When her transition doesn't result in her impossible goals she has imagined for herself, when she finds out she had been fed medical misinformation by her online community, when she finds out stigma isn't the only reason you don't want to be a lifelong medical patient and those hypothetical side effects aren't just scaremongering by doctors and transphobes, I don't think the worst thing she could do is blame others. I fear the worst thing she could do is go online and insist to another questioning and doubting girl that it was still worth it and she would do it all over again despite all the pain and unmet expectations because that's the only way she will be allowed to talk about her experience. Just as bad, she will fill out some surveys insisting it was all worth it as a way to help herself deal with the physical and emotional pain of reality vs expectations, and those survey results will be compiled with dozens of other young people like her and published in a journal to assure doctors, therapists, parents, and the public in general that everyone is happy after transition and there are no regrets.
One of the reasons the trans athletes issue can be so confounding is that younger generations seem profoundly ignorant about athletic differences between men and women, in a way that seems new to me (a Gen Xer). My daughter runs high school cross country, and when she first started a few years ago, she was legitimately surprised at just how much faster the boys really were. She was particularly miffed by the fact that even mediocre boy runners were significantly faster than all but the very fastest girls; and even those very fast girls had no hope of beating the fastest boys.
I was surprised she was surprised, but I guess in these days of little or no mandatory PE classes, lots of kids can grow up without ever realizing just how big the athletic gap between men and women gets after puberty.
And, to take the cake, the erstwhile reputable biological journal Cell had asked, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?" My open letter to them:
This lack of physical education is malpractice. Makes me so mad, as a retired K teacher who did all sorts of workouts with my students to make up for the lack of phys ed. In NYC, principals are allowed to call climbing the stairs to to go to the library a fulfillment of the PE requirements.
I have a brother 2 years older than me. When we were kids, starting from around age 8 for me, we started participating in the big local 10k each summer. I wanted to be a runner. After the first year or two, I trained for this thing. Maybe not the best training, but I ran a couple times a week for months in advance, sometimes for most of the year. He didn't care and didn't run at all or even exercise much unless required to for PE. He was always faster than me. Even when we was nearly the same height because of the age differences in growth spurts between boys and girls. He had skinny beanpole legs and I had some muscle. Didn't matter. He was faster, every single time. His time as, say, a 14 year old was faster than my time as a 14 year old. This drove me INSANE but also did not surprise me. Not until we were in our 30's and I trained a lot and he trained not at all could I beat him in a race, and if he trains any significant amount, he'll still be faster.
The gap in running is even there before puberty--it's clearly evident in anyone who follows youth running (as I do because children in my life are involved in XC and track. Even at the 7-8 year old level in track clubs where all children receive coaching and are serious enough (or their parents are) to be in track clubs, the boys are faster.
So sad for these children. You do such valuable work. These things would remain hidden otherwise. It’s easy to forget that while parents may live in the real world, their children are immersed in this strange online existence. Making life-changing decisions. I wish MSM would delve. Substack is great, as are Unherd but you should be in the Guardian and elsewhere, exposing what is really happening. But it seems like they’ve got their hands over their ears. Do you detect any shift in willingness to explore byMSM?
Reddit is the very worst. There is heavy screening - I was on reddit some years ago, made a trannie-skeptic comment, and got a perma-ban. Second, it's more anonymous than other forums. Third, you get a lot of benefits from being within the envelope of Woke opinion.
The MSM will not explore this topic while the idealogues at Google (with their utopian agenda) control what is seen and known. Lest I sound paranoid/fanciful, Dr Robert Epstein has been researching and writing about the search engine manipulation effect (SEME), with particular regard to Google, who have more power over the population than any other entity.
Learning about Dr Epstein's work has been the final puzzle piece for me to understand how the obviously false idea of gender identity being more important than biological sex has taken hold through law, medicine, the media, schools and the general population.
It's frustrating, isn't it? -- all the delusion. I realized recently that I'm in this fight because delusions are going to undo mankind's progress, and this is just one more delusion. Like "facilitated communication" which seemed to turn retarded people into geniuses, until they discovered the facilitator was doing the speaking. Or the delusion that you could improve a person by harming their brain, as in lobotomies. Or the delusions of Christianity that say God is a humanoid being, and that we are consigned to heaven or hell for an ETERNITY after just one lifetime. Or, God forbid, the delusions of the MAGA crowd and their pied piper Trump, who seems to be well positioned to win the upcoming election.
As long as I am mentioning Trump, I have to say that the man is increasingly evil. I have watched him in videos as he spreads lies. If you watch him closely, it becomes apparent that he knows he is lying. You can see him calculating the effect of his lies on his listeners. He paints a dystopian picture of the world, and he refines the lies as time passes. I know there are conservatives and Republicans who read Eliza's articles. If you are planning to vote for Trump, or simply sit out the election because the Dems are pushing transgender ideology, know that they'll eventually come to their senses. In the mean time, Harris is right on 90% of the issues. Voting for Trump is a vote for autocracy and chaos.
