Why?

The president of World Boxing has apologized after Olympic champion Imane Khelif was singled out in the governing body’s announcement to make sex testing mandatory.

Algerian boxer Khelif, who won gold at the Paris Games last summer amid scrutiny over her eligibility, was specifically mentioned when World Boxing released its new policy last Friday.

And? What’s the problem? He’s not shy, and he beat up a woman, and he cheated. I don’t think he’s an innocent victim here.

On Monday, its president Boris van der Vorst contacted the Algerian Boxing Federation to acknowledge that was wrong.

“I am writing to you all personally to offer a formal and sincere apology for this and acknowledge that her privacy should have been protected,” he wrote in a letter seen by The Associated Press.

Why? The Olympics are not private. Also why “her”? Why not “Khelif’s” if you’re not willing to say “his”?

We have to fight over every inch. It’s so tedious.

Sports Illustrated:

Just days after World Boxing declared that female boxers must complete a mandatory gender test in order to compete, directly challenging controversial Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif’s status in the amateur boxing arena, a new bombshell report has now shed light on the Algerian boxers true gender.

In an article published yesterday (June 1) by Alan Abrahamson of 3 Wire Sports, the leaked medical records from Khelif’s tests carried out in 2022 and 2023 ahead of the Paris Olympics have now been made public.

“Unless someone manipulates the evidence, the result is going to be crystal clear, déjà vu all over again, because in chromosome tests given amid the International Boxing Association’s 2022 and 2023 world championships, the boxer’s DNA showed XY markers with “male” karyotypes,” Abrahamson wrote.

Abrahamson would go on to note that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) knew this, but still allowed Khelif to compete. 

…

Khelif has yet to issue a statement on the report, but her status in both amateur and professional boxing is potentially in jeopardy now more than ever.

So stop saying “her status” already.

Get the experts in. You’re going to talk about a man who pretends to be a woman? Bring in a man who pretends to be a woman to discuss it. Let everyone see how batshit crazy the ideology is.

I do recommend playing the clip – it’s a treat to hear “Joanne” speaking.

How can UN Women do anything about this when it doesn’t even know what women are?

But who are men? Who are women? Who is doing what to which? Do we even know? Is there any way we can tell?

Also, whoever wrote that doesn’t know what “purposefully” means. It’s not a synonym for “purposely” or “on purpose.”

Oh good, another ten minutes hate.

Pop star Jade Thirlwall has led a crowd of thousands in an anti-J.K. Rowling chant during a music festival known for celebrating LGBTQ+ culture.

While performing on the Main Stage at Mighty Hoopla in London Saturday evening, Thirlwall ignited the crowd when she chanted “transphobes” and the crowd responded: “Fuck you!”

She then changed the prompt to “J.K. Rowling” to which the crowd responded with another enthusiastic “Fuck you!”

Great. Brilliant. Woman incites crowd to scream hatred toward a woman for the crime of knowing and saying that men are not women. What pleasant times we live in.

Rowling, author of the acclaimed Harry Potter series, has come under intense scrutiny during the last few years for her comments about women and transgender rights.

Listen, Indy: crowds screaming “fuck you!” is not “intense scrutiny”. It’s not any kind of scrutiny, it’s mindless hatred of a kind that can incite violence.

The author, 59, first made controversial comments about the transgender community in December 2019. Since then, she has published and retweeted numerous posts containing hateful rhetoric toward the trans and non-binary communities.

Liars. It’s not “hateful rhetoric” to say that men are not women. I’ll tell you what “hateful rhetoric” is: it’s shouting a woman’s name to get the response “fuck you!”

Rowling has denied being transphobic, but has previously stated that she would “happily” go to prison for misgendering a trans person rather than refer to them by their preferred pronouns.

That’s not “phobic.” It’s not hatred to decline to refer to a man as “she”. Furthermore, it’s not ok to order women to call men “women” so how about focusing on that instead?

She’s even gone so far as to dismiss concerns that her views on transgender people will damage her legacy. When asked in 2023 by interviewer Megan Phelps-Roper about her legacy in the podcast titled The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author said she doesn’t think about it.

Gone so far as? How is that any kind of going far? Why shouldn’t she dismiss such pompous “concerns” that she doesn’t share and are none of anyone else’s business?

