See someone lies about what I wrote. I make a post pointing out that men and women are different biologically and a woman isn't just a weaker version of a man, and someone falsely claims I'm basically saying women aren't women if they don't have a child. Far from it.
That's why I thought it was important to to mention the word penis in the article. That's another way of pointing out the obvious that men and women are different. Instead of you admiring the fact I'm trying to celebrate the miracle that a women's body can develop and give birth to a baby, people like yourself act like I'm trying to put women back in the kitchen.
Yes, you pointed out that men and women are different. You also very importantly repeatedly emphasized a penis to point out the supposedly “obvious” difference between men and women.
So if a trans woman doesn’t have a penis, do your arguments just break down? What if they have a penis and can give birth and are XX? What if they are XY but can give birth? What if they are XXY? Do you have a clean line to delineate groups of people so everyone feels it’s fair? No, you don’t. You are not adding any new ideas to the difficult question.
The problem people have with your post is that it’s poorly informed of modern science and it’s total cringe, especially coming from someone in the position of an editor, seemingly simply intended to seek applause from your base.
Rojo, if you had a “daughter” born with a penis, you would feel differently about the topic, and you would not have written a mocking article like this one.
Your post doesn't refute anything I've said, in fact it just confirms it. So you predictably sidestep the entire topic of this thread and present yet ANOTHER strawman.
Almost no one in this thread is arguing that people born biological males don't have an advantage. There have been nearly 200 posts in this thread and 100 downvotes on your initial post.....yet almost NO ONE is claiming what you seem to be responding to. You keep responding to an imaginary horde of posters that think Lia Thomas should be able to compete against females. Read the thread. Are even 1% of the posts advocating for this? If not, why is this the point you guys keep responding to?
the reason you are being downvoted into oblivion on your own site isn't because peeple on LRC think males should be allowed to compete against females. Very few people are arguing for this.
You are being downvoted for your disgusting transphobic attitude presented on your site.
Maybe try addressing that in your response next time , rather than inventing yet another strawman to joust against. What's the point of that?
What people are responding negatively to on LRC is not your stance against transgender biological males competing against women, but your disgusting obsession with and tone taken toward transgenders on this site. Your article was an embarrassment to this site.
If very few people think trans women should be allowed to compete against females can you answer a few questions: Did Lia Thomas just win an NCAA championship or not?
Were here teammates encouraged not to speak out if they felt she shouldn’t be allowed to compete?
Do I need to connect the dots….
She just won an NCAA title. It’s clear the NCAA and her school felt she should be able to compete. I don’t know the number of people who think she should be allowed to compete but they are powerful enough they it happened.
The majority of LetsRun may think she shouldn’t compete but clearly those in power in the NCAA weren’t worried about it .
I'm actually very curious what most people think - there is definitely a group that is against transgender women competing in women's sports but is afraid to speak out about it.
Can you make a poll on the front page for people to vote anonymously? I'd be really interested in the findings.
Thanks rojo for the response to my "worth it or not" question.
Someone above asked if I thought it was worth pubishing given the blowback.
I'll agree it could have been written better and I am debating on the podcast next week after addressing to pledge not to talk about it for a full calendar year. So I was thinking of saying, I doubt I'm changing anyone's mind so it's almost not worth it,. But then I saw Weldon's post.
BRAVO!!
The reality is tons of people realize this was a stupid idea but no one had the guts to say anything. It's scary that so many people are scared to death to state facts. The whole winter I kept waiting for the women in swimming to just stand on the start line and let her jump in, swim alone and then swim on their own. Nothing. No protests.
So yes I'm glad we did it. Someone has to push back. Could it have been written slightly more sensitive? Sure. It's quite scary how this country is turning into China on certain matters. We don't have the formal censorship but we might as well.
It's soooo brojo to avoid all the actually posts criticizing them and pat each other on the back instead.
Why are you acting like you are being so brave to post this on a website that mostly agrees with your stance? Lia Thomas should not be competing against females. Not a controversial stance on LRC or in this thread. What is controversial is acting like a bunch of transphobic frat bros in your coverage about it.
#1 most upvoted current post on LRC now is one comparing you guys to.a couple of drunk uncles telling racist jokes. #2 says your article makes you look like a couple of a-holes.
Way to go.