I have been saying for a while that trans people are "trying to increase their numbers". They seem to want to do this because they don't like being so alone in the world, being only 1/2% of the population. I can imagine that if they were drug addicts, they'd be trying to get more people addicted. It seems to be human nature to want to further the fortunes of whatever group you are part of -- and that's fine, as long as the group you are part of is doing something productive and healthy. But turning yourself into a damaged woman or a damaged man hardly seems healthy.
As you were talking about team sports in the article, I had this vision of Chase Strangio, who is apparently diminutive, playing soccer with the guys and getting crushed by them. Perhaps we should try to convince Strangio to go into professional male sports. She is, after all, a REAL male (at least in her own mind). Maybe we can get rid of her that way.
As to "increasing their numbers", absolutely. At 3 AM, lying in bed, trannies must wonder if they are on the right path, which obviously they are not. What to do? Vindication by indoctrination - convince others to join you, and you will not be alone in the dark. Plus no normal person wants to partner romantically with a trannie - the only hope they have is convincing others to mutilate themselves, and the pool of potential partners increases.
Yes, I suppose that when you have mutilated your own body, the mutilated bodies of other people seem more acceptable.
I am gay, but I am too old to be looking for partners. However, I have always been attracted to small, cute guys. If I were 30, I would be worried I'd end up with a trans man. Whatever a trans man has between her legs -- a vagina or a cigar-shaped piece of fat from her ass, covered with skin from her forearm, I'm not interested in making love to it!
Better to stick with trannie stuff than to get into politics. I'm voting for Trump. Lots of people will be doing so. And Horizontal Cackles right on 90% of the issues? Hah. Hah I say.
So sorry to tell you this, but you are stupid if you are voting for Trump. You are apparently uninformed about just how bad he is -- either that, or you have extraordinarily poor judgement.
Biden and Harris agreed to a very conservative immigration bill which Trump killed because he wanted to have immigration as a talking point during the campaign. Besides, the onslaught at the border has dropped in the past year (or so I have read).
Crime is dropping according to what I've read recently. (I get a lot of my news from the PBS News Hour, and I heard that on the News Hour recently.)
What the hell is "DEI revenge racism"??? Dems care about race relations, while Republicans fuel racism (don't forget that Trump is now calling the shots for your party, and he is a racist).
Inflation was caused primarily by the pandemic. Dems can't be blamed for that.
Housing is a problem, but then, there have been housing spikes in the past. In this case, the current spike was also caused by the pandemic.
Yup, I agree with you on the Trans issue. Biden is stupid on the trans issue. Overall, however, the Democrats are saner than the Republicans on most issues.
You see, when you talk about the one issue that you are right on -- trangenderism -- you sound intelligent. Otherwise, you sound uninformed, or like you are getting your news from Fox.
Like everyone else who doesn't understand politics, you imagine that the president is responsible for everything that happens in the economy, but that simply isn't true. Your understanding of economics and politics is poor.
I don't know what your segue about Kansas and Kansas's "best interest" means. No offense, but I never think about Kansas. You apparently imagine that Dems spend a lot of their time denigrating people in Middle America, but I certainly don't.
So, you made your list, but except for the trans issue, YOU'VE GOT NOTHING. Trump is a dictator wannabe. If you want a dictator, then go ahead and vote for him.
Oh, one more thing: Immigrants are "scum"? Really??? This is a nation of immigrants, and immigrants are scum? You reveal that you are a bigot. No wonder you are voting for Trump. I can imagine you'll be celebrating after he throws out a million of them, as he says he is going to do.
I live in a suburban neighborhood. The best neighbors that I have are Venezuelan immigrants who are seeking asylum. My American neighbors are mostly self-centered. Some of the best people I have known in my life have been immigrants.
=====
I'm still reading your note above. I didn't know what "Cackles" meant, but now I realize that you were referring to Harris because she (I've heard) has a strange laugh. So you are picking up on Trump's ugly name-calling. What the hell kind of person ARE you? You've shown that you are a bigot, and now you show that you have no respect for Harris -- probably because she is a woman -- despite the fact that she is a vastly better person than Trump is. You have really shown your colors in this exchange, and all your colors are ugly colors.
One more thing, the number if immigrants that have come in during Biden's term is well under 10,000,000 and possibly much lower than that. Indeed, during the Republican primaries, Republican candidates were claiming that 8,000,000 immigrants had come in, and that was criticized as being exaggerated. In late February, 2024, Factcheck.org estimated the number at under 3,000,000. The fact that you are willing to believe that Biden has let 25,000,000 people into the country during his term just shows that you are getting your facts from God-knows-where (from Trump himself, it would seem). Among other things, you are gullible to believe such a huge figure.
