Molly Huddle calls out misogyny on letsrun.

winsome smith wrote:

/quote]

The ACLU forgot this a long time ago. Their lawyers aren't walking into any Skokie courtroom today.

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The ACLU has succomed to authoritarian ideology. It's disturbing. Just this week, I was telling a twenty-something that, until about 5 years ago, free speech was a cherished value on the left (and much of the right, probably), not a "racist dogwhistle." They were visibly shocked.

old enuf wrote:

So, she should do things like this to help promote youth sports in Providence, or help revive a middle school program that had lost its funding?

https://www.womensrunning.com/events/road-races/october-races-charity/https://www.providencejournal.com/article/20141222/SPORTS/312229972

The mods removed a post I made suggesting that posters who badmouthed Molly may want to reach out and donate to her cause. Wonder why it was removed……. I’ve posted way worse stuff. Lol. This was genuine and with good intention…….. Oh, well.

GD wrote:

You really don’t understand the value of free expression, do you? The ACLU famously defended the right of Nazis to March in Skokie, IL because they understood that censorship protects the powerful and will inevitably be used to further marginalize the less powerful. How on Earth did the left forget this?

You say that ANY unfounded doping allegations should get the poster banned? That Letsrun ought to be “an intelligent running platform?” Who do you imagine will be appointed to this Ministry of Truth? How will this body of experts know which doping allegations are founded and which are not? How will they determine what talk is intelligent vs ignorant?

Were they right to do that though? Neo-Nazis wanted to parade in a town known for having lots of Jews living there. It was to intimidate them in their homes. Holocaust survivors would look out the windows of their houses and see swastikas and Hitler salutes.

When similar things happened in Jewish neighborhoods in Europe, Jewish and non-Jewish residents came out and turned the fascists back and prevented them from passing through. The street belongs to the community, if Skokie doesn't want them there (and there was exactly zero people who wanted them there), they don't get to go there.

Yusef Scumm. wrote:

Oh, well.

you have made a ton of posts that i find offensive. mainly against athletes i admire. but i read one of the articles you posted. the second one. i read it three times because i wanted to make sure i wasnt missing any story. but it didnt seem to contain much of a story. the main story seemed to be- hey , molly did something to help a cross country team a number of years ago. but it was very light about the specifics of what she did. it seems like there are some topics there. since middle school cross country is obviously full of topic if anyone is ever going to get good. so my guess is. if someone likes to write articles, or someone likes to visit messageboards and complain about what they see, maybe an article could be written about some topics related to these articles. someone could say- hey, molly, i heard you were doing something to help a middleschool team years ago, did anything you did help out, how did that go, what sorts of things helped the middle school team, how have they evolved? or if some lurker passed through and took offence to a few posts she read she might start a thread of her own about something she knows about that she feels is positive. obviously way more people are complaining about threads than coming up with new threads.

this place is pretty inconsistent in how it deletes things. a teammate actually had a thread deleted and got a ban for something posted on this thread. there were other posts saying the same thing and they are still up and their writers are still posting. another posters name- the clown show- summarizes what i think i'll see when i come here. i think the cliche that this place is a cesspool is a bit of a cheap assessment. and if youve got what it takes to make it better then step up and make it better. quit whining.

when it comes to the post about the nazis in skokie. i am fortunate enough not to have been trapped in various situations in history. i did read one book on a dark night in warsaw. i dont think that i vote for allowing the nazi's to march. i really don't know what the answer is. but until i understand the right answer i am willing to join in with- kick the nazi's asses the second they show up in town.

vrs the inevitable weak conclusions that will arise from- kick the nazi's asses. i vote there is always room for something i call- the c team. these are the people who just screw off and dont focus and dont try very hard in practice and dont get skilled results. there is a place for them on the team. there is a giant market niche for them. by far most people we meet are not A team people. the place for the c team isnt wrecking the A teams practice. a lot of the A team are screw offs too. matters more to me the results they can get.

Back to the middle school cross country. There may be a place. even in elementary school. when due to the challenge of supervising a number of kids with a wide range of pace abilities. where it might make sense to use something like step aerobics. jogged. but all in the same gym. as part of a foundation. to help the young or the rehabilitating, towards cross country.

Well, ok then, Josh. Lol. You must be a Rupp* fan. That’s ok. I would be too, except for…..well, you know why.

Molly’s thread here is different because she was upset people here were labeling all women as potential legal issues when it comes to coaching them. A few decent coaches chimed in and cleared things up for most…. I hope.

I just thought people giving something in a charitable means may get the point across that not everyone thinks that way towards women….. or anyone hopefully.

And for the record, I still think using thyroid and asthma meds while competing as a world class runner is cheating…. and therefore wrong.

A standoff between Nazis and community members (with the latter being successful) is different than having the government or another instutution regulating public gatherings and/or speech. Nobody is saying that the Nazis should be quietly accepted, or that misogyny ought to be accepted. It's good that the community was able to turn the Nazis back. What I'm saying (and maybe others) is that I want to debate these issues, not cede control over what is acceptable or offensive to a a nameless bureaucrat, social media provider, etc.

Everybody knows the Letsrun message boards can get nasty, but there's huge disagreement over where the line should be drawn. Not only that, but people are increasingly demanding censorship from above and arguing that words are literally the same thing as violence. However, suppression of speech causes toxic ideas to fester. People whose ideas are actively suppressed tend to develop a sense of righteous victimhood, and righteous victimhood is an engine of actual physical violence. It's better to let people say what they want, argue against them, and if that doesn't work, just ignore them.

Last but not least, one of the main reasons to argue against all but the most permissive speech/expression codes is that anything else requires us to create an institution or group of people with special powers to tell us what can and cannot be said. Who do you want to entrust with that power? As I said earlier in this thread, power will inevitably harm those who have the least access to it. In his book Kindly Inquisitors: New Attacks on Free Thought, Jonathan Rausch gives an example of a hate speech law that was used against a black man for calling a white police officer a "cracker." See how this works?

bump

As soon as they realize their career is in the toilet, all these woman's become social justice warriors. Just desperate for attention. Sad.

She sounds like an odd person! I'm sorry that happened.

What the hell? Is this true or some copypasta?

Copypasta

I voted for Trump wrote:

As soon as they realize their career is in the toilet, all these woman's become social justice warriors. Just desperate for attention. Sad.

It's easy to make derogatory remarks about people you don't know. She is a great person but you will never know that. But then again, who are you?

jecht wrote:

Something funnier:

https://dumbrunner.com/news-blog/2020/12/14/local-web-designer-suffers-severe-reaction-to-letsruncom-homepage

Doctors said Yang should be fine, physically, but her aesthetic sensibilities may never fully recover.

“An experience like this is a real jolt,” said Dr. Nelson Guggenheim, a professor of neurology at West Anderson Medical College and former collegiate steeplechase state champ. “If you haven’t acclimatized yourself to Let’s Run gradually and incrementally—ideally over a period of weeks—and then suddenly find yourself face to face with a hodgepodge of 87 hyperlinks against a mile-high wall of text, it’s like a visual overdose.”

Dr. Guggenheim said he hopes Yang’s experience serves as a cautionary tale for others, adding that her case could have been much worse.

“She could have clicked into the forums,” he said.

This is perfect. Thanks for sharing

ghat man wrote:

Curious_Cat wrote:

Good for her. This place is a cesspool.

Big thanks for being a part of it.

this place is more of a compost heap than a cesspool.

has molly ever asked a sincere question here?