepted among female athletes (after all, just playing sports has long been considered masculine) -- as long as they have not taken testosterone, which is disqualifying. In that case, they, too, should be welcomed on in the men's (or renamed open) category, though their testosterone boost will generally not improve their performance enough to match men's natural performance advantage.
Men sometimes like to wear dresses, wigs, make-up. Whatever. As Eddie Izzard said before he discovered the glories of male supremacy, "They're not women's clothes. They're mine."
I had a good friend in the 1980s and 90s who was in a rock band and liked to wear dresses and make-up onstage. We all encouraged him. He considered himself extremely masculine, and heaven help the ignoranamus who tried to tell him that was women's dress. It was men's dress because he was wearing it.
I raised my son nonsexist. Everything he owned and wore, all across the "gender" spectrum, was 100% boyish because he was 100% a boy.
This all came in very handy when I recently educated the best friend of my friend from the 1980s (one of my oldest and dearest friends) on how "transgenderism" is the enforcement of gender--the exact *opposite* of smashing gender like his buddy.
100% - men mimic women for the same reason many animals do - to avoid sex competition and gain access to females by deception.
The film “Some Like it Hot” perfectly dramatizes trans - two men evade mafia execution by mimicing women, gain access to an all woman’s band taking jobs from women, ogle women changing clothes in private, and Tony Curtis gains privileged information from Marilyn Monroe he uses to woo her.
Trans indeed also do it to avoid male violence - male sex mimics die of violent death at half the rate of other men.
The Penn State Swim team is not a street gang however, so that reason fails.
Yes, there are the predators hanging out in locker rooms to prey on women or women's bodies. But I think with the athletes, it usually seems more self-centered and confused than that. Trying to blend in with the women, be "affirmed as a woman," even in the most egregious circumstances, when he's so obviously not.
Just yesterday a coworker that normally has no interest in sports and I don't think ever golfed was telling me about a trans golfer that is winning in women's golf. Unfortonatly the stereo type is that men that ordinarily don't care about women's sports are the ones complaining about this. It's not fair but I think women are going to have to be the loudest on this.
I only expect it to become bigger as prize money and pro salaries go up for women's sports and certian less democratic countries chase more medals for national glory.
Yes, that golfer is probably Hailey Davidson, who this week failed to qualify for the LPGA tour but will play on another smaller women's tour. 275 female golfers signed a letter of protest and the LPGA is said to be reconsidering whether this is really such a great idea. I welcome male and female voices of protest, information, sanity. Women and girls are getting louder and louder; seems to be coming to a head - but countless world organizations are involved in decision-making, which at the moment must happen on an organization-by-organization basis. A federal law here in the States would also do it.
A federal law on it would bemuch better. You can imagine smaller sports organizations don't have the money and time to get tied up in court over these things. A similar thing happened in women's MX a few years ago and people were worried about what would happen but it turns out she finished af enough down the order that it didn't matter.
I think it's an unfortonate distraction in th epolitical world that gives an uperhand to the MAGA gang while the left has to tip toe around these issues much more.
Please stop referring to people who voted for Trump in a derogatory tone. MAGA gang. Really? I am a human with legitimate political and social concerns. Additionally, I have been ripped apart at the seams as my daughter spirals towards ruination due to gender ideology being shoved into every aspect of culture, education, government and medicine. The fraud perpetrated on her is astounding. Criminal. It is trying to kill her, so please, just stop it.
So sorry about your daughter, Sweet Caroline -- and about your feeling "ripped apart at the seams." Yes, it's coming at us from all angles, and devastating to so many families, and far beyond.
I agree. Democrats need to come to their senses and remember their longstanding support for women's equal rights. Even if a male athlete finishes far from the podium in a female event, he's still taking up space where he does not belong.
Yes, I agree, but I feel a need to note that this is not about how successfully men disguise themselves as women. Nor how women actually look, or should look. We can look any way we want, as can men. We just need men to admit that they're men and stay in their own (men's category) lane.
Brava, Athena, whoever you are! “He Cheated” is an invaluable resource. And thanks so much to you, Mariah, for compiling so much important information in this post. I am saving this for reference and use when confronted with the claim “but there are only a few.” (Of course, as we know, a few is still too many. The women’s category is for women.)
hecheated.org is great. I'm sure the reason the males are able to get away with this is that female sports have less funding than male sports and can't really pursue legal action? Also, why aren't the feminists marching on Washington over this?