Living in the UK, I listen to a lot of BBC news programmes, and news fact-checking programmes. (And I read a lot about US politics.) Trump's claim that crime has gone up in the US since 2016 has been comprehensively debunked, in some detail: the reported crime figures from a myriad of US police districts of various sizes are incomplete from all districts, but cover 94% of the US population. But sociological data enables criminologists to statistically infer the missing 6% pretty accurately.
The result? Crime has gone DOWN in the US since 2016.
But then, Trump is a world class expert in making up "alternative facts": so what can we expect but claims that favour him and smear his opponents?
The amount of misinformation out there is astounding. Of course, far fewer people would consider this route if they knew what it entailed so it's best to make sure that they remain clueless...
Back in the day when I was 100% on board with all this and accepted everything without question, I genuinely believed that the surgeries worked beautifully and that there weren't any issues with the hormones. If you are someone who just wants to support this, it's so easy to believe it all works out lovely and doctors have this all figured out.
I got an education watching YouTube videos of people who have had problems with their surgeries. There was a trans woman who got the bottom surgery (and then regretted it). Did you know that all trans women have to dilate their vaginas to keep them from closing up? Or that the surgeons sometimes accidentally break through into the anal canal when forming the vagina? Or that necrotic tissue is a real problem? (meaning parts of the fabricated organs simply die and/or become infected?) It is a horror story.
Yes, this break through of colon happened to 24 year old Yarden Seveira. Mount Sinai Hospital actually banned him from entering, as they were "bothered" by him trying to contact the surgeons) He killed himself at the onset of sepsis in 2021.
What kind of normal male is interested in sex with such freaks? Maybe 1 time for "exploration". But not a long-term relationship. Trannies have few if any romantic partner possibilities.
You've put your finger on one of the key differences between sexual orientation and gender identity (hope you were wearing gloves :)
When normal gay and straight people (the do exist) reach adolescence, hormones and other factors awaken sexual desire for the same or opposite sex, respectively. Life goes on with myriad possible outcomes including but not limited to romance, sex, marriage and kids, though not always necessarily in that order.
On the other hand, when a person who is susceptible to gender identity ideology (let's assume he or she is a youth) reaches a certain tipping point, an obsessive desire to be perceived by others as a member of the opposite sex (or "gender," whatever that is) pretty much squashes the adolescent sex drive. The unfortunate teen girl isn't mooning over a teen boy and weaving elaborate fantasies of a life of sex and romance with him. No, she just wants to BE one of those boys and - more importantly - be seen by the world as a boy.
Should the obsession cause her to take puberty blockers, her natural libido will probably be suppressed. "Gender affirming" surgery will remove the erogenous bits or impair their functioning. It is hard to imagine that trans man sending out wedding announcements any time soon after her transition.
The thing that really shocks me are the older men with autogynephilia who transition to being "women". Autogynephilia apparently afflicts men who are so besotted by the female form that they must become female themselves. What that means is that they are heterosexual before transitioning, so once they do it, they supposedly become "lesbians". But with fake vaginas in their pants (most of them get the bottom surgery), I can't imagine that any lesbian woman would want them.
Most of them are terribly disappointed. They've been sold the Brooklyn Bridge. Doctors should call the vagina the birth canal instead. No man wants a birth canal. I'd love to give them fibroids and morning sickness to have under their imperial control. They can have that.
I played pick-up sports with my brother and the two neighbor boys as a teenager (no other girls around). The neighbors were my age and my brother was older. They were competitive but not excessively aggressive, that is, they were not trying to hurt people but trying to win. My brother and one of the boys were pretty skinny and I'm solidly built and almost as tall. Probably outweighed at least one of them. Even so, I'd get banged up playing with them, especially basketball which had the most contact. They never got banged up by each other, or by me. And this was nowhere near as physical as high school teams get, much less older players. It's also abundantly clear in all the middle school and high school sports I watch my family members play in now. The girls just can't physically compete at the same level.
Taking testosterone might give a girl more muscle but it will cause enough other problems that she'll probably also not be very competitive against boys, at least not for long. Those differences only grow as you go up in level.
> "... though I hear they reliably outcompete ‘cis’ men in the whole ‘giving birth’ department."
🙂👍 Indeed. Reminds me of a famous quote from Oscar Wilde who had been asked by a woman as to the fundamental difference between men and women. To which he, as an inveterate punster, had replied, "Of that madam, I cannot conceive (comprehend)."