Whoever wrote this drivel is not very good at the job.

“I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly. I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy, what a pompous way to live your life thinking about what my legacy will be. Whatever! I’ll be dead, I care about now, the living.”

Well said – yet Indy dimwit considers it going so far.

I can remember when it was an ok news outlet.

But what if it’s true?

British courts have been accused of reviving blasphemy laws after a man who set fire to a copy of the Koran was convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence.

Hamit Coskun shouted “fuck Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism” while holding the religious text above his head during a protest on Feb 13. The 50-year-old, who was violently attacked by a passerby during the demonstration in London, went on trial last week, accused of an offence under the Public Order Act.

At Westminster magistrates’ court on Monday, he was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence of using disorderly conduct, which was motivated “in part by hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam”.

But if an ideology is a really bad, hostile to humans, especially hostile to women and “infidels” and Jews, punitive, coercive ideology, then “hostility” to its members is pretty much inevitable, isn’t it? Face it: it’s a profoundly hostile religion.

Robert Jenrick, shadow justice secretary, said: “This decision is wrong. It revives a blasphemy law that parliament repealed. Free speech is under threat. I have no confidence in Two-Tier Keir to defend the rights of the public to criticise all religions.”

The public doesn’t have the right to say men are not women, so we can’t expect it to have the right to say Islam is a nightmare.

The CPS said that Coskun was not being prosecuted for burning the book. They argued it was the combination of his derogatory remarks about Islam and the fact that it was done in public that made it an offence.

Making derogatory remarks about a religion should never ever be an offence aka a punishable crime.

The CPS originally charged Coskun, who is an atheist, with harassing the “religious institution of Islam”. However, the charge was later amended after free speech campaigners took up his cause and argued he was essentially being accused of blasphemy.

Harassing Islam ffs! Harassing the religious institution that is Islam! That’s not even a thing!

However, the charge was later amended after free speech campaigners took up his cause and argued he was essentially being accused of blasphemy.

Because he was.

Katy Thorne KC, Coskun’s barrister, had argued that even the amended charges against him effectively criminalised any public burning of a religious book and were tantamount to blasphemy laws. “It is effectively chilling the right of citizens to criticise religion,” she said.

She said Coskun’s actions were not motivated by hostility towards the followers of Islam but to the religion itself. Judge McGarva, however, said he did not accept that argument.

Addressing Coskun, he said: “You believe Islam is an ideology which encourages its followers to violent paedophilia and a disregard for the rights of non-believers. You don’t distinguish between the two. I find you have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers. That is based on your experiences in Turkey and the experiences of your family.”

Ok let’s talk about that. How does one distinguish between the two? If there is a set of beliefs, an ideology, that includes a lot of harsh rules and restrictions and punishments, and that treats women and unbelievers as evil and thus deserving of death by torture, how is it possible not to feel at least wary about the adherents to that belief? There are liberal reformist Muslims who really do reject the harsh rules and punishments, but still, when an ideology is as warped and murderous as Islam is, it’s difficult to make the distinction. It could be that that’s Islam’s fault as opposed to the fault of infidels.

The National Secular Society (NSS), which, alongside the Free Speech Union, paid for Coskun’s legal fees, said the verdict “jeopardises” free expression.

A spokesperson for the FSU said: “This is deeply disappointing. Everyone should be able to exercise their rights to protest peacefully and to freedom of expression, regardless of how offensive or upsetting it may be to some people.

“The Free Speech Union and the National Secular Society intend to appeal this verdict and keep on appealing it until it’s overturned. If that means taking it all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, we will do so.”

Good. Now do “men are not women.”

Lying pronouns are the tool that confuses the issue. BBC Sport:

Billie Sky has just helped her team to promotion but now she cannot play for them again.

She is one of 28 transgender women registered with the Football Association to play amateur football in England who are banned from playing FA-affiliated women’s football.

That is, he’s a man, therefore the BBC is deliberately lying to its readers by calling him “she”. And the BBC is very determined about it.

The ruling has forced Billie Sky to stop playing competitive 11-a-side football for one of her teams, London Galaxy. She will still be able to play informally for her other – Goal Diggers FC – as the club has withdrawn from all FA-affiliated leagues in response to the new policy.