Is there a wait to see the most upvoted post across the full site? There was a thread about the "#1 post of the week" a few weeks back but I wasn't aware of a way to check that at any time
But it is interesting. Lots of people are saying they agree with the sentiment but we just didn't write the article smoothly enough and they keep talking about all of the downvotes we are getting.
Maybe we shouldln't have written an article and just put in a picture. This picture has 34 upvotes and just 5 down votes.
What's ironic is we thought about having a similar quote from Thomas in our April 1 article but didn't include it as we thought it would be too mean.
We reached out to Thomas for coment and she said, "I won that race fair and square and if you don't like it, you can **** my dick."
But for some reason people view that picture as the proper way to make the point? It's all very confusing. I thought that picture was mean and thus didn't include it. Here you can see how everyone is upvoting the hell out of it. I guess we could have saved ourself the grief and not written the article and just linked to the "messageboard post of the week" Or "Photo of the week."
Rojo, don't think too hard about this. The people doing the unhinged screeching in this thread are just looking for an excuse to be angry and offended. They enjoy being outraged, they enjoy self-righteously putting you down and accusing you of being a bigot, it energizes them. Your post was no different than a lot of what The Onion or Babylon Bee would write - something that most healthy people don't become outraged over.
See someone lies about what I wrote. I make a post pointing out that men and women are different biologically and a woman isn't just a weaker version of a man, and someone falsely claims I'm basically saying women aren't women if they don't have a child. Far from it.
That's why I thought it was important to to mention the word penis in the article. That's another way of pointing out the obvious that men and women are different. Instead of you admiring the fact I'm trying to celebrate the miracle that a women's body can develop and give birth to a baby, people like yourself act like I'm trying to put women back in the kitchen.
Yes, you pointed out that men and women are different. You also very importantly repeatedly emphasized a penis to point out the supposedly “obvious” difference between men and women.
So if a trans woman doesn’t have a penis, do your arguments just break down? What if they have a penis and can give birth and are XX? What if they are XY but can give birth? What if they are XXY? Do you have a clean line to delineate groups of people so everyone feels it’s fair? No, you don’t. You are not adding any new ideas to the difficult question.
The problem people have with your post is that it’s poorly informed of modern science and it’s total cringe, especially coming from someone in the position of an editor, seemingly simply intended to seek applause from your base.
Rojo, if you had a “daughter” born with a penis, you would feel differently about the topic, and you would not have written a mocking article like this one.
It looks like you worked really hard on this, but I'm sorry to inform you that if you're born with a penis you're either male or intersex, you can't be a female.
Rojo, if you had a “daughter” born with a penis, you would feel differently about the topic, and you would not have written a mocking article like this one.
If my son becomes trans, I'll love him a great deal. However, I'd have the guts to tell her. "Honey, you can live your life as you want but it's not fair for you to be a female D1 athlete. Elite women's sports is for XX women."
If I was the UPenn swimm coach, I'd have no problem coaching Lia Thomas, but you can bet your ass I'd have the guts to tell her I thought she was making a mistake.
Alexi Santana wrote: I'm actually very curious what most people think - there is definitely a group that is against transgender women competing in women's sports but is afraid to speak out about it. Can you make a poll on the front page for people to vote anonymously? I'd be really interested in the findings.
I was talking to a pretty liberal friend of mine the other day. He said someting along the lines of, "With the trans issue, People act like it's 50-50. I bet it's 90-10 against". I 100% agree with them. My 75 year old VERY liberal aunt gets more riled up about the issue than I do.
Dude, you went from not wanting to speak on this subject for a year. That you would address on your podcast. To literally attempting to explain yourself with replies for days. Just admit that it was an insenstive. Admit that you missed the mark. Admit that you definitely offended a group of people larger than 10% r whatever you are trying to get at. Being liberal or conservative, LEFT or RIGHT......as if political ideologies can just take directions as descriptions for their moronic thinkings, doesn't have to help one explain away their feelings about this hot topic. What is most disturbing about this whole thread is that we are talking about people here. They don't need to be discussed about so callously.
NCAA tried to change the eligibility rule mid season. They even asked the USA Swimming to craft a new policy.
16 of Thomas' teammates asked UPenn and Ivy League to follow the new USA Swimming policy. Only four of the teammates signed an open letter in support of Thomas. 16-4 looks pretty lopsided to me.
Eventually, NCAA chickened out because they were probably afraid of a potential lawsuit (either from UPenn or Thomas' attorney).