But your "practice to self-deceive" reminds me of another quote from the patron saint of physics, Richard Feynman:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
What a perfectly fitting metaphor, love the photo and title for this piece however as well as you have captured the self reinforcing fantasy world and indoctrination that seems to predominate in such online spaces as well as in the public sphere, as a clinician who has worked with a variety of people over many years (granted this includes a previous generation of transitioners) I have been pondering the question of whether I can still support some individual people pursuing transition who are capable of responding to all this pressure from within the community by being realistic about the process and the outcome (perhaps a distinct minority or just not as outspoken or visible). Would these be people we might want to just “let be”, and if these people are now marginalized and lost in the noise because we who are critical view the entire community as a monolith—that is something I still think about when challenging myself to sort out where I ultimately stand on gender medicine, and I’m a bit afraid of how this ideology as it is appropriately described and exposed might miss those who aren’t as captured by it, and have no such illusions but still prefer to pursue transition or are reasonably comfortable with their existence and their limitations that go with it
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
I now have confused teens contacting me for advice because even they have doubts about the TQ clubs claims. Below, link to "Paul" and my interactions. My reactions really. He gave me permission. He's a boy whose mother miscarried a female fetus when he was 7 or so and he has this feeling he should have been a girl. He's not old enough to have acquired his male face, I told him. I got a "Nanny Blue Box" from the Trevor Project, probably because I titled it "Paul" is Not Trans!
It should be helpful for parents seeking cognitive behavior strategies. (I give advice, not therapy, so I'm not doing "conversion therapy.")
Ute, what does "blue box" mean in this context? I asked in a comment under yours at YT, but I expressed Wrongthink about the Trevor Project, and it looks like it got deleted by the Google Gremlins. It's a good thing you're doing, and it will be interesting to see how long the video stays up, how long it will be before the TRAs weigh in with their insults in the comments, etc. I was pleased you said you limited the time for interaction to once a week. Boundaries like that are important. Do be careful, though; your personal experience as a trans widow is valid and useful, but could represent a potential threat too. Watch out for strong emotions and acting on them. I think your approach is good. It's difficult finding the right balance between directing someone away from danger and respecting their autonomy and finding their own way forward, but I think it's probably best to be honest about what you think, while making it clear that other opinions are available, and you are there as a friend and advisor, but they can make their own decisions and you won't abandon them or be angry whatever they do. That's important, because these youngsters will almost certainly want to please you, and while that's a benefit in helping them find the rational path, it can backfire in various ways (you may know, for example, of the "Karpman Drama Triangle" of Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor).
Sorry if that sounds patronising - I realise you're a wise woman with long experience of helping children - I just didn't want it to go unsaid, and it's for general consumption for anyone else in similar circumstances. It's not officially "therapy", and therefore not "conversion therapy," as you say, but it shares many features with therapy, or merges with it in grey areas, and the thing to stress is that whether it's therapy or not, it is definitely NOT conversion therapy. And that depends on clearly, overtly, establishing and maintaining their confidence in their autonomy. That is then a million miles away from the coercive methods of conversion therapy.
People are calling it the "Nanny Box" and it's the light blue wide rectangle under any video in youtube where their moderators "warn" viewers that the opinions relate to the political take by YT. Any video saying you don't have to be trans just because you have a thought, will get the Trevor Project box. This is indoctrination on the part of YouTube. They must have a good point score from Human Rights Campaign for putting these boxes under videos they don't like. I'm just going along with "Paul" offering him my version of a critical thought process to counter "trans" indoctrination. I just found another dead young person, collateral damage in the trans brainwash. Samuel Walter Cassidy, from Lancaster PA, went to college and got transed, took name Thea and apparently got on estrogen, based on photos showing breast development. He killed himself through carbon monoxide poisoning in a parked car in Millerton, PA. He was barely 18. I don't know if he was on finasteride, a drug used by these dudes to stop hair loss, which has been related to many deaths. Unfortunately, the lying Trevor Project will count this as a "trans" suicide, not a suicide related to consumption of wrong sex hormones and possibly finasteride. May his memory be for a caution to all physicians and may the group who lured him into this cult be forever damned.
Thanks, Ute. I don't know if the blue box wasn't there when I first saw the video or I just wasn't observant and missed it. I went there again and it is. Following the link "Why am I seeing this?" gives me some verbiage that raises more questions than it answers:
"When you search or watch videos related to topics that are prone to misinformation, such as the moon landing, you may see an information panel at the top of your search results or under a video that you're watching.
[Hmm, OK, so are they also on pro-trans nonsense videos about chest feeding?]
"Information panels show basic background info, sourced from independent, third-party partners, to give more context on a topic. If you want to learn more, the panels also link to the third-party partner's website."
[Erm, isn't "independent ... partner" an oxymoron? One chooses or vets partners, presumably.]