“I just took part in a season with London Galaxy and helped them earn promotion,” she told BBC Sport. “Now I can’t play with them, which is really sad. I put a lot of commitment into that club. What am I supposed to do? Go and play with the men? Because I don’t feel safe playing there. And all of my team-mates want me here.”

Uh, Billie? Does it occur to you that women don’t feel safe playing against you? Does it occur to you to wonder why your safety should matter while theirs should not? Does it occur to you that even your teammates may not feel safe with you on the team?

BBC Sport approached a number of grassroots footballers who support the ban. Most did not want to go on record with their opinions because of a fear of reprisals, but one footballer, who plays in the sixth tier of the women’s game, was willing to speak anonymously.

Aha, so the BBC is aware that women have been bullied into silence on this subject. The BBC is aware but continues with the bullying anyway.

Georgie (not her real name) believes the FA’s new policy “protects the integrity of women’s football that we have fought for so long to attain”.

The issues around the policy have been described by the FA as a “complex subject” and wider debates have centred on inclusion, sporting fairness and safety in women’s sport.

Says the BBC briskly, then returns to paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of what the man Billie thinks and feels and wants and whines about.

When avid football fan Billie Sky first transitioned, she had given up on the idea of sport, but that changed when she was encouraged to join Goal Diggers FC, an inclusive club based in London.

“I think I had the first moments of my life where I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I’m trans or different or weird or something. I just felt like another person here,” she said.

Nice for him, not so nice for her and her and her…

For the trans communniny? Maudlin hair-tearing anguish and apology. For women? Instant surrender of their rights and crawling self-abasement for attempting to act as if they had any.

Oh no oh no oh no they tried to have a sauna session for women, got caught treating women as people with rights, and all but pulled their own heads off in their anguished remorse. What kind of horrible brutal person treats women as if they have rights??????

Of course it wasn’t “cis-only”; it was women-only. If it were cis-only it would be about men as well as women, and that would never do. It’s women who have to be punished and bullied and beaten down into the ground until they finally shut up for good. Men are just kindly bumbling sweeties who never commit crimes against the trans communniny, so there is never any need to hold them up for public insult and abuse. It’s women who are the rot in the cheesecake, the worm in the soup, the turd in the punch bowl. The project to punish women until they stop continues.

Oh they’re not asking for much, only everything.

See it? “Codify trans-inclusive meanings of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in law” – thus obliterating women’s rights.

That’s “doing better” is it? I would hate to see what doing worse would look like.

There’s a lot of paradox here.

[Stephen] Miller told Fox News: “Harvard has engaged in decades of invidious, unlawful and illegal race-based discrimination against American citizens … The Democrat party’s philosophy right now is for foreigners, everything – for Americans, nothing.”

Jason Johnson, a political scientist at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, said: “Their goal is to intimidate and break down institutions of higher learning in America because that is where most of the resistance to their authoritarian tendencies is going to come from.”

…

Other commentators detect an element of class warfare. Trump won election last November with a base drawing largely on non-college-educated white men. Now he is stoking hostility towards the ivory towers of the US’s most elite university.

It’s such a weird twisted turned inside out kind of class warfare though. Trump with his billions and golf resorts and gold shoelaces is a bizarre candidate for working class hero…but the US has a long history of swapping realities for symbols. Trump is enormously rich but he gets to play the class game in his favor because he is so ignorant and crude and trashy. It’s all surface and nothing underneath. He doesn’t give a good god damn about the working class, but he does love to make war on intelligent people for the edification of his “base.” He’s all hat and no cattle, all symbol and no substance. And it works for him.

Brendan Boyle, a Democratic representative who graduated from Harvard in 2005, said: “Part of Trump’s political skill is figuring out how to portray himself as this working man’s populist hero even though he’s a billionaire who pisses in gold toilets.”

Exactly so. It’s infuriating, and it keeps going and going and going.

Sigh. Every single news outlet that appears makes the same damn mistake.

In fact the same two damn mistakes. Each one says “trans” or “transgender” instead of “male” and each one fails to say “women’s” meet or event or championships.