You are supporting my pointwihtout realilzig. The reality is 16 of her teammates were against the policy but they were afraid to sign their names to it. Why? Cause they correctly realized- as this whole thread shows - that the Internet mob and keyboard warriors will come after you. Think about it. People say I'm overacting when I'm talking about China. I'm not. You have Ivy League administrators telling them not to talk.
IF you put your name out there, people falsely lie about what you said or call you transphobic.
lolio wrote: Jesus christ Robert, there's more to being a woman than having a vagina, having a period and giving birth. It's 2022; stop acting like it's 1950.
See someone lies about what I wrote. I make a post pointing out that men and women are different biologically and a woman isn't just a weaker version of a man, and someone falsely claims I'm basically saying women aren't women if they don't have a child. Far from it.
That's why I thought it was important to to mention the word penis in the article. That's another way of pointing out the obvious that men and women are different. Instead of you admiring the fact I'm trying to celebrate the miracle that a women's body can develop and give birth to a baby, people like yourself act like I'm trying to put women back in the kitchen.
You want to be admired for celebrating that women can have a baby? So what. In a nutshell you just put women in their place - biological females popping out babies who can be athletic but certainly only in a way that the biological male deems appropriate. You don't need to defend women's sports so clumsily when you BIOLOGICALLY don't have the goods that you are so adamant about protecting. Hell, I think those "penis" females do a better job of protecting women than you ever will.
HOW ABOUT YOU JUST LET WOMEN SPEAK UP FOR THEMSELVES.
I think the thread I posted this on before was deleted, so I'll post again here: The medium is the message. Whatever your opinions on the topic are, the fact that you've chosen to communicate them in the form of a satirical April Fools article sends the message that "we think this issue is a joke and you people are funny!"
I'm a physician at a hospital that serves an incredibly socioeconomically disadvantaged part of Philly. I have my own opinions about opioid use, violence, HIV, and all kids of other issues that plague our patient population. Some of my opinions are PC while others are not, but I would NEVER communicate my thoughts on sensitive subjects like this in the form of a satirical April Fools article. Doing so would serve no purpose and would be counterproductive to actually making progress on the issues.
I too think that trans women should not be competing in the women's division, but the way to make the argument is to tactfully explain you concerns, not to shout "LULZ at people with penises racing biological women!" You're just making it easier for people to write off our concerns for women's sports as being rooted in transphobia.
Caster Semenya isn't trans. She is intersex. She wouldn't have known and her family didn't know either. She was born just like every other girl but had internal testes. Internal i.e. you cannot see them. So she grew up knowing nothing different, as a girl. I know butch women who look similar to Caster. They exist. They're more often involved with women's rugby and football (soccer) than athletics in my experience.
It was only after she won the world champs that they requested sex testing and discovered the intersex issue. The thing is having those levels of testosterone make a dramatic difference. If I was competing then I found out that and read about it, I wouldn't carry on competing against women because of the massive difference.
Actually, what you say about Semenya isn't accurate. South African sports authorities knew full well that Semenya was XY with a disorder/difference of male sex development before Semenya won Semenya's first World Championship in Berlin in September 2009.
In early August 2009, Athletics South Africa sent Semenya to a gynecologist in Pretoria for a full medical workup. Any gynecologist with basic training would be able to tell that someone with Semenya's history, anatomy and physiology was/is not female pretty early on during the interview and physical exam. Semenya's particular DSD condition, XY 5-ARD, has been well-documented in medical and popular literature since the early 1970s, and it's been relatively easy to diagnose medically since at least the early 1980s, so it would not have been difficult for a competent medical professional to find out what processes to follow to definitely identify Semenya's sex and DSD in 2009.
After Semenya's medical workup in August 2009, various bigwigs in the SA medical world told ASA that they could not enter Semenya into women's competition in Berlin because Semenya is not female. But the head of ASA told them to get stuffed, he was going to do it anyways. Which he did. He later admitted publicly that he lied about Semenya's sex and sex testing, and in 2011 he was fired from his job for corruption.
Also, prior to Semenya's full medical workup in August 2009, Semenya's coaches and everyone close to Semenya would have known something was not quite right if only because of the fact that Semenya had never menstruated. For a female person to reach age 18 without ever having a period is virtually unheard of - and on the rare occasions that this does occur, it's always a sign that something is medically wrong. In medicine, lack of menarche by 15 or 16 is a red flag that a person might be XY with a DSD.