"These information panels will be shown regardless of what opinions or perspectives are expressed in a video."
[OK, so they are shown in pro-trans videos. Yeahrite.]
Under "Feedback" it says:
"YouTube doesn't endorse or create any of the info shown in information panels on YouTube. If you disagree with info in a particular article, please contact the website owner that published the article. If you see an information panel that violates our Community Guidelines, send us feedback."
So all that leaves the question of how the Trevor Project, or anyone else, gets to be putting "background info" on "videos related to topics that are prone to misinformation," not to mention who decides what misinformation is and what "background info" ought to be presented. This is all bullshit, avoiding the obvious intended purpose, which is to correct it with officially sanctioned truth, and also avoiding any mention of how that's determined (let me guess, the cash offered, or as you say, the "human rights" points).
I will have to dig a bit more, methinks, maybe check out some videos on the Moon landings, flat earth, or ancient aliens building the Pyramids, see what the background info is.
Exactly. It is an attempt at censorship that "can't be called censorship." However, kids are trained to steer away from the blue "nanny boxes." by their sources on reddit and tik tock. I am not willing to spend time ferreting out all of that. (which is an insult to ferrets, I know)
The toxic culture of trans subreddits (the bad advice, incorrect information, half truths, outright lies and emotional manipulation and abuse that abounds there) is yet another reason to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and make the platforms accountable to individuals who are harmed by users' posts.
Since moderating oceans of bad content would likely prove impossible or prohibitively expensive, offending platforms such as Reddit might decide to manage their regulatory and financial risk by closing high risk subreddits such as the one that was the source of the quoted material in this essay.
Since pigs are likely to fly before the US imposes meaningful and effective regulatory oversight on Internet platforms, Ms. Mondegreen's sources are safe for the foreseeable future..
Not only are these individuals misinformed and too interested in protecting a fantasy to see the truth (sub-consciously, of course), but they lack basic logic.
For example, saying that a female professional soccer player might beat “most” non-professional male soccer players - assuming that were true - says absolutely nothing about whether a female competing in a male professional soccer league would have a real chance of excelling. While I am sure there is a woman out there who can beat the professional male players, it is sheer folly to ignore the odds.
To make an informed choice to pursue this, a female player would have to say to herself that she doesn’t care if it is highly unlikely that she will do well as a professional player in a male league and go from there - rather than pretending there is no hurdle to overcome! But being realistic doesn’t seem to be in vogue in these circles.
The terrible irony is that there is a growing female football scene and if she were good and dedicated herself to this goal she might actually have a chance, she would certainly have more enjoyable competition along the way.
As a fan of women’s soccer, I wish you wouldn’t perpetuate the myth that lost to “a league of 15 year old boys.” The USWNT scrimmaged against a a boys’ team a decade ago; there was never a match or anything formal. This is constantly thrown up at women’s soccer fans by men seeking to gloat over the inferiority of women’s sports. Yet the National Women’s Soccer League is expanding and thriving.
This doesn’t undermine your point about this delusional girl who hopes to compete on a men’s soccer team after “transitioning.”
Ok, please help me understand so I can characterize it correctly because I don't know what it means that it was a scrimmage game. How would you describe what happened?
It was a casual practice game. Nothing on the line. No reason to risk injury to starters. Just to get practice after the team hadn’t been together in camp for awhile.
George is right, Anna. In sports, men are superior. Does that make men superior to women overall? Of course not. Any man who gloats at the inferiority of women because of sports is simply a misogynist. If men are superior to women because of their size, then I suppose that men are inferior to bears and lions and elephants and whales and even antelopes -- i.e., inferior to any animal that is bigger than men are. Superiority/inferiority is not measured by size or strength (thank God).
Women cannot compete against men in soccer or any contact sport. Playing women against women, they play a different game than do the men. It's equally valid as a competitive activity, just as women hoops is not men's hoops. Recently, a group of manly trans men (actually women with beards) formed a team to show men how manly and tough they are. First game - 0-19.
Head to head, women cannot keep up. Of course, professional athletes can beat amateurs, and there are sports were there is more parity - tennis, others. But remember that the 2 Williams sisters put out a bet that they could beat men at a given level in the male power rankings. They both played a guy ranked 201, and lost decisively.
There are a ton of reasons why women cannot compete head-to-head. But it's simply a fact.
It's not just that women play a "different game" from men: women cannot compete against the numerous physiological advantages conferred on males by going through puberty. These include a larger frame, bigger heart and lungs, bigger musculature with much greater strength in kicking, throwing etc. This is why men's and women's sports are segregated: for any semblance of "fairness".
I used ro compete in equestrian sports. Even though male strength actually can be an advantage there, women can do as well or better than men because they tend to be better at the horse communication side of things.