For the billionth time, the problem is not being trans, the problem is being male and competing against females.

This endlessly repeated obfuscation benefits exclusively males who cheat females.

Mainstream newspaper refers to male athlete as trans athlete instead of male athlete in the eleventy billionth refusal to tell the truth about this relentless cheating of female athletes.

When East Valley of Spokane runner Verónica Garcia crossed the finish line at Mount Tahoma High School after winning the Class 2A 400-meter dash on Saturday, she looked over at the scoreboard, saw her time of 55.70, and smiled. 

Ignoring the boos she heard from the crowd, Garcia took a moment to bask in her accomplishment of winning her second consecutive Class 2A 400-meter state title. 

How sweet – except for the fact that he’s a boy and it was a girls’ race.

As a transgender person, Garcia has heard the boos before. She heard them last year when she hit the straightaway on her first state title run. She heard them again on Saturday, as the crowd cheered loudly for every other runner during the medal ceremony, before boos rang out when Garcia was announced as the winner. 

But he’s not a generic “transgender person.” He’s a boy. He’s not a she, he’s a he. The boos “rang out”” (how do boos “ring”?) because he cheated a girl out of winning the race. Calling him “she” obscures that fact. Journalism should not lie about what sex people are, especially when it’s a story about a male cheating females.

While she warmed up before the race, a man near the starting blocks wearing an American flag shirt that read “Save women’s sports”  repeated “Let’s go girls!” and “girls’ race!” seemingly making sure that Garcia was within earshot. 

She heard the heckles, but the 17-year old Garcia didn’t let it negatively affect her performance. Instead, she used it as fuel. 

“I’ll be honest, I kind of expect it,” Garcia said. “But it maybe didn’t have their intended effect. It made me angry, but not angry as in, I wanted to give up, but angry as in, I’m going to push.

Isn’t that nice? Framing this story as boy cheating girls = the victim of nasty right-wing bullies, as opposed to boy cheating girls = boy cheating girls. It’s not the guy in the flag shirt who’s the bully here, it’s the boy cheating a girl out of first place.

And in conclusion:

For Garcia, who plans to study fire science and someday drive a Spokane Fire Department engine, winning the state title wasn’t just about herself.  “One of the things that Martin Luther King always pointed out is that you have to do what’s right,” Garcia said. “Even if there comes risk, you still have to do what’s right.”

And what you’re doing is wrong, you smug little toad.

Tucking breaks.

An LGBTQ+ group within an NHS hospital trust drew up plans to give trans staff extra breaks if they wore chest binders or had to tuck their genitals away.

In draft guidance seen by The Telegraph, an LGBTQ+ staff network within the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust (UH Sussex) said trans colleagues “may require extra scheduled breaks in their shift in order to have breaks from binding and tucking”.

Well now wait a second. If they get extra breaks from binding and tucking, why shouldn’t women get extra breaks from/for wearing high heels or makeup or tampons? Why shouldn’t men have extra breaks from/for shaving or not shaving? If one group gets extra breaks then all groups should get extra breaks. Fair’s fair.

However, the trust said the new proposals, which also said women-only spaces should include trans women, had been dropped in February and would not be pursued following the Supreme Court ruling last month.

…

But critics said the draft guidance raised concerns about the time spent by NHS staff on working up and consulting on these types of policies. 

Well, that, plus the utter stupidity of the policies themselves.

Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at Sex Matters, a human rights charity, said the proposals for “employees who are self-harming in pursuit of the impossible goal of sex change should never have made it onto paper, even as a draft”.

She added: “Tucking genitals and binding breasts are culturally motivated actions that cause permanent physical damage, just like breast ironing and the use of neck coils. The only difference is that self-harm in the name of trans identity is high status and fashionable.”

See also: female genital mutilation aka FGM. There are, of course, people who defend FGM because it’s a religious/cultural practice and therefore must be beyond criticism or prevention.

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust is vehement in its disavowal of these proposed policies, which it rejected entirely.

How embarrassing. A grown-up museum is doing this.

Gender Stories

Challenging rigid definitions and binary narratives, Gender Stories dives deep into the intricate connections between sex, gender, sexuality, and identity. Discover how these fluid, and multifaceted ideas have been mythologised, stereotyped, expressed – and sometimes concealed – through art, history, politics, and daily life over time.

