Most of the above measures seem to be aimed at keeping minors from irrevocable changes. Prime Minister Trudeau has done the forced teaming work for Team Trans, calling the proposed policies “most anti-LGBT policies anywhere in this country.”
It spends most of its space discussing the Semenya case and testosterone levels. It downplays the irreversible musculoskeletal and cardio-pulmonary advantages that male puberty confers on trans identified male athletes, and quotes a study that concluded that
The CCES study also noted that social factors have a greater impact on athletic performance than hormones.
“Researchers in the sociocultural field of study argue that social factors contribute to performance advantages to a far greater extent than does testosterone and that assessing testosterone levels is another way to perpetuate the long history of policing women’s bodies in sport,” the report reads.
“Researchers highlight the many social factors that contribute to differences in athletic performance, including, for example: discriminations, disparate resource allocations, inequities, and violence against women in sport in the forms of sexism and sexual violence in sport contexts, arbitrary differences in rules and equipment between men’s and women’s sport, as well as histories of barring women from certain sports.”
One of its conclusions is that ‘the CCES strategy is a continuity with the history of the exclusion and oppression of female athletes in sexist, misogynist, patriarchal sport structures whilst, at the same time, masquerading as inclusive, anti-sexist and anti-misogynist.”
Also, as a basic fact, humans can’t change sex. Trans identified males remain male, however they dress, whatever name they give themselves, and whatever “gender” they claim to have. “Gender identities” don’t play sports, human bodies do. Sports are segregated by sex so that women can have their own level playing field. Letting men cheat their way into women’s sports under the guise of “trans inclusion” destroys fairness for women in favour of men, obviating the reason that women’s sports were established in the first place. But sure, you go ahead and keep saying that men in women’s sports have no advantage:
It probably won’t do a goddamn thing, but still worth it.
Comments
10 responses to “Guest post: Fact check your “fact checking””
Omar
The CCES study also noted that social factors have a greater impact on athletic performance than hormones.
Total bullshit. The photo above says it better than could 10,000 words.
Eava
Within sex categories, that is largely true. A man with a T level of 20 is not necessarily going to be a better athlete than one with a level of 10. A woman with a level of 2 is not necessarily going to be a better athlete than a woman with 1. Within sex groups, testosterone doesn’t matter. And there are some women who will be better athletes than men with 10-20 times their testosterone levels. But she will be one of the better female athletes and he will be one of the worst male athletes.
Blood Knight in Sour Armor
You get women that tall but they’re generally 60% the width… Very specific “beanpole” phenotype associated with the freaks of nature that are upper level women’s basketball…
tigger_the_wing
Testosterone levels aren’t even vaguely similar between the sexes. The difference is vast. Normal testosterone levels are 300–1,000 ng/dL for men and 15–70 ng/dL for women.
In my opinion, the best way to counter the lie that social factors outweigh biology is to:
• quote those figures, as they are astonishing; and
• link to historical school sports statistics which clearly show that boys start breaking women’s Olympic records in their early teens; and
• illustrate the rebuttal, as Ophelia has done, with photos such as the above (sadly, there are lots of them).
I’ve had some success with using those three together.
Your Name’s not Bruce?
Testosterone levels aren’t even vaguely similar between the sexes. The difference is vast. Normal testosterone levels are 300–1,000 ng/dL for men and 15–70 ng/dL for women.
Unfortunately, measuring testosterone levels has become a distracting sideshow. It lets proponents of trans “inclusion” concentrate everyone’s attention on one of the few aspects of male physiology that can be tinkered with, while ignoring all the structural advatages that testosterone reduction cannot touch. Unfortunately, sports regulatory bodies have eagerly adapted this narrow, flawed standard, as if wanting to encourage the male invasion of women’s teams, with the old goal of “fairness” having to be suddenly balanced, for some unspecified reason with the shiny, new goal of “trans inclusion.” With everyone fixated on testosterone levels, to the exclusion of everything else, it gives TiMs a sanctioned, acheivable milestone that, once attained, they can wave as an all-access pass to the world of women’s sport, as if women were just men with low testosterone.
Karen the chemist
And how old is that guy in the team photo? The girls look high school age to me. To me, he looks considerably older than the girls.
Word is the guy in the photo is in fact their coach, not a team-mate. It’s been around for years. I looked around for confirmation at some point and I don’t think I could find any. Coaches don’t generally dress as players, I think ,nor do they pose in line that way, but who knows.