Christine, I assume women being smaller is also an advantage for equestrian sports, no? Also, and I swear I am not trolling and I am just curious: Are male or female horses better in equestrian sports?
This is a multi-level marketing scam, pure and simple. How many of our kids will be shocked to find themselves at the bottom tier, when the music stops?
When her transition doesn't result in her impossible goals she has imagined for herself, when she finds out she had been fed medical misinformation by her online community, when she finds out stigma isn't the only reason you don't want to be a lifelong medical patient and those hypothetical side effects aren't just scaremongering by doctors and transphobes, I don't think the worst thing she could do is blame others. I fear the worst thing she could do is go online and insist to another questioning and doubting girl that it was still worth it and she would do it all over again despite all the pain and unmet expectations because that's the only way she will be allowed to talk about her experience. Just as bad, she will fill out some surveys insisting it was all worth it as a way to help herself deal with the physical and emotional pain of reality vs expectations, and those survey results will be compiled with dozens of other young people like her and published in a journal to assure doctors, therapists, parents, and the public in general that everyone is happy after transition and there are no regrets.
One of the reasons the trans athletes issue can be so confounding is that younger generations seem profoundly ignorant about athletic differences between men and women, in a way that seems new to me (a Gen Xer). My daughter runs high school cross country, and when she first started a few years ago, she was legitimately surprised at just how much faster the boys really were. She was particularly miffed by the fact that even mediocre boy runners were significantly faster than all but the very fastest girls; and even those very fast girls had no hope of beating the fastest boys.
I was surprised she was surprised, but I guess in these days of little or no mandatory PE classes, lots of kids can grow up without ever realizing just how big the athletic gap between men and women gets after puberty.
People these days get absolutely no anatomy or physiology in high school, and often not at University, even if majoring in biology.
I teach this stuff at grad school level, and most students with biology degrees know less than I did at 15. No wonder such misinformation persists
"misinformation", indeed. And from people and organizations who should know better. For example, the NLM/NCBI who insists that "Every Cell Has a Sex":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222291/
Though Anne Fausto-Sterling has her dirty ideological mitts all over that article -- she's listed somewhere in the contributor list.
And the Yale School of Medicine likewise:
"Every Cell Has a Sex: X and Y and the Future of Health Care"
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/every-cell-has-a-sex-x-and-y-and-the-future-of-health-care/
And, to take the cake, the erstwhile reputable biological journal Cell had asked, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?" My open letter to them:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
This lack of physical education is malpractice. Makes me so mad, as a retired K teacher who did all sorts of workouts with my students to make up for the lack of phys ed. In NYC, principals are allowed to call climbing the stairs to to go to the library a fulfillment of the PE requirements.
I have a brother 2 years older than me. When we were kids, starting from around age 8 for me, we started participating in the big local 10k each summer. I wanted to be a runner. After the first year or two, I trained for this thing. Maybe not the best training, but I ran a couple times a week for months in advance, sometimes for most of the year. He didn't care and didn't run at all or even exercise much unless required to for PE. He was always faster than me. Even when we was nearly the same height because of the age differences in growth spurts between boys and girls. He had skinny beanpole legs and I had some muscle. Didn't matter. He was faster, every single time. His time as, say, a 14 year old was faster than my time as a 14 year old. This drove me INSANE but also did not surprise me. Not until we were in our 30's and I trained a lot and he trained not at all could I beat him in a race, and if he trains any significant amount, he'll still be faster.
The gap in running is even there before puberty--it's clearly evident in anyone who follows youth running (as I do because children in my life are involved in XC and track. Even at the 7-8 year old level in track clubs where all children receive coaching and are serious enough (or their parents are) to be in track clubs, the boys are faster.
👍 Bonus marks for your Substack handle ... 😉🙂
So sad for these children. You do such valuable work. These things would remain hidden otherwise. It’s easy to forget that while parents may live in the real world, their children are immersed in this strange online existence. Making life-changing decisions. I wish MSM would delve. Substack is great, as are Unherd but you should be in the Guardian and elsewhere, exposing what is really happening. But it seems like they’ve got their hands over their ears. Do you detect any shift in willingness to explore byMSM?
Reddit is the very worst. There is heavy screening - I was on reddit some years ago, made a trannie-skeptic comment, and got a perma-ban. Second, it's more anonymous than other forums. Third, you get a lot of benefits from being within the envelope of Woke opinion.
The MSM will not explore this topic while the idealogues at Google (with their utopian agenda) control what is seen and known. Lest I sound paranoid/fanciful, Dr Robert Epstein has been researching and writing about the search engine manipulation effect (SEME), with particular regard to Google, who have more power over the population than any other entity.
Learning about Dr Epstein's work has been the final puzzle piece for me to understand how the obviously false idea of gender identity being more important than biological sex has taken hold through law, medicine, the media, schools and the general population.