Blah blah blah. It’s so rigid and binary and last Tuesday to know that men are not women. Do you want to be your grandmother?? Do you???!

Featuring works by David Hockney, Rene Matić, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, Grayson Perry, and Del LaGrace Volcano, this ground-breaking exhibition invites visitors to delve into the multifaceted world of gender. It challenges traditional binary narratives and explores how gender intersects with sex, identity, and sexuality across cultures and history.

That’s the ticket! Traditional and binary=wrong and stupid, so do the opposite of them at all times. It’s traditional and binary to think gravity is real, so walk off the top deck of tall buildings every chance you get. It’s traditional and binary to think people need to eat food to survive, so go ahead and starve yourself until you reach peak enlightenment.

We don’t have all the answers, but we’re excited to explore these complex questions together. Whether you’re beginning, continuing, or seeking to understand a gender journey – your own or someone else’s – this exhibition offers a meaningful space for reflection and discovery.

You mean there’s somewhere quiet to sit down?

When confusions collide:

A practising witch claims she was thrown off a druid training course over accusations by a member of the UK Pagan Federation that she was “transphobic” in a row about women’s rights.

When even the Druids believe it you know it’s gone mainstream.

Angela Howard said she became involved with paganism and joined the British Druid Order (BDO) in 2020 to find “spiritual healing” after being sexually assaulted.

Somebody needs to set up a British Terf Order.

However, Howard said the solace she sought in druidry and paganism was shattered when she was banned in April from continuing her training because of her support of the exclusion of trans women — males who identify as female — from single-sex spaces for women.

…

The dispute began, she said, three days after the landmark Supreme Court judgment that ruled the definition of a woman under equality laws related to biological sex, rather than “certificated gender” acquired by trans people.

She said the Pagan Federation put up a post on its official Facebook page entitled: “Statement of Support for Trans People from the Pagan Federation”.

According to Howard, 48, in contradiction of the Supreme Court ruling, it asserted that trans women should be regarded to be exactly the same as biological females and that this position was “not up for debate”.

Well not exactly in contradiction of the ruling, because the ruling doesn’t tell people how we should or should not “regard” things. The ruling leaves us free to “regard” men as women if we want to. The law is about actions, not thoughts. Laws about thoughts are extremely hard to police, so legislatures and courts generally avoid them.

Howard said she responded to this statement by commenting that there were situations in which women needed single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms, women’s refuges and prisons. She illustrated the point by citing her own experience of being sexually assaulted by a trans person, a man who identified as a woman, and being unable to access a rape crisis service because it was “mixed-sex”.

And so they punished her because of course they did.

Four days later, the British Druid Order also banned her from their Facebook page when she criticised an article posted there that described the Supreme Court ruling as a “victory for bigotry”, she said, adding that her response included only one line of criticism, an expression of sympathy for trans women in prison. She also asked the article’s author whether he had read the judgment.

However, she said she was expelled from the site by its administrators after a member of the Pagan Federation support team claimed she had been “more unequivocally transphobic” in her comments.

Of course. This is how you win points in The Great Global Who Is Most Transphilic contest. You keep your eyes and ears open for the tiniest deviation from Transphilic Law and then you pounce before someone else does. Ding ding ding! You get to move forward ten steps.

In a written complaint to the BDO this week, Howard pointed out that women and girls were the “largest and most consistently oppressed group worldwide”, adding: “Even here in the UK, I cannot safely wear a witch’s hat in public without receiving threatening or fearful looks.”

Well…I hate to spoil the fun, but you also can’t wear a chicken on your head in public without receiving threatening or fearful looks. Funny clothes are going to get funny looks, because people expect the expected. That is after all the whole point of wearing a witch’s hat or a chicken when out in public.

Hmm. Is citing non-existent sources a “formatting issue”? I don’t think so.

The White House will fix errors in a much-anticipated federal government report spearheaded by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which decried America’s food supply, pesticides and prescription drugs.

Kennedy’s wide-ranging “Make America Healthy Again” report, released last week, cited hundreds of studies, but a closer look by the news organization NOTUS found that some of those studies did not actually exist.