Southwest88
Your Name’s not Bruce? #5
Yes, letting TRAs make “woman” into nothing but a testosterone level is playing their game. I stick with hammering them with the truth that nothing turns a man into a woman, so they must stay out of women’s stuff no matter what. If the topic devolves to stuff like hormone levels, we need to bring up stuff like q-angles and other skeletal structures that are not changed by hormones, and which give men an advantage in most sports. Heart volume, lung volume, stride, reach, area of muscle attachment with stronger ligaments, muscle mass, etc. are all things that need to be discussed if people want to break down humans into parts this way.
Your Name’s not Bruce?
• illustrate the rebuttal, as Ophelia has done, with photos such as the above…
Let’s look at the guy in the photo a little more closely. (Please forgive the length of the following, but I think it merits in depth examination.)
The photo dates from 2012. “Gabrielle” Ludwig (born Robert John Ludwig) was 50 years old at the time, playing on a women’s college basketball team. USA Today ran an extensive story about him at this time. The story now comes with an interesting notification:
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to adhere to current USA TODAY style.
There’s no indication of when the rewrite occurred. My guess? A whole lot of “misgendering” pronoun scrubbing. Must retcon for Righthink. USA Today is probably more captured now than it was then, but even if it was only pronouns being changed, the rest of the content is pretyy indicative of capture. Here’s a link to the story:
Did they ever think to write as long a piece on the young woman Ludwig displaced from the team? Why are his troubles and dreams prioritized over those of the woman who didn’t make the cut? It’s the whole thing in a nutshell; women are expected to step aside uncomplainingly when men want something they have. From Ludwig’s storey we get a lot of women being forced to change their lives so he can do what he wants to. Here’s a sampling:
They don’t know the odyssey: one failed suicide attempt, two failed marriages; one 19-year-old daughter who insists on calling her dad, two girls who insist on calling her Momma Gabbi.
And they have little sense of reactions Ludwig has encountered – the gawking, the whispers and the female referee in Barstow who looked her in the eye and refused to shake her hand.
Ludwig took female hormones behind her wife’s back and developed breasts, somehow thinking it would go unnoticed. “But how do you hide that from your wife?” Ludwig says. “It’s like you coming home, undoing your shirt and there are boobs there. Sure your wife would have some questions. Marriages are hard enough without a husband’s boobs.”
There were tears and love and a struggle that endured through an 11-year marriage and a birth of a daughter, Janelle Ludwig. But the two ultimately divorced. “I feel I betrayed her trust,” Ludwig says. “That is a cross I have to bear the rest of my life. What would you do?”
But Ludwig recalls that one day Janelle, who is now 19 and declined to be interviewed for this story, said, “Maddy (a combination of mom and dad), it’s time you do what you need to do. If you want to become a woman, I will always love you and will always call you dad.”
Dad?
“I have one father and one mother,” Janelle told him. “No matter how you present yourself, you’ll always be my dad.”
Theresa Foakes, Ludwig’s partner for two years, says she has watched basketball sap more and more of her time. Foakes, whose 11- and 7-year-old daughters also live with Ludwig and call her Momma Gabbi, says Ludwig is an inspiration because of her commitment to her area non-profit youth basketball club and the six-grade AAU team Ludwig coaches.
“Basketball is her mistress,” Foakes says. “She loves the game. I get jealous. I say, ‘I know you will never cheat on me. You cheat on me with basketball.’ She is very consumed by this right now.”
Everyone has an odyssey; we can’t know them all. We don’t have to know them all. It’s unique, and personal, and informs and shapes who you are, but that’s true of absolutely everyone. You don’t get to use your “odyssey” to get your way in everything. I do feel sorry for his psychological problems, and the lengths he’s felt driven to go to deal with them, I truly am; but that does not give him the right to demand everyone else share in his delusion as some sort of compensation, or consolation prize. His “treatment” should not require the rest of the world bending reality around his particular, personal, mistaken self-image. He’s not a woman; never has been, never will be. Whoever told him he could become one was lying; “sex reassignment surgery” is as impossible as “species reassignment surgery.” If some people are willing to accept him as a woman, that’s on them. There is, and should never be, any obligation whatsoever for anyone to do so, much less any sort of requirement or enforcement of such a perverse “acceptance.”
Ludwig and those around him are learning all the wrong lessons in this story, and patting themselves on the back for how progressive and forward thinking they are.
Ludwig’s coach:
Perez says he had no hesitation about Ludwig playing for Mission College, though the process “has been an education for all of us. We can look at it like this is a student-athlete who wants to play basketball. No, this is much more than that. This is a student-athlete who is really opening up to what is going on in her life. What we can do is support her, as I would any student-athlete …
“This is a special time for all of us in awareness – not athletics – but in the world we live in, a great opportunity for all of us to learn.”
