Men are not women=the earth is flat
Rhys McKinnon aka “Veronica Ivy” is back. He…hasn’t changed. For some reason MSNBC sees fit to publish his opinion that he has every right to compete against women in cycling races.
The International Olympic Committee and international sport federations have been grappling with inclusion policies for at least 20 years.
What does he mean by “inclusion policies”? Allowing men like him to steal prizes and medals from women.
Are trans women really women? If you think they are, then there’s no real debate here.
If you think they aren’t, then there’s likely nothing I can say that will change your mind. It’s a little like arguing with a flat-Earther: If someone is convinced that the Earth is flat, then they will likely find any reason, no matter how irrational, to hold on to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Who is the flat-Earther here? The people who don’t buy the new ideology that says men can turn themselves into women? Or the ones who say they can they can they CAN?
Trans women are women. Trans women are female. Our sport’s governing body (cycling’s Union Cycliste Internationale, the one that banned Armstrong for life) says I’m female. My U.S. and Canadian identification documents say I’m female, including my birth certificate. My medical records all list me as female. So officials in sports, government and medicine all consider me, a trans woman, to be female. The people who disagree are just wrong.
Officials in sports, government and medicine have been coaxed and/or bullied into embracing a lie. Their embrace doesn’t make the lie true. The people who say the lie is a lie are not wrong.
Martina Navratilova effectively called me a cheater for being a trans woman and following all the UCI rules — and passing all my drugs tests — en route to my Masters Track Cycling World Championships.
Diddums. Now think about how all the women you cheated felt. (Mind you, he already has, of course. He likes it. He loves doing that to women.)
Bizarrely, MSNBC captions McKinnon’s op-ed with
Dr. Veronica Ivy (previously Rachel McKinnon) is an associate professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston in Charleston, S.C. She is currently writing a book on trans and intersex women athletes’ rights.
But the College of Charleston got rid of him – denied him tenure, upon which he quit – two years ago.
“The people who disagree are just wrong.”
Very Socratic.
It scares me that someone who purports to teach philosophy can care so little about distinguishing facts from values and acknowledging underlying assumptions.
The bio is not only inaccurate, the link in the bio has been hijacked. Sloppy, MSNBC.
In a sane world this would be written a little more like “The International Olympic Committee and international sport federations have been besieged by would-be intruders for at least 20 years.” The whole point of women’s sport is exclusion (of male people) in order to promote inclusion (of female people) on the world stage.
Nice, an ideological statement chased down by an outright lie to support it. A nice summary of gender identity theory.
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#1 Francis
Scary to think Rhys has a degree and a PhD in philosophy!
“Female” in that case means nothing other than “what I say I am.”
From the Wikipedia profile:
“She completed her PhD from University of Waterloo in Philosophy in 2012,[3][4] with a thesis entitled ‘Reasonable Assertions: On Norms of Assertion and Why You Don’t Need to Know What You’re Talking About’.[5]”
“Dr. Veronica Ivy (previously Rachel McKinnon)”
But isn’t Rachel a “deadname” now?
And male is his deadsex.
The only question that comes to my mind is: ‘What on Earth had the doctors and nurses present at his (her???) birth been drinking? Or smoking?’
Interesting how the birth certificate thing only works in one direction — if someone’s legal papers don’t match their claimed gender, it’s merely considered evidence that the laws are bigoted.
Is a retconned birth certificate the same as an original birth certificate?
History flows from the future into the past.
I’m still gobsmacked that a birth certificate can be modified legally. Seems to me that this would make them worthless. Can I change my birthweight? I was only 6lbs 9 oz. I want to have it recorded that I was 9lbs 6 oz so that people know I was a burly baby.
This guy is out of shape and old and could not compete against men in elite cycling. Why do people buy that he has the right to change sex to get medals?
And the road is wide open for those addicted to winning while they can. Go trans, and win women’s events. Then when you can no longer win, change back to being male again. Then spend your prize money on wine, whatever and song.
I wonder if that has ever been tried. (?)
The “Flat Earth” thing is the surest indication that the speaker is a tad confused – or maybe they think Pratchett’s Discworld is a series of history texts?
I’ve met people with some pretty whacked out ideas. I’ve never met anyone who believes the earth is flat. Is it a straw man concept (straw planet)?
I was born in 1953, my parents divorced when I was two. When my mother remarried in 1958 and my stepfather adopted me I was issued a new birth certificate in 1958 with his (my current) surname. Odd but I guess that’s how it worked then in my state.
I was still “assigned” male though.
ktron: Flat Earthers are surprisingly common. Check i out the Netflix documentary “Behind the Curve”.
Screechy: That sort of directional cherry-picking is something I’ve wondered about for a while. There are just so many instances of it that it sometimes seems like the ideology (and support for it) is primarily grounded in the inability or unwillingness to consider the reverse.
I learnt a useful term on Twitter(!) today – epistemological caste system. Roughly, the idea is that people like McKinnon see their job as purely the promotion of ideas. Testing or analysis of those ideas is strictly someone else’s job. Whatever passes for truth in their world view is taken on authority and that authority is taken as being fundamentally ethical. How that squares with identifying as a philosopher is anyone’s guess. (I suppose I could read the thesis in question but thankfully that’s not my job and I don’t identify as a masochist.)