Excuse me, excuse me – that’s not “errors.” Citing studies that don’t exist is not an error, it’s lying. It’s fraud. It’s playing craps with other people’s lives. It’s not a mistake, it’s a crime.

Asked about the report’s problems, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the report will be updated.

“I understand there was some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated.” Leavitt told reporters during her briefing.

Oh puhleeze. Citing fake studies is not a fucking formatting issue.

Ouch. Sports journalist Steve Bunce is getting ferociously chastised for pretending he never did fall for the Imane Khelif bullshit when in fact…

Some of us did, but it seems he did that other thing.

Well um errr

Thieves fall out.

Donald Trump unleashed a furious screed lamenting his recent legal loss on tariffs, and pointed the finger at “sleazebag” conservative billionaire Leonard Leo, the ex-chairman of the Federalist Society.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump railed against the U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling the previous day, which found that the president had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.”

Oh dear, he’s a sleazebag? According to Donald Trump, the sleaziest sleaze bag most of us have ever seen?

On Thursday, the Trump administration was granted a temporary stay of the little-known federal court’s ruling while the government appeals—but that didn’t keep Trump from flying off the handle.

“Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?” Trump wrote.

How is it possible for Trump to have done so much irreparable damage to the US? Is it purely hatred of everyone who isn’t Trump?

(Spoiler: yes.)

Trump said that he regretted taking recommendations for judges from the Federalist Society, and lashed out at Leo specifically. “I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. 

Wait stop right there. He was “new to Washington” i.e. he was completely ignorant of anything and everything relevant to the job of presiding but he went for the job anyway because he has such a bloated ego and an infinite supply of greed and self-dealing. Someone as pig-ignorant as he is should never ever put xirself forward for that job.

“I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions,” Trump wrote.

Trump is a bad person. Trump is the most bad living person the majority of us have ever seen. He’s bad in so many ways, and so thoroughly bad in all of them. There is no compensating good to alleviate the gruesome picture. He’s all bad. There are few bad qualities that don’t apply to him – in fact I can’t think of any, but I’m being generous because I’m better than he is.

Khelif told “no” at last.

Imane Khelif, the boxer at the heart of the gender controversy at the Olympics, has been barred from making a competitive comeback next week.

World Boxing have confirmed that they will introduce mandatory sex testing and that they have written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform them that Khelif will not be able to compete at the Eindhoven Box Cup.

The amateur boxing federation said that Khelif would have to undergo sex testing before she could compete at any of their events.

HE. Don’t call him “she” in the very act of reporting on his cheating ffs.

In a statement, the governing body, which has taken on running amateur boxing and did not run it at the Paris Olympics, said: “World Boxing will introduce mandatory sex testing, to determine the eligibility of male and female athletes that want to take part in its competitions.

“The introduction of mandatory testing will be part of a new policy on “Sex, Age and Weight” to ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women.

Especially women. It’s women who are cheated by gender nonsense.

This is just dumb. Really dumb.

Gay and lesbian adults identify more with straight and bisexual individuals, nearly doubling in percentage compared to what they have in common with transgender individuals, according to a new survey.

…

About half of gay and lesbian adults said they have a great deal or a fair amount in common with bisexual people (50 percent) and straight people (51 percent), compared to 28 percent who said they have a lot in common with transgender people.

But it’s a stupid question. It’s like asking people if they have more in common with farmers or Santa Claus. Pretending to be the opposite sex is radically different from being attracted to either sex. Attraction is one thing and being is quite quite another. It’s so much another. There’s no pretending involved in sexual attraction, while idennifying as the other sex is all about pretending. Being gay is reality, being trans is fantasy.

Both trans individuals and those who identify as gay or bisexual represent parallel groups, she added, as they’ve had a long shared history of social marginalization and discrimination.

Yeah no. That’s not enough. Murderers also have a long history of social marginalization and discrimination; that doesn’t mean they represent a “parallel group” to people who get parking tickets.

“The gay rights movement, going all the way back to Stonewall, has significant representation by trans people,” Schwartz said. “Historically, it has always been referred to as the LGBT community as opposed to the LGB community.

That’s just not true. At all.