This is a troubled man who thinks he’s female. I’m going to be an enabler for him and keep a woman from reaching her goals so he can reach his.
Eligibility rules determined Ludwig had to enroll: She takes 12 credits at Mission College through online courses. And she needed an amended birth certificate with her new name, Gabrielle Monika Ludwig. She was resentful about having to do so because it would mean cutting off her previous identity, burying Robert Ludwig in one sense. But playing basketball again – finishing something she regrettably aborted – now was a pursuit that carried a larger message.
What? Enroll and change your birth certificate? That’ it? Wow. Noy even a molifying word about testosterone levels (which would have been spun as part of Ludwig’s “odyssey”). Those are some slack rules; but then they probably date from a time when it was expected that only women would try out for the women’s basketball team. You can’t fault the past for failing to predict the insanity of the future. But you can blame the present for opportunitically taking advantage of the unsurprising naivite of the past to shoehorn a MAN onto the WOMEN’S team. (In the same spirit, we should at some point expect colleges to start fielding teams of robots, because the eligibilty requirements formulated by organizing bodies in the past failed to specfy that the players be humans.)
Ludwig:
“If the example I can set for the kids who are transgenders in high school, for the people who hate transgender people and for those learning to deal with transgenders, transsexuals, if they see me as a normal person and we are not the bogeyman and love life and raise kids just like you,” Ludwig says, “maybe some of this mystery of who these people are will be taken away and there can be more blending into society. People are afraid of what they don’t know. I am willing to put myself out there. It was not like that before. It was just about playing basketball. It’s about more because I see an injustice.”
Well, he might see an injustice, but he’s ignoring the injustice he has has perpetrated, with the help of way too many others, against the young woman whose rightful place on the team he has taken. Does he never think that his own behaviour in this episode might engender animosity towards himself and his narcissistic sense of entitlement? That his forcing those around him to accept him as a woman, to consent to a lie, might not ruffle some feathers? Maybe much of the “hatred” he sees consists of people saying “No,” like the female referee who refused to shake his hand, who saw the bending of the rules, the blatant cheating, the fundamental dishonesty of Ludwig’s mere presence on the court, but left with little but this silent jesture in favour of the truth. (Of course, she could have walked off the court in protest, but why is it left up to her to make up for the failure and corruption of others? Why is it up to the female players to jeopardize their own carers and futures to oppose an injustice for which they bear no responsibility? Why are they expected to martyr themselves? It might be great if they could, but it would just be reported and passed off as “transphobia.”
Ludwig says she is forever grateful for the efforts of her athletic director and head coach, who has put his reputation on the line despite outside criticism. Players have heard that this is being cast as a disgrace worse than point shaving. They have heard that some consider them a coed team.
In a sane world, the reputations of both the athletic director and the head coach would have been ruined because they enabled cheating. And maybe, just maybe, some of those players who have “heard” these things think exactly the same thing, but are too scared to say it themselves. Couching it in these terms to the reporter might be the only safe way for them to put it out there (see above). Because Ludwig’s presense is a disgrace worse than point shaving, worse than an individual doping, because it is evidence of shameless corruption at the core of their school’s athletics department, and in the entire collegiate athletic system itself. And they are playing on a coed team. These dirty, whispered rumours are the truth.
blockquoted text goes here
The athletic director:
Cafferata, 42, is an insulin dependent diabetic who has rebuilt a program that suffered through a 90-game losing streak before he arrived four years ago.
(Insert description of the condition of his kidneys, his prognosis, and self-admininisterd insulin injection. See, he has an odyssey too!)
But he has never hesitated in fighting for Ludwig’s eligibility. He says he believes in trust and loyalty and dependability on and off the court, and that that is what Ludwig brings (in addition to being an imposing interior presence).
I’m guessing it’s helped reduce the chances of another 90 game losing streak too. Win-win!
Friday morning, Ludwig sat in Superior Court of California County of Alameda, where a judge decreed she is now legally recognized as a woman in the State of California. Her teammates behind her cheered the decision, and Ludwig turned around and said, “Let’s play ball, y’all!” before they reconvened at IHOP for a pancake celebration.
Oh look, here’s some state-sanctioned requirement to accept Ludwig as a woman. “Now that the State of California has cleared my concsience, and absolved me of all personal responsibility about my place on the team, let’s get back to cheating!”