@ktron
I certainly don’t know anyone who believes the Earth is flat but I follow several flat-Earth debunkers on Youtube and the first question I ask when I see someone new is “is this person a dupe or a scammer”. Eric Dubay who started the modern flat-Earth movement is undeniably a scammer. He’s a bullshitter in the Frankfurtian sense. He probably has less concern for truth than McKinnon and like many new age gurus made a lucrative career out of shamelessly telling people exactly what they want to hear. Down one level, most of those who have positions in flat-Earth organisations, I suspect likewise know they are talking nonsense but they like the gig, even if it’s not financially rewarding. It’s really just a fun hobby for them. But here’s the thing. At the bottom there’s an endless parade of obvious dupes. These people simply lack the intellectual capacity to understand reality in any systematic way so they compensate by reflexive personnel incredulity which they glorify as scepticism. They don’t so much believe the Earth is flat as disbelieve anything they haven’t personally experienced or dreamt up. And to them that’s a brave and noble stance. And when you’ve found a virtually effort-free way of being special and virtuous you don’t want to go and ruin it by asking too many questions. While you don’t have to be very smart to believe the gender nonsense, you just have to be a bit less smart to believe the flat-Earth nonsense.
I would be remiss not to remind people of the very funny novel, “The End of the World is Flat”, by Simon Edge. It is a satirical comedy about money and social media and influencing people to go against reality (in this case by embracing a flat Earth concept), and it’s an extremely thinly veiled critique of gender ideology, so thinly veiled that gender ideology is thrown out as a “hypothetical” example at the end of the book. Really well done.
[…] a comment by Francis Boyle on Men are not women=the earth is […]
Francis:
It has been my privilege in my time to have the acquaintance of a GFE (Genuine Flat-Earther.) This particular GFE also happened to be the father of one of my best friends of my university days. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the said GFE was that he had scientific training of sorts (he was a pharmaceutical chemist). But that GFE was also a Christian fundamentalist, and some fellow parishioner from his church had shown him passages from the Bible (I’m not sure which) in which it is stated that the Earth is flat. That was all the GFE needed, and he was off and away.
Even more amazing was the fact that the said GFE was married to a most erudite and educated woman, who was also the mother of my friend’s five siblings. She had a first-class honours degree in English Literature, but had managed to marry the GFE before finding out that he was (or his becoming ?) such a religious ratbag..She was also a freethinker, and did not attend her husband’s church.
Takes all sorts, I suppose.
I thought Rhys was the “deadname”; it’s just all too tiring to keep up, so let’s all agree te Earth IS flat and go back to calling him Rhys.
Maybe it’s already been said in a long ago thread, but Veronica Ivy sounds like a porn name.
Somebody please alert SilentBob.
SilentBob. Now there’s a fun guy.
Rhys is certainly a “deadname”. If you change your name twice, I suspect both former names might be considered “deadnames”, so Rachel would also be a “deadname”.
A former friend, not trans but very much caught up in this ideology, changed her name several times (sometimes for good reasons), and would get angry at people for “deadnaming” her (she used that term) by using even the more recent former names.
Interestingly the deadname debate has been had on Ivy’s wiki page (talk) as well…
Of course, following that logic it is entirely reasonable to include the ‘actual’ deadname as well.
I’m not a huge fan of name changing. Sure, it can be facile and harmless. I have family members who have changed their names in whole or part because they didn’t like them and wanted something that ‘fit’. Rarely, it might be necessary to ensure a person’s safety. Frequently name changing is used by crooks and never do wells using frequent name changing as a mask to enable them to dupe/harm more victims,a nd to shelter themselves from the consequences of actions taken under previous names. Depending on the circumstances trans name changing could fall into any of those categories.
There are good reasons for a legal name change. Divorce: a woman who took a husband’s last name may want her own name restored, or another name selected. Business: actors, singers, or other performers can use a stage name. John Wayne, for instance. It would make sense to change his legal name from Marion Morrison. Common usage: someone who uses a name other than their birth name, could get their name changed to what people know them as. Example: I had a classmate who went exclusively by “Zeke” as a first name. His real name was “Anthony,” but no one called him that.
There are limits, though. A petition for legal name change can be denied if it’s done for a nefarious purpose, such as whitewashing or “laundering” your convicted name. Criminals can be denied a name change, because it would obstruct discovery of the person’s criminal record.
IMO, transgender people seeking a name change to masquerade as the opposite sex should be denied any such name change. It’s being made for fraudulent purposes. I doubt that many of them even seek legal name change. They just bullyingly assert an obviously false identity. They are just lying. No wonder they don’t file a legal petition. The whole thing is a sham.
@Bruce Coppola #14 and @Mike Haubrich #11
The difference, I suppose, between altering a name on a birth certificate and altering sex is that names are neither immutable nor objectively observable. Names are always invented. Names have legal significance. One of the important functions of vital records, like birth certificates, is to establish and enforce legal relationships between persons. A man who is not the biological father of the child can be listed on the birth certificate because of the relationship between them. Recognizing a step-parent adoption on a birth certificate gives both the adoptive parent and the child significant legal rights. Support rights, inheritance rights, rights to make decisions for/about the child.
Birth certificates are legal documents and vital records. Among other things, they are used to trace ancestry and descent. That is a legitimate purpose of the record, an historical purpose. Birth certificates are governmental records; they aren’t the personal property of the person listed on the record. The usefulness of the records depends on the truthfulness of the data, both the factual, immutable data, and the legal relational data. The records shouldn’t be made deliberately false and fraudulent just on the whim of the person who demands that they be changed. Sex is observed, sex is factual, sex is immutable. Changing the sex on a person’s governmental records is a lie; it’s false and fraudulent. It renders the birth certificate useless as a factual record. It’s not a right to lie on public records.
[…] amusing to find that I quoted “Veronica Ivy” aka Rhys McKinnon just six weeks ago […]