Go march on Washington! Who’s stopping you? Oh, you have work and family and a busy schedule and need to spend limited disposable income on finally getting a vacation at some point? And you already educate and fight the good fight online, as the pen is mightier than the sword?
Yep. Same with nearly everyone else.
The men with all the resources are welcome to jump in and help. Considering how hard feminists work already, it is not ok to accuse them of “not doing enough”. Washington is owned by the rulers, anyway.
Fighting the powers directly point by point will only burn you out. Build parallel structures and communities (online included) and render the rulers irrelevant.
Agree but don’t understand the last paragraph. How do the rulers become irrelevant?
They become irrelevant when we build parallel structures that only include people of good character, who will not compromise projects or community. We need greater numbers of those people, hence the online truth-telling. Of course, rulers (papacy, monarchs) attack such operations, but the more of us there are, the more unlikely their success at stopping us becomes. So, less focus on stopping them in congress and more focus on boosting ourselves in business and philosophy.
I understand why many fight against the legistlation that screws over young female athletes and it's good for the sake of expediency, but the big picture is more like above.
Interesting food for thought. Thanks.
Yes, I love HeCheated.org too.
We are pursuing legal action in many states and federally. Here's a list of current cases:
https://womenssportspolicy.substack.com/p/recent-lawsuits-over-male-participation
And we are feminists. That's where TERF comes from. :-)
Yes, I’d say we are the feminists, because feminism today is “inclusive” to the point that it no longer focuses on real women’s issues. https://abcnews.go.com/US/examining-modern-feminism-wave-now/story?id=97617121
Feminism doesn’t change no matter who “identifies” as whatever. Those who don’t adhere to feminist tenets are not feminist. They can call themselves what they like, and we are under no obligation to indulge their delusions.
Yikes, what a disappointing article. I have always been a feminist, fighting for women’s rights, and I have always known who women are, and I will never grant men women’s rights, regardless of their gender identity. I don’t wanna give up the word feminist either, just because feminist is still used by these women who are putting men first. How about you? What’s your relationship with the word?
Agree about the word. NEVER relenquish definition/use of a word to the enemy. Words have etymologies and their meanings are non-negotiable. They evolve over time, but do not naturally flip and mean their own opposite. If a word changes meaning overnight, we can be sure it’s the work of think tanks, who give marching orders even to the leading dictionaries. Give up a word, and next they will come for your other words and you will be left, for all intents and purposes, voiceless. Operation Tower of Babel.
WOW
This old cruddy dude didn't have the decency to put his tools in his tool box. He needs to be flogged
Those last few words should be lingered over: ‘less skilled boys’. They remind us that sport should be a test of skill more than of natural advantage, which is the whole reason for having separate female and male categories
I am very bad at math, so I’m probably not a very good person to bring up this kind of objection. But here goes: you can’t measure fairness just by how often men compete or how often they win. what matters is what PERCENTAGE of athletes are men, and what percentage are women. If men are 5% of all athletes competing with women, and they are only winning 5% or less of the prizes, there is nothing unfair about that. If on the other hand, they are winning 10 or 20% of the prizes, that would indicate that their maleness is giving them an unfair advantage. Medical physicist Joanna Harper used an even more effective control by comparing trans runners both before and after their transitions. She discovered that their ability to win against females after transition was no higher than their ability to win against males before transition. This is strong evidence that hormone therapy removes the advantage that male runners usually have over female runners.
The advantage is not as easily eliminated in other sports however. Swimmer Lia Thomas was ranked in the lower 500s in various events before transition, and among the top 10 after transition. this is why the Olympic committee rightly disqualified Lia from competing against women. These kind of factors have to be considered if trans people are permitted to compete against women. These advantages can’t be measured however, if you only list the number of males competing and pay no attention to the percentages. I may not have figured out the best way to calculate the significance of those percentages. I would appreciate it if anyone with better math skills would do a better job than I did. Nevertheless I know for certain that these advantages can’t be determined if all we have is only one number measuring the quantity of athletes. More on this here: https://substack.com/@teedrockwell/note/p-157588382?r=l7a9l&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Why do we have to be mathematicians to know that men competing and winning prizes in women’s sports are cheating? It’s unfair no matter how you do the math! That’s just obfuscating the facts.