Ludwig has served as a second coach to players, encouraging them to block out, keep their head up after a miscue and put a hand in a shooter’s face.
Are any of the women on the team seen as a second coach? Is this something he’s been assigned, or something that he’s taken on himself? And look at the size of the hand he’s sticking in the face of his opponents.
And his teammates are learning the wrong lessons, too (but again, what they might say to a reporter may be different than what they might say to each other, or think to themselves).
But to teammates, she has been more than that. Some say they have learned about life’s struggles from Ludwig. Standout guard Felicia Anderson considers Ludwig an inspiration not only because of her personal journey, one that opened Anderson’s eyes to a different group of people, but also because of her age. Ludwig also never shies away from poking fun at herself, and teammates never hesitate to join in.
“If she ever says something like, ‘Well, I used to do this or that,’ we say, ‘What, in 1920?,’ ” Anderson says. “She just laughs about it. She knows we are not judging her.”
Ha ha. Well, maybe they should be judging him. What would make a 50 year old man want to join a women’s college basketball team? Hold that thought.
And teammates say they become particularly motivated if they sense gawking – or worse – from spectators. “Stop talking mess and come see her play,” Anderson says. “It is 2012. Life is not like it was in 1920 – when Gabbi was five, right? – when women stayed home in the house. The world has changed.”
And why shouldn’t the spectators “gawk?” What should their response to cheating be? What if it was their daughter facing off against this huge man on the court? I know I’d do more than “gawk.” Well, women didn’t all stay home in the house in 1920. Many worked jobs, and then came home to housework. And there’s one woman who should be on their team who isn’t because her place was stolen by this man. Sure it’s 2012, and things change. Not all changes are improvements.
On the road, Ludwig does not share rooms with teammates because of their age differences.
BULLSHIT. If Ludwig was a 50 year old woman, age would not be a reason to self-segregate. Sex is, and he knows it; so does everybody else. What about locker room and shower arrangements? Are they similarly segregated by “age?”
But there are few other allowances made for her. Ludwig spoke to the team weeks ago and told them that she badly wants to play with them but would never want to endanger them.
Well, playing ball with them is a danger because because YOU’RE A HUGE MAN. It’s even more of a risk for the players on the other team. Is this a hint of honest self-awareness? Spoiler alert: no. Here’s the rest of the paragraph:
She says she sometimes wonders if someone who hates that she is playing will track her down with a bullet in hand.
His team-mates might get hurt not by him, but because someone is trying to kill him (though I suspect shooting the bullet would be a greater threat than throwing it. If you’re going to do self-centered, narcissistic threat-inflation, get the threat right. You’re afraid of someone with a gun in their hand. Remember, you’re in America, where guns have more rights than people. Unfortunately, this fear might not be completely unrealistic. Gun-toting nuts have killed people for a lot less)
His team-mates, it turns out, have odysseys too, and wouldn’t you know it, they reflect (or are spun to reflect)
his!
Her teammates accept her without hesitation, in part, because they say they often feel like outsiders.
“We’ve been discriminated against for different reasons,” Anderson says. “We’re used to it. So to have someone come with us, you’re discriminated against too. You are a part of our family as well. It’s the common bond.
“We all have our own oppressions we are facing ourselves. Either we are lesbians or we are difference races or we dress like boys or we have piercings or tattoos or different hairstyles. All of us are already different, so it’s like, where else would she be?”
Well, not on your team BECAUSE HE’S A MAN.
Is having been descriminated against one of the criteria of eligibilty for making the team? Not all descrimination is bad, otherwise absoluetly anyone could have joined your team; skill or talent for basketball wouldn’t even be on the radar. In fact, such a requirement wouldn’t be allowed because not selecting someone with no such skill or talent would be discrimination.
Unfortunately our interepid reporter can’t even find a good, well-reasoned doubter.
Before one game, a spectator named Lawrenze Thibodeaux stood under the basket, just a few feet from Ludwig, and kept snapping photos of the dark-haired player warming up.
“I thought it was ludicrous that she plays at 50,” he says later. “That she used to be a man makes it doubly ludicrous. Damn, people are doing everything nowadays.
“I don’t think a 50-year-old should be out here playing with kids. Whatever she is after I hope she finds it, and I hope people give her a break and not ridicule her. God is the judge. He put her there and he must want her there in that position.”
HE STILL IS A MAN, YOU DOLT. And also, your god didn’t have anything to do with it. But hey, if your god is that much of a misogynistic, meddling, micro-manager, your god is an asshole.