It's frustrating, isn't it? -- all the delusion. I realized recently that I'm in this fight because delusions are going to undo mankind's progress, and this is just one more delusion. Like "facilitated communication" which seemed to turn retarded people into geniuses, until they discovered the facilitator was doing the speaking. Or the delusion that you could improve a person by harming their brain, as in lobotomies. Or the delusions of Christianity that say God is a humanoid being, and that we are consigned to heaven or hell for an ETERNITY after just one lifetime. Or, God forbid, the delusions of the MAGA crowd and their pied piper Trump, who seems to be well positioned to win the upcoming election.
As long as I am mentioning Trump, I have to say that the man is increasingly evil. I have watched him in videos as he spreads lies. If you watch him closely, it becomes apparent that he knows he is lying. You can see him calculating the effect of his lies on his listeners. He paints a dystopian picture of the world, and he refines the lies as time passes. I know there are conservatives and Republicans who read Eliza's articles. If you are planning to vote for Trump, or simply sit out the election because the Dems are pushing transgender ideology, know that they'll eventually come to their senses. In the mean time, Harris is right on 90% of the issues. Voting for Trump is a vote for autocracy and chaos.
I have been saying for a while that trans people are "trying to increase their numbers". They seem to want to do this because they don't like being so alone in the world, being only 1/2% of the population. I can imagine that if they were drug addicts, they'd be trying to get more people addicted. It seems to be human nature to want to further the fortunes of whatever group you are part of -- and that's fine, as long as the group you are part of is doing something productive and healthy. But turning yourself into a damaged woman or a damaged man hardly seems healthy.
As you were talking about team sports in the article, I had this vision of Chase Strangio, who is apparently diminutive, playing soccer with the guys and getting crushed by them. Perhaps we should try to convince Strangio to go into professional male sports. She is, after all, a REAL male (at least in her own mind). Maybe we can get rid of her that way.
As to "increasing their numbers", absolutely. At 3 AM, lying in bed, trannies must wonder if they are on the right path, which obviously they are not. What to do? Vindication by indoctrination - convince others to join you, and you will not be alone in the dark. Plus no normal person wants to partner romantically with a trannie - the only hope they have is convincing others to mutilate themselves, and the pool of potential partners increases.
Yes, I suppose that when you have mutilated your own body, the mutilated bodies of other people seem more acceptable.
I am gay, but I am too old to be looking for partners. However, I have always been attracted to small, cute guys. If I were 30, I would be worried I'd end up with a trans man. Whatever a trans man has between her legs -- a vagina or a cigar-shaped piece of fat from her ass, covered with skin from her forearm, I'm not interested in making love to it!
Increasing numbers - state funded transitions would (will?) be like Ponzi scheme
Better to stick with trannie stuff than to get into politics. I'm voting for Trump. Lots of people will be doing so. And Horizontal Cackles right on 90% of the issues? Hah. Hah I say.
So sorry to tell you this, but you are stupid if you are voting for Trump. You are apparently uninformed about just how bad he is -- either that, or you have extraordinarily poor judgement.
Yeah yeah. He's Hitler. Coming from the same people who tell you men are women.
Yes. Hitler. Sorry you can't see it. However, Eliza will be annoyed if we start debating, so I'd better stop here.
Okay, let's look at those:
Biden and Harris agreed to a very conservative immigration bill which Trump killed because he wanted to have immigration as a talking point during the campaign. Besides, the onslaught at the border has dropped in the past year (or so I have read).
Crime is dropping according to what I've read recently. (I get a lot of my news from the PBS News Hour, and I heard that on the News Hour recently.)
What the hell is "DEI revenge racism"??? Dems care about race relations, while Republicans fuel racism (don't forget that Trump is now calling the shots for your party, and he is a racist).
Inflation was caused primarily by the pandemic. Dems can't be blamed for that.
Housing is a problem, but then, there have been housing spikes in the past. In this case, the current spike was also caused by the pandemic.
Yup, I agree with you on the Trans issue. Biden is stupid on the trans issue. Overall, however, the Democrats are saner than the Republicans on most issues.
You see, when you talk about the one issue that you are right on -- trangenderism -- you sound intelligent. Otherwise, you sound uninformed, or like you are getting your news from Fox.
Like everyone else who doesn't understand politics, you imagine that the president is responsible for everything that happens in the economy, but that simply isn't true. Your understanding of economics and politics is poor.
I don't know what your segue about Kansas and Kansas's "best interest" means. No offense, but I never think about Kansas. You apparently imagine that Dems spend a lot of their time denigrating people in Middle America, but I certainly don't.
So, you made your list, but except for the trans issue, YOU'VE GOT NOTHING. Trump is a dictator wannabe. If you want a dictator, then go ahead and vote for him.