The only reason it is unfair is that men have physical advantages over women which enable men to win, even if they have put less effort into developing their skills.
if there were no such advantages, there is really no reason to have men and women compete separately. Why do it otherwise? Because God doesn’t want men and women competing against each other? Even if I were Christian, which I’m not, I’m reasonably sure there is nothing in the Bible one way or the other on that topic.
One way to prove or disprove this is to compare their victories before and after transitioning. There is strong evidence that any given man will lose certain kinds of strengths after HRT. There is less evidence that these losses will actually level the playing field. In some sports it appears to, in other sports it doesn’t. The math is helpful in determining whether that advantage is still there.
Teed, I see you working hard to understand the problem of males in female sports (I read the post you linked to and 3 of your comments on my work), and see that you're looking at it from a variety of angles. I appreciate all of that.
I don't have time to walk you through the three years I've spent thinking about this, but most of your conclusions are wrong due to lack of information; trusting the research of Joanna Harper, whose work has largely been discredited due to tiny sample sizes and historical self-reports - and even Harper recently admitted that there's no way to remove male advantage and is now proposing "meaningful competition" instead); and this assumption: that men can somehow earn their way into women's sports events if they take meds (69% do not) or don't win too often.
Each male in a female event replaces a female participant. There's no reason for any of them to be there. And why should ANY men win women's trophies? We don't care if it's just five percent (your example) or just one man. The male category is for males. All the males. The female category is ours, for obvious reasons.
Please try to see this from a female perspective, and it should get clearer.
To learn more, please read any/all of my columns in my #SaveWomensSports channel: https://strongerwomen.substack.com/s/save-womens-sports
Respectfully, M.
I do appreciate your thoughtful and considerate responses, to both my post and to many others on this subject. That's a rare thing. There is almost no communication going on in this "debate". What we have are two echo chambers that constantly reinforce their animosity to each other. Check the comments on this post. This is the only one that offers anything resembling a critical response. Every other comment is cheerleading. That is true of every other post on this subject I have seen on Substack. (That may be a fault of the algorithm, of course). However if you go to Medium or Daily Kos, you get nothing but the other side, with all the comments cheerleading that position. And if you dare to take the forbidden side in either echo chamber, you get showered with abuse. Again, I am thankful that you have tried in some of your posts to combat this problem. I will continue to read your posts for that reason.
Part of the problem is that there isn't any agreement on acceptable language. I have to refer to Transwomen as women if I'm talking to one side, and as men if I'm talking to the other. How can there be dialog on the important issues when we are quibbling over word choice? I have to rewrite everything for each side to make sure I don't trigger my readers over this issue.
Both sides of this debate need to compromise. This issue needs to be resolved as quickly as possible, because the MAGA fascists are riding it to victory. That's the only reason I'm studying this issue. I have almost no interest in sports, and so I don't really care either way. That makes it hard for me to empathize with either side, of course, which is a handicap. But it might increase my chance of being able to see both sides with relative clarity. (It's not a matter of one side being the female perspective, however. The majority of people who call me transphobic are women.)
Yes, the MAGA fascists are riding it to victory, and that's the fault of liberals who have handed it to them on a silver platter.
Mariah and I -- and millions of other women -- are liberals. But we're not ideologues and we're not idiots. And we are furious with the Democratic Party and with people who clalim they're liberals for their insane stance on this. They are wrong. They are harming people, especially women and children. They are falsely framing trans ideology as a civil rights issue when it's nothing of the sort.
People can't change their sex. Men can't become women, and women can't become men. Period.
Single-sex spaces exist for a reason. For the safety of women and girls. And unless the Dems wake up and come back to common sense, they're going to keep losing and losing and losing.
Check out DIAG -- Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender:
https://www.di-ag.org
Yes. Thank you, Lisa! I love how you write. In a review, Robert Lipsyte of the New York Times once wrote that I write "with both elbows flying." I'll pass that compliment on to you. :-)
I refer to this as “men imitating women” then “imitating victory”.