Some critics who are more on point (like this player from an opposing team) are safely dismissed for their youthful ignorance:
Ludwig says that when she visited the snack bar for Gatorade, she encountered a Contra Costa College player named Jeannay Washington who told her, “Do you have enough steroids? If not, I have some for you,” before high-fiving a teammate. Washington later denied ever talking to Ludwig but said she did not feel Ludwig should be eligible to play.
AND SHE’D BE RIGHT.
“They have no clue,” Ludwig says. “They have been in this world 18 measly years. This 18 year old has not the slightest clue what life is about. It’s when they grow up. If that comment came from someone like you, that would sting and I would need to find a home for that comment.”
Well, that’s big of him. It should sting now. Even young children can tell cheating when they see it, and it doesn’t get much more visible than this five foot eighteen inch, 230 pound narcissist.
What Ludwig fears most are remarks by adults.
Yeah, those are a little harder to brush off. But again, the critics the reporter chooses to quote are boorish, foul-mouthed, god-botherers who are best ignored, despite the valid points they’re making.
When Ludwig enters the game midway through the first half, the Mission College fans and parents greet her with a boisterous standing ovation. A different response resonated from some on the College of the Siskiyous side of the gym.
“What the (expletive) is that thing?” Boorishness says Kevin Casey, the father of one of the Siskiyous players who lives in Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento .
“This just ain’t right,” Valid point says Ray Galli, a friend of Casey who lives in Folsom. “If you and I went to get breast implants, we could say we’re women tooValid point. They are playing girls’ ball and having fun. Man or woman always tries to find a way to cheat at any sport. To me, this is kind of cheating.”Valid point. It is cheating
Ludwig at times labors while moving up and down the court in Mission College’s run-and-gun offense. She grabs two rebounds with ease, towering over her competition. The Mission College side of the stands cheers. Casey points to her running up the court.
“I don’t want her in the same locker room as my daughter,” Valid point Casey says. “That’s a man with girls. Valid point Take Shaq and cut his (penis) off and we’ll put him out there with the girls. What’s the difference? Valid point You have daughters out there. Mine might be a Tom boy, but she is all girl. Valid point They let too much (expletive) go by. Was it Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve? God bothering
“She’s got the parts? Just because she has the parts does not mean she is one Valid point with wrong pronouns; he doesn’t have “the parts.” Call a man a man, Casey. That was man-made. Valid point Obviously it was not God made because she did not come out like that God bothering. Man-made. Fake.”Valid point; he’s not a woman.
Having characterized the critics as bigots with aexes to grind, it’s time to add a final quote from another player, this time from the opposing team:
Siskiyous forward Anna Cameron, a native of New Zealand who found herself guarding Ludwig at times, asks, “Men’s leagues won’t accept her, would they? So where is she supposed to go? It’s a hard thing, and there are many different sides to it. She should play somewhere. She loves basketball.”
He might not make the cut in a men’s league, so they might not. Most men aren’t accepted. That’s what sport is based on, exclusion. Where is he supposed to go? Not to a women’s team, because he’s not a woman. He doesn’t belong their. His passion for the game makes no difference to that. He could find some non-competitive house league, or shoot hoops at a gym, or in a park. Nobody owes him a spot on a team, particularly one where he fails to meet the most basic criterion for eligibility: being female. That’s not the women’s problem to solve.
Writer Eric Prisbell presents this story as a feel-good human interest one, with a plucky 6’6″ 230 lb heroine overcoming challenging obstacles to live her dream, but there are lots of bits of other stories peaking out, waiting for someone to tell. The trans widow, and daughter forced to deal with the demands placed on them by Ludwig’s desire to become something he cannot; the enabling corruption of a coach and athletics department; the young woman who lost her rightful place on the team to a man; the women on “Ludwig’s” team, betrayed and abandoned by their coach, their department, their school, and college athletics conference; the parents of Ludwig’s “team-mates; the players on other teams now forced to play against a huge man in a fast, demanding game in which bodies can sometimes collide; the parents of the opposing team’s players; the unsung ref who bore silent witness to the truth; the fans now watching a man cheat. Lots of stories, if you read between the lines. Yet only Ludwig’s is deemed worthy of telling, the others being little more than obstacle path of adversity, a background noise of bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance, against which Ludwig emergers righteously triumphant. Yet it all falls apart if you simply mention the fact that humans can’t change sex, and therefore men can’t become women. Without that element of fantasy, it becomes a disturbing tale of delusion, obsession, and pushiness, aided and abetted by authority figure whose primary job was to protect the health, wellbeing and aspirations of the women they so eagerly betrayed for the “inclusion” of this one mistaken man. Where did that story go?
iknklast
Not all changes are improvements.