Yeah, there are lots of butch women out there. But like all other female persons, butch women have periods, and most of them started having periods at the customary age, which for the large majority of girls is 9-13. Many butch women have had babies too. Also, butch women have urethras that are formed and located in the customary, which from what Semenya has said in the past - and the way that XY 5-ARD usually presents - Semenya most likely does not.
IMHO, the idea that Semenya, Semenya's mother, aunts, sisters and friends went for years without ever noticing, thinking it odd or remarking about the fact that teenage Caster was the only girl in the family - or the village - who never had a "monthly visitor" is not credible.
As for the claim that Semenya "was born just like every other girl but had internal testes. Internal i.e. you cannot see them. So she grew up knowing nothing different, as a girl" - we really don't know if this is the case. Many people with Semenya's XY 5-ARD are born with testes that are only partially undescended - they are often in the inguinal canal, or in the folds of the groin where they are palpable. Moreover, when babies are born with undescended testicles, they often descend further after birth - particularly during the 4-7 month long male mini puberty of infancy that occurs in the first year of life, starting about 4 weeks after birth.
But we'll never know what really happened in Semenya's early childhood because Semenya was not born in a medical facility, or with medical monitoring, and Semenya's mother did not get the kind of prenatal care and scanning that would have been customary in other countries or if she were white in SA. Nor AFAICT did Semenya receive any medical care as a child, not even well child checkups. So there are no health records to check.
In addition, like nearly all black people in South Africa under apartheid, Semenya's parents did not register Caster's birth with the government authority that tallies and keeps track of births in SA or apply for a birth certificate for the child.
Semenya's first birth certificate was issued in April 2007 when Semenya was 16. By that time, Semenya already had been scouted by SA sports officials who apparently saw Semenya has a prime candidate to enter into female competition under the loose and ever shifting eligibility standards that came into place after the IAAF and IOC stopped the sex chromosome and SRY gene testing that once had been mandatory for all athletes 18 and up seeking eligibility for elite international women's competition. Not coincidentally, the government that issued 16-year-old Semenya a BC saying "Female" in 2007 was full of officials who were counting on Semenya to bring South Africa international sports gold and glory once they put the "golden girl" runner on the world stage.
The belief that Semenya grew up "as a girl" and nobody knew anything different doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you look deeper into Semenya's story. Press reports from 2009, including a long piece in the New Yorker, said that Semenya's first running coach referred to Semenya with male pronouns, that Semenya's father expressed uncertainty and ignorance about Semenya's sex, and that the head of Semenya's school did not realize anyone thought Semenya was a girl until Semenya was in grade 11 and started competing in girls' running events. Prior to then, Semenya had played football (soccer) on the boys' team - and throughout Semenya's schooling, Semenya always wore a boys' uniform to school (there are several of photos online that show this).
Given the rigid sex segregation in SA school uniforms and youth sports then as now, and the second-tier status and strict and narrow social expectations of girls in rural SA when Semenya was a kid, it would have been highly unusual for Semenya to be allowed to do wear a boys' school uniform and play boys' teenage sports if Semenya really had been viewed as a girl growing up. Even today, SA - particularly rural SA - is a very hostile place for girls who are sporty and come across as in any way butch. Rather than be accepted and allowed to compete in boys' sports, girls deemed to be butch and suspected of being lesbians in rural black SA are customarily ostracized, shamed and subjected to violence, including the all too common crime of "corrective" rape and gang rape. With all that in mind, I find it hard to believe that all the teenage boys on Semenya's teams and on all the other teams they played against, and all the coaches and families involved, would have been cool with Semenya playing teenage boys' soccer if everyone really thought Semenya was a girl.
The glaring contradictions in the stories about Semenya's childhood and youth told by and on behalf of Semenya over the years were apparent in a fawning profile in the NY Times published in June 2021. As most press coverage of Semenya does, the story started out claiming that
She identifies as female, was raised female, is legally female and has boldly proclaimed, “I am a woman, and I am fast.”
But a few paragraphs later, the NY Times said:
Books for children and young adults have portrayed Semenya as a race and gender activist, a hero, an athlete who overcame bullying to find her identity and confidence on the track. She was the fourth child in a family of five daughters and a son...
Her parents, Semenya said, understood that her life would be uncommon and prepared her for it. They let her wear boys’ clothing, take on a household role traditionally reserved for sons and join a teenage boys' soccer team.