I’m surprised there are not more Fraud lawsuits. It’s easy to construct. By the looks of it there are 10’s of thousands of opportunities.
You pay to sponsor a women’s running event.
A man participates.
You sue the event for fraud.
You pay to enter a women’s bicycle event.
A man participates.
You sue the event for fraud.
You are on a women’s college volleyball team.
A man participates.
You sue the school for fraud.
You pay to attend a women’s soccer match.
A man participates.
You sue the event for fraud.
The class action case of fraud is trivially easy.
All the women participating sue each and every sports body claiming female sports.
They sue for each man present.
They sue the governing body.
They sue each board member individually.
They sue the sponsors.
All assuming women’s sports event and governing bodies are run by businesses and associations, they have D&O insurance - Directors and Officers, in case those people make poor decisions they are covered for personal liability. I’ve been on boards and run non-profit research institutions, I have had the legal briefings and paid for the insurance.
Sports associations become non-insurable if they begin having lawsuits against the club for fraud, and against the officers.
I’d recommend advocating for fraud suits since they are absurdly simple to litigate.
I would also send threatening letters en mass to associations and institutions notifying them that women’s groups are assembling legal teams to consider how much damage they have endured from past fraud cases, and that they should retain any and all records relating to the due diligence they took at ensuring no males entered the competition, as men imitating women have become pervasive in the sports.
I’ve been trying to understand why this even happens.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-1-incipendum
Eek! I feel so… conservative. Well that was 4 months ago. It would also just be approached by empathetic people like teen girls. Paxton is a real piece of work but nobody would feel poorly about young female athletes.
Feeling conservative on this issue is a good feeling! The liberals that support trans” women” are not liberal…they’re illiberal.
I agree that fraud is an intriguing approach to the problem of males in female sports. In the Texas Attorney General's suit against the NCAA, "The lawsuit alleges the NCAA engaged in deceptive business practices by promoting women's sporting events that are actually "mixed sex sporting events where men can compete against women."
There's a temporary injunction against Texas' call for sex texting, but the main argument could prevail, here or in other cases.
https://midmichigannow.com/news/nation-world/texas-ag-sues-ncaa-over-biological-men-competing-in-womens-sports-ken-paxton-transgender-lgbt-trans-gay-lesbian-athletics-collegiate-universities-sporting-events
I fear He Cheated may have been nobbled.
Uh-oh. I sent a message to the owner. Will report back if I learn anything.
It’s back online.
I read your book "The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football" when it first came out and thought it was brilliant! I've actually been wondering what you thought of this whole trans ideology business and the takeover of women's and girls' sports. Glad to see you're still out there punching!
:-) Hi Clemence, Of course I love hearing all of that. The phrase "Glad to see you're still out there punching!" made me laugh. But you're right: That is what it takes sometimes, even when one's boxing gloves are just fingers on a keyboard. Thanks so much for your enthusiastic support.
Haha, yes, I also punch mostly with my keyboard.
Thanks and what a great and important resource.
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/yeh-alright
Dusty
Terrific. Thanks for re-posting, Dusty!
You're welcome, Mariah. Great piece.
Here is my urgent update for today FYI
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/stand-with-gript-news
Dusty
Athena is a hero. Thank you for highlighting her work and her words. This is scandalous. I will find a way to share the findings with my running and tennis friends. They choose to ignore this. How dare they?
Yes, HeCheated.org offers a wealth of otherwise unknown information, all due to the volunteer labor of one strong woman.
Update to He Cheated.org info just about 2 months later, thanks to MA4Women: https://substack.com/@ma4women/note/c-84077579?
One hole in the logic: We're told that sex isn't real and that there are more than two genders, yet a model that is arguably based on either/both binary sex and gender persists. That is, TRAs are not arguing for a change from the boys'/men's - girls'/women's teams dynamic -- why? Well, seems that's because, belying their claims about more than two genders and sex being a spectrum, they need there to be teams of female athletes for the male athletes to beat.
Yes - it still comes down to a binary, and sexist stereotypes about how women or men do or should look and behave. And yes, sometimes it's about defeating women. Other times it seems to be mostly about being publicly affirmed as belonging in the female category. If the sports rules say that you're allowed to compete in the women's category, then you must be "really" a woman after all. Same for women's private spaces. To go there is to insist that society treat you like a woman, with the same (limited!) privileges.