Needs to be said. One of the things all the woke continually throw at us rad fems is that things change. Yes, they do. Not all things have to, of course, but in our modern world, change is seen as good if it is change. Just like fashions – hemlines, cuts of fabric, colors – they all change. It isn’t always an improvement.
One thing that doesn’t change is your sex. Cross-sex hormones, surgery, and voice training can superficially make you look more like the opposite sex. Wearing clothes that have been designed for the opposite sex can be a superficial marker. But in the final assessment, your sex has not changed just because you think it has.
Comments
10 responses to “Guest post: Fact check your “fact checking””
Total bullshit. The photo above says it better than could 10,000 words.
Within sex categories, that is largely true. A man with a T level of 20 is not necessarily going to be a better athlete than one with a level of 10. A woman with a level of 2 is not necessarily going to be a better athlete than a woman with 1. Within sex groups, testosterone doesn’t matter. And there are some women who will be better athletes than men with 10-20 times their testosterone levels. But she will be one of the better female athletes and he will be one of the worst male athletes.
You get women that tall but they’re generally 60% the width… Very specific “beanpole” phenotype associated with the freaks of nature that are upper level women’s basketball…
Testosterone levels aren’t even vaguely similar between the sexes. The difference is vast. Normal testosterone levels are 300–1,000 ng/dL for men and 15–70 ng/dL for women.
In my opinion, the best way to counter the lie that social factors outweigh biology is to:
• quote those figures, as they are astonishing; and
• link to historical school sports statistics which clearly show that boys start breaking women’s Olympic records in their early teens; and
• illustrate the rebuttal, as Ophelia has done, with photos such as the above (sadly, there are lots of them).
I’ve had some success with using those three together.
Unfortunately, measuring testosterone levels has become a distracting sideshow. It lets proponents of trans “inclusion” concentrate everyone’s attention on one of the few aspects of male physiology that can be tinkered with, while ignoring all the structural advatages that testosterone reduction cannot touch. Unfortunately, sports regulatory bodies have eagerly adapted this narrow, flawed standard, as if wanting to encourage the male invasion of women’s teams, with the old goal of “fairness” having to be suddenly balanced, for some unspecified reason with the shiny, new goal of “trans inclusion.” With everyone fixated on testosterone levels, to the exclusion of everything else, it gives TiMs a sanctioned, acheivable milestone that, once attained, they can wave as an all-access pass to the world of women’s sport, as if women were just men with low testosterone.
And how old is that guy in the team photo? The girls look high school age to me. To me, he looks considerably older than the girls.
Word is the guy in the photo is in fact their coach, not a team-mate. It’s been around for years. I looked around for confirmation at some point and I don’t think I could find any. Coaches don’t generally dress as players, I think ,nor do they pose in line that way, but who knows.
Your Name’s not Bruce? #5
Yes, letting TRAs make “woman” into nothing but a testosterone level is playing their game. I stick with hammering them with the truth that nothing turns a man into a woman, so they must stay out of women’s stuff no matter what. If the topic devolves to stuff like hormone levels, we need to bring up stuff like q-angles and other skeletal structures that are not changed by hormones, and which give men an advantage in most sports. Heart volume, lung volume, stride, reach, area of muscle attachment with stronger ligaments, muscle mass, etc. are all things that need to be discussed if people want to break down humans into parts this way.
Let’s look at the guy in the photo a little more closely. (Please forgive the length of the following, but I think it merits in depth examination.)