She spoke affectionately of her younger days of playing on a dusty field in a rural village, and being celebrated, not isolated, for standing out, for being singular and distinctive. “As a kid, you’re walking home to the sports ground, you’re playing with boys and your childhood becomes marvelous because everyone loves you because you’re different,” Semenya said with a grin.
Sounds to me like Semenya grew up being regarded as a very special male child, not as a girl like every other girl. Moreover, the NYT's statement that Semenya spent childhood "being celebrated, not isolated, for standing out, for being singular and distinctive" sure undermines the claims we've heard for many years now that Semenya grew up being bullied and ostracized.
Whether or not she qualifies for the Tokyo Games, the South African runner will have provoked an important debate about who should compete in women’s sports.
Honestly your getting a lot of hate for this but I thought it was a good joke and respect for standing up for womens sports. Can’t cancel if you don’t give a f*ck🤷♂️
I was talking to a pretty liberal friend of mine the other day. He said someting along the lines of, "With the trans issue, People act like it's 50-50. I bet it's 90-10 against". I 100% agree with them. My 75 year old VERY liberal aunt gets more riled up about the issue than I do.
This just screams "I'm not racist, my gardener is Mexican! And my lawyer is Jewish LOL"
You need to get out of your bubble, or do something very crazy like hire someone who's not a cis white dude to work on this site/sit on your board
I was talking to a pretty liberal friend of mine the other day. He said someting along the lines of, "With the trans issue, People act like it's 50-50. I bet it's 90-10 against". I 100% agree with them. My 75 year old VERY liberal aunt gets more riled up about the issue than I do.
This just screams "I'm not racist, my gardener is Mexican! And my lawyer is Jewish LOL"
You need to get out of your bubble, or do something very crazy like hire someone who's not a cis white dude to work on this site/sit on your board
I agree with everything you wrote except I think it’s funny that you think LetsRun has a board
Yes, you pointed out that men and women are different. You also very importantly repeatedly emphasized a penis to point out the supposedly “obvious” difference between men and women.
So if a trans woman doesn’t have a penis, do your arguments just break down? What if they have a penis and can give birth and are XX? What if they are XY but can give birth? What if they are XXY? Do you have a clean line to delineate groups of people so everyone feels it’s fair? No, you don’t. You are not adding any new ideas to the difficult question.
The problem people have with your post is that it’s poorly informed of modern science and it’s total cringe, especially coming from someone in the position of an editor, seemingly simply intended to seek applause from your base.
Rojo, if you had a “daughter” born with a penis, you would feel differently about the topic, and you would not have written a mocking article like this one.
It looks like you worked really hard on this, but I'm sorry to inform you that if you're born with a penis you're either male or intersex, you can't be a female.
China Joe It took as much time as running a lap, no big deal. Your opinion (or mine) on whether someone is or isn’t female is not that significant. Biologists [1] and philosophers of science [2] who know a thing or two about what they are talking don’t have such clear-cut convictions as you seem to. If you need more education, start with the references below, and then ask yourself what you will call an XY person born looking like a female and with even an impregnable womb and underdeveloped ovaries and also undescended testicles and an underdeveloped penis beyond birth. Maybe then the Supreme Court nominee’s answer won’t seem disingenuous.
BY MORTEN BUSCH Sex chromosomes usually determine whether you are female or male. Women are XX. Men are XY. However, genetically, a few women are actually men. They grow up as women with a woman’s body, and most only discover...
The issue is we are who we are. We cannot entirely hide it. This thread is revealing much about who we are. It is not pretty. I do prefer real to pretty but get back to me later…
You are supporting my pointwihtout realilzig. The reality is 16 of her teammates were against the policy but they were afraid to sign their names to it. Why? Cause they correctly realized- as this whole thread shows - that the Internet mob and keyboard warriors will come after you. Think about it. People say I'm overacting when I'm talking about China. I'm not. You have Ivy League administrators telling them not to talk.
IF you put your name out there, people falsely lie about what you said or call you transphobic.
They were not afraid of "the internet mobs and keyboard warriors." They were afraid of their woke coaches (who list their preferred pronouns on their bio pages). If they were swimming at Liberty or BYU, they wouldn't be afraid. One swimmer at Virginia Tech wrote an open letter right after the meet. Another from Kentucky did a TV interview.
Do the internet mob and keyboard warriors harass people in Pennsylvania but not people in Virginia and Kentucky? I don't think so.