Yes—you're right, it is also about the "validation" of being on the "women's team." Can't get that on an "open team" or being welcomed on the men's team.
Maybe they (trans-identified) could get validation if they weren’t ostracized on the men’s side? Like they could wear ponytails or lipstick or women’s tank suits in men’s competition and that’d be OK? A solution? Differentiate ‘women’ from sex ‘female’? Would have to maintain the rules for transmen (they shouldn’t be ostracized if bearded, mastectomied & going bear chested (a swim event or some such)? We need solutions bad!
To be honest I couldn’t care less what men wear, if anything. I’ve lived in cultures where men wore “women’s” clothing - sarongs among the Malay and Dayaks. It’s such a non-thing. In western culture men wear women’s clothing as a statement, like clockwork, every 15 years to be gender bendy - it always appears on runways as being “edgy”. As edgy as a waistcoat or cravat. Ponytails are ubiquitous, and few women wear lipstick in competition (I find makeup by either sexes kabuki-like strange anyway). But we are not speaking of men wearing a Gaultier male kilt skirt. We are speaking of all aspects of an appearance calculated to mimic women.
Theis appearance is the signal that they are oppressed, and a woman, and it is supposed to then short-circuit aggressive impulses by activating protective ones, and gaining priveliges to female resources by deception and fraud, if only at an unconscious level.
You are a women, you may scan a room as you disrobe, you seem to register women, you trust women who have shared need for safety.
Trans are present. They are men mimicking women. They have manipulated the trust instinct to gain privileged access via disguise. They watch you undress. It provides a sexual kick of voyeurism. They have no shared need for safety from men as women. It is a corrupt trust they leverage.
You may detect them. Your instinct is to protect yourself from unwanted male attention. You protest their unwanted presence, as they have abused the trust instinct female-only safety.
You are told that what you feel is abusive and oppressive, these are women, you are mistaken.
No, their presence is abusive and oppressive. It has leverage female trust in the presence of women to feel safe. They are men mimicking women. You cannot trust what they say because anything they say is in service of perpetuating the mimicry. It’s is called compulsion.
Men mimicking women in any situation where women may mistake them for men is abuse and corruption of female trust for men to gain unwanted and unearned priviléged access to what society deems the special protective domain of women.
Critiquing the look then is seen as being aggressive and bullying, especially if you deny
I have yet to see any TRAs push for acceptance of trans women by men—except for straight men to see them as being the same as cis women and to date them.
Yes, much of the problem lies with rigid male sex roles. If men would welcome men who wear lipstick, ponytails, etc. into men's sports, that could go a long way toward freeing people to dress as they wish while competing in the proper sex category. We know from effeminate gay men's horror stories that this is not the case in many sports, but it's a vision for men to work toward.
On the women's side, there is no rush among trans-identified women to play with men. This highlights the fallacy that males who ID as trans "must" be "affirmed" in the women's category. Women stay in the women's category regardless of gender ID because that makes the most sense competitively (men are too big, too fast, too strong), and those who call themselves transmen are not reporting any massive gender dysphoria as a result.
Those women who appear somewhat "masculine" are already accepted among female athletes (after all, just playing sports has long been considered masculine) -- as long as they have not taken testosterone, which is disqualifying. In that case, they, too, should be welcomed on in the men's (or renamed open) category, though their testosterone boost will generally not improve their performance enough to match men's natural performance advantage.
Exactly. Though I know a few males who dress as women but still use male restrooms and do not compete against women. So it can happen. Stay tuned. :-)
If they're men, they're dressing as men, not women. They're men regardless of what they wear, and everyone knows it.
That's smashing gender.
Good point. Correction: Dress in women's clothes, or dress as they think women do or should dress. Circling back to the term transvestite.
Men sometimes like to wear dresses, wigs, make-up. Whatever. As Eddie Izzard said before he discovered the glories of male supremacy, "They're not women's clothes. They're mine."
I had a good friend in the 1980s and 90s who was in a rock band and liked to wear dresses and make-up onstage. We all encouraged him. He considered himself extremely masculine, and heaven help the ignoranamus who tried to tell him that was women's dress. It was men's dress because he was wearing it.