The photo dates from 2012. “Gabrielle” Ludwig (born Robert John Ludwig) was 50 years old at the time, playing on a women’s college basketball team. USA Today ran an extensive story about him at this time. The story now comes with an interesting notification:
There’s no indication of when the rewrite occurred. My guess? A whole lot of “misgendering” pronoun scrubbing. Must retcon for Righthink. USA Today is probably more captured now than it was then, but even if it was only pronouns being changed, the rest of the content is pretyy indicative of capture. Here’s a link to the story:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2012/12/04/college-basketball-transgender-player-gabrielle-ludwig-robert-ludwig-mission-college/1744703/
Did they ever think to write as long a piece on the young woman Ludwig displaced from the team? Why are his troubles and dreams prioritized over those of the woman who didn’t make the cut? It’s the whole thing in a nutshell; women are expected to step aside uncomplainingly when men want something they have. From Ludwig’s storey we get a lot of women being forced to change their lives so he can do what he wants to. Here’s a sampling:
Everyone has an odyssey; we can’t know them all. We don’t have to know them all. It’s unique, and personal, and informs and shapes who you are, but that’s true of absolutely everyone. You don’t get to use your “odyssey” to get your way in everything. I do feel sorry for his psychological problems, and the lengths he’s felt driven to go to deal with them, I truly am; but that does not give him the right to demand everyone else share in his delusion as some sort of compensation, or consolation prize. His “treatment” should not require the rest of the world bending reality around his particular, personal, mistaken self-image. He’s not a woman; never has been, never will be. Whoever told him he could become one was lying; “sex reassignment surgery” is as impossible as “species reassignment surgery.” If some people are willing to accept him as a woman, that’s on them. There is, and should never be, any obligation whatsoever for anyone to do so, much less any sort of requirement or enforcement of such a perverse “acceptance.”
Ludwig and those around him are learning all the wrong lessons in this story, and patting themselves on the back for how progressive and forward thinking they are.
Ludwig’s coach:
This is a troubled man who thinks he’s female. I’m going to be an enabler for him and keep a woman from reaching her goals so he can reach his.
What? Enroll and change your birth certificate? That’ it? Wow. Noy even a molifying word about testosterone levels (which would have been spun as part of Ludwig’s “odyssey”). Those are some slack rules; but then they probably date from a time when it was expected that only women would try out for the women’s basketball team. You can’t fault the past for failing to predict the insanity of the future. But you can blame the present for opportunitically taking advantage of the unsurprising naivite of the past to shoehorn a MAN onto the WOMEN’S team. (In the same spirit, we should at some point expect colleges to start fielding teams of robots, because the eligibilty requirements formulated by organizing bodies in the past failed to specfy that the players be humans.)
Ludwig:
Well, he might see an injustice, but he’s ignoring the injustice he has has perpetrated, with the help of way too many others, against the young woman whose rightful place on the team he has taken. Does he never think that his own behaviour in this episode might engender animosity towards himself and his narcissistic sense of entitlement? That his forcing those around him to accept him as a woman, to consent to a lie, might not ruffle some feathers? Maybe much of the “hatred” he sees consists of people saying “No,” like the female referee who refused to shake his hand, who saw the bending of the rules, the blatant cheating, the fundamental dishonesty of Ludwig’s mere presence on the court, but left with little but this silent jesture in favour of the truth. (Of course, she could have walked off the court in protest, but why is it left up to her to make up for the failure and corruption of others? Why is it up to the female players to jeopardize their own carers and futures to oppose an injustice for which they bear no responsibility? Why are they expected to martyr themselves? It might be great if they could, but it would just be reported and passed off as “transphobia.”
In a sane world, the reputations of both the athletic director and the head coach would have been ruined because they enabled cheating. And maybe, just maybe, some of those players who have “heard” these things think exactly the same thing, but are too scared to say it themselves. Couching it in these terms to the reporter might be the only safe way for them to put it out there (see above). Because Ludwig’s presense is a disgrace worse than point shaving, worse than an individual doping, because it is evidence of shameless corruption at the core of their school’s athletics department, and in the entire collegiate athletic system itself. And they are playing on a coed team. These dirty, whispered rumours are the truth.
The athletic director:
(Insert description of the condition of his kidneys, his prognosis, and self-admininisterd insulin injection. See, he has an odyssey too!)
I’m guessing it’s helped reduce the chances of another 90 game losing streak too. Win-win!
Oh look, here’s some state-sanctioned requirement to accept Ludwig as a woman. “Now that the State of California has cleared my concsience, and absolved me of all personal responsibility about my place on the team, let’s get back to cheating!”
Are any of the women on the team seen as a second coach? Is this something he’s been assigned, or something that he’s taken on himself? And look at the size of the hand he’s sticking in the face of his opponents.
And his teammates are learning the wrong lessons, too (but again, what they might say to a reporter may be different than what they might say to each other, or think to themselves).
Ha ha. Well, maybe they should be judging him. What would make a 50 year old man want to join a women’s college basketball team? Hold that thought.
And why shouldn’t the spectators “gawk?” What should their response to cheating be? What if it was their daughter facing off against this huge man on the court? I know I’d do more than “gawk.” Well, women didn’t all stay home in the house in 1920. Many worked jobs, and then came home to housework. And there’s one woman who should be on their team who isn’t because her place was stolen by this man. Sure it’s 2012, and things change. Not all changes are improvements.