I raised my son nonsexist. Everything he owned and wore, all across the "gender" spectrum, was 100% boyish because he was 100% a boy.
This all came in very handy when I recently educated the best friend of my friend from the 1980s (one of my oldest and dearest friends) on how "transgenderism" is the enforcement of gender--the exact *opposite* of smashing gender like his buddy.
100% - men mimic women for the same reason many animals do - to avoid sex competition and gain access to females by deception.
The film “Some Like it Hot” perfectly dramatizes trans - two men evade mafia execution by mimicing women, gain access to an all woman’s band taking jobs from women, ogle women changing clothes in private, and Tony Curtis gains privileged information from Marilyn Monroe he uses to woo her.
Trans indeed also do it to avoid male violence - male sex mimics die of violent death at half the rate of other men.
The Penn State Swim team is not a street gang however, so that reason fails.
Yes, there are the predators hanging out in locker rooms to prey on women or women's bodies. But I think with the athletes, it usually seems more self-centered and confused than that. Trying to blend in with the women, be "affirmed as a woman," even in the most egregious circumstances, when he's so obviously not.
Just yesterday a coworker that normally has no interest in sports and I don't think ever golfed was telling me about a trans golfer that is winning in women's golf. Unfortonatly the stereo type is that men that ordinarily don't care about women's sports are the ones complaining about this. It's not fair but I think women are going to have to be the loudest on this.
I only expect it to become bigger as prize money and pro salaries go up for women's sports and certian less democratic countries chase more medals for national glory.
Yes, that golfer is probably Hailey Davidson, who this week failed to qualify for the LPGA tour but will play on another smaller women's tour. 275 female golfers signed a letter of protest and the LPGA is said to be reconsidering whether this is really such a great idea. I welcome male and female voices of protest, information, sanity. Women and girls are getting louder and louder; seems to be coming to a head - but countless world organizations are involved in decision-making, which at the moment must happen on an organization-by-organization basis. A federal law here in the States would also do it.
A federal law on it would bemuch better. You can imagine smaller sports organizations don't have the money and time to get tied up in court over these things. A similar thing happened in women's MX a few years ago and people were worried about what would happen but it turns out she finished af enough down the order that it didn't matter.
I think it's an unfortonate distraction in th epolitical world that gives an uperhand to the MAGA gang while the left has to tip toe around these issues much more.
Please stop referring to people who voted for Trump in a derogatory tone. MAGA gang. Really? I am a human with legitimate political and social concerns. Additionally, I have been ripped apart at the seams as my daughter spirals towards ruination due to gender ideology being shoved into every aspect of culture, education, government and medicine. The fraud perpetrated on her is astounding. Criminal. It is trying to kill her, so please, just stop it.
So sorry about your daughter, Sweet Caroline -- and about your feeling "ripped apart at the seams." Yes, it's coming at us from all angles, and devastating to so many families, and far beyond.
If MAGA gang has you that bothered that only demonstrates the thin skin of people who identify as MAGA.
Really classy there Chris.
Thanks
I agree. Democrats need to come to their senses and remember their longstanding support for women's equal rights. Even if a male athlete finishes far from the podium in a female event, he's still taking up space where he does not belong.
“But it doesn’t happen often” is even more true of white police gunning down unarmed Black men. Or anyone, for that matter.
That picture just says it all. How can anyone see the picture and still defend men competing in the women's sports?
Valentina Petrillo is a most unconvincing-looking woman. What a creep.
If he wants to call himself a woman, he can go ahead, but he should keep out of women’s sports.
Yes, I agree, but I feel a need to note that this is not about how successfully men disguise themselves as women. Nor how women actually look, or should look. We can look any way we want, as can men. We just need men to admit that they're men and stay in their own (men's category) lane.
Brava, Athena, whoever you are! “He Cheated” is an invaluable resource. And thanks so much to you, Mariah, for compiling so much important information in this post. I am saving this for reference and use when confronted with the claim “but there are only a few.” (Of course, as we know, a few is still too many. The women’s category is for women.)
Ditto re brava to Athena & one is too many. Glad this seems useful. Thanks!