BULLSHIT. If Ludwig was a 50 year old woman, age would not be a reason to self-segregate. Sex is, and he knows it; so does everybody else. What about locker room and shower arrangements? Are they similarly segregated by “age?”
Well, playing ball with them is a danger because because YOU’RE A HUGE MAN. It’s even more of a risk for the players on the other team. Is this a hint of honest self-awareness? Spoiler alert: no. Here’s the rest of the paragraph:
His team-mates might get hurt not by him, but because someone is trying to kill him (though I suspect shooting the bullet would be a greater threat than throwing it. If you’re going to do self-centered, narcissistic threat-inflation, get the threat right. You’re afraid of someone with a gun in their hand. Remember, you’re in America, where guns have more rights than people. Unfortunately, this fear might not be completely unrealistic. Gun-toting nuts have killed people for a lot less)
His team-mates, it turns out, have odysseys too, and wouldn’t you know it, they reflect (or are spun to reflect)
his!
Well, not on your team BECAUSE HE’S A MAN.
Is having been descriminated against one of the criteria of eligibilty for making the team? Not all descrimination is bad, otherwise absoluetly anyone could have joined your team; skill or talent for basketball wouldn’t even be on the radar. In fact, such a requirement wouldn’t be allowed because not selecting someone with no such skill or talent would be discrimination.
Unfortunately our interepid reporter can’t even find a good, well-reasoned doubter.
HE STILL IS A MAN, YOU DOLT. And also, your god didn’t have anything to do with it. But hey, if your god is that much of a misogynistic, meddling, micro-manager, your god is an asshole.
Some critics who are more on point (like this player from an opposing team) are safely dismissed for their youthful ignorance:
AND SHE’D BE RIGHT.
Well, that’s big of him. It should sting now. Even young children can tell cheating when they see it, and it doesn’t get much more visible than this five foot eighteen inch, 230 pound narcissist.
Yeah, those are a little harder to brush off. But again, the critics the reporter chooses to quote are boorish, foul-mouthed, god-botherers who are best ignored, despite the valid points they’re making.
Having characterized the critics as bigots with aexes to grind, it’s time to add a final quote from another player, this time from the opposing team:
He might not make the cut in a men’s league, so they might not. Most men aren’t accepted. That’s what sport is based on, exclusion. Where is he supposed to go? Not to a women’s team, because he’s not a woman. He doesn’t belong their. His passion for the game makes no difference to that. He could find some non-competitive house league, or shoot hoops at a gym, or in a park. Nobody owes him a spot on a team, particularly one where he fails to meet the most basic criterion for eligibility: being female. That’s not the women’s problem to solve.
Writer Eric Prisbell presents this story as a feel-good human interest one, with a plucky 6’6″ 230 lb heroine overcoming challenging obstacles to live her dream, but there are lots of bits of other stories peaking out, waiting for someone to tell. The trans widow, and daughter forced to deal with the demands placed on them by Ludwig’s desire to become something he cannot; the enabling corruption of a coach and athletics department; the young woman who lost her rightful place on the team to a man; the women on “Ludwig’s” team, betrayed and abandoned by their coach, their department, their school, and college athletics conference; the parents of Ludwig’s “team-mates; the players on other teams now forced to play against a huge man in a fast, demanding game in which bodies can sometimes collide; the parents of the opposing team’s players; the unsung ref who bore silent witness to the truth; the fans now watching a man cheat. Lots of stories, if you read between the lines. Yet only Ludwig’s is deemed worthy of telling, the others being little more than obstacle path of adversity, a background noise of bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance, against which Ludwig emergers righteously triumphant. Yet it all falls apart if you simply mention the fact that humans can’t change sex, and therefore men can’t become women. Without that element of fantasy, it becomes a disturbing tale of delusion, obsession, and pushiness, aided and abetted by authority figure whose primary job was to protect the health, wellbeing and aspirations of the women they so eagerly betrayed for the “inclusion” of this one mistaken man. Where did that story go?
Needs to be said. One of the things all the woke continually throw at us rad fems is that things change. Yes, they do. Not all things have to, of course, but in our modern world, change is seen as good if it is change. Just like fashions – hemlines, cuts of fabric, colors – they all change. It isn’t always an improvement.
One thing that doesn’t change is your sex. Cross-sex hormones, surgery, and voice training can superficially make you look more like the opposite sex. Wearing clothes that have been designed for the opposite sex can be a superficial marker. But in the final assessment, your sex has not changed just because you think it has.