Oh, one more thing: Immigrants are "scum"? Really??? This is a nation of immigrants, and immigrants are scum? You reveal that you are a bigot. No wonder you are voting for Trump. I can imagine you'll be celebrating after he throws out a million of them, as he says he is going to do.
I live in a suburban neighborhood. The best neighbors that I have are Venezuelan immigrants who are seeking asylum. My American neighbors are mostly self-centered. Some of the best people I have known in my life have been immigrants.
=====
I'm still reading your note above. I didn't know what "Cackles" meant, but now I realize that you were referring to Harris because she (I've heard) has a strange laugh. So you are picking up on Trump's ugly name-calling. What the hell kind of person ARE you? You've shown that you are a bigot, and now you show that you have no respect for Harris -- probably because she is a woman -- despite the fact that she is a vastly better person than Trump is. You have really shown your colors in this exchange, and all your colors are ugly colors.
One more thing, the number if immigrants that have come in during Biden's term is well under 10,000,000 and possibly much lower than that. Indeed, during the Republican primaries, Republican candidates were claiming that 8,000,000 immigrants had come in, and that was criticized as being exaggerated. In late February, 2024, Factcheck.org estimated the number at under 3,000,000. The fact that you are willing to believe that Biden has let 25,000,000 people into the country during his term just shows that you are getting your facts from God-knows-where (from Trump himself, it would seem). Among other things, you are gullible to believe such a huge figure.
Please take this to email or somewhere else, you guys.
I'd like to leave my comment, Eliza. The election is almost here, and people need to come to their senses when it comes to Trump.
I deleted my response.
Living in the UK, I listen to a lot of BBC news programmes, and news fact-checking programmes. (And I read a lot about US politics.) Trump's claim that crime has gone up in the US since 2016 has been comprehensively debunked, in some detail: the reported crime figures from a myriad of US police districts of various sizes are incomplete from all districts, but cover 94% of the US population. But sociological data enables criminologists to statistically infer the missing 6% pretty accurately.
The result? Crime has gone DOWN in the US since 2016.
But then, Trump is a world class expert in making up "alternative facts": so what can we expect but claims that favour him and smear his opponents?
No. They stopped requiring cities to report to the FBI the way they did previously. Crime is actually up.
False. But this is not a political blog.
The amount of misinformation out there is astounding. Of course, far fewer people would consider this route if they knew what it entailed so it's best to make sure that they remain clueless...
Back in the day when I was 100% on board with all this and accepted everything without question, I genuinely believed that the surgeries worked beautifully and that there weren't any issues with the hormones. If you are someone who just wants to support this, it's so easy to believe it all works out lovely and doctors have this all figured out.
I got an education watching YouTube videos of people who have had problems with their surgeries. There was a trans woman who got the bottom surgery (and then regretted it). Did you know that all trans women have to dilate their vaginas to keep them from closing up? Or that the surgeons sometimes accidentally break through into the anal canal when forming the vagina? Or that necrotic tissue is a real problem? (meaning parts of the fabricated organs simply die and/or become infected?) It is a horror story.
Yes, this break through of colon happened to 24 year old Yarden Seveira. Mount Sinai Hospital actually banned him from entering, as they were "bothered" by him trying to contact the surgeons) He killed himself at the onset of sepsis in 2021.
What kind of normal male is interested in sex with such freaks? Maybe 1 time for "exploration". But not a long-term relationship. Trannies have few if any romantic partner possibilities.
You've put your finger on one of the key differences between sexual orientation and gender identity (hope you were wearing gloves :)
When normal gay and straight people (the do exist) reach adolescence, hormones and other factors awaken sexual desire for the same or opposite sex, respectively. Life goes on with myriad possible outcomes including but not limited to romance, sex, marriage and kids, though not always necessarily in that order.
On the other hand, when a person who is susceptible to gender identity ideology (let's assume he or she is a youth) reaches a certain tipping point, an obsessive desire to be perceived by others as a member of the opposite sex (or "gender," whatever that is) pretty much squashes the adolescent sex drive. The unfortunate teen girl isn't mooning over a teen boy and weaving elaborate fantasies of a life of sex and romance with him. No, she just wants to BE one of those boys and - more importantly - be seen by the world as a boy.
Should the obsession cause her to take puberty blockers, her natural libido will probably be suppressed. "Gender affirming" surgery will remove the erogenous bits or impair their functioning. It is hard to imagine that trans man sending out wedding announcements any time soon after her transition.
The thing that really shocks me are the older men with autogynephilia who transition to being "women". Autogynephilia apparently afflicts men who are so besotted by the female form that they must become female themselves. What that means is that they are heterosexual before transitioning, so once they do it, they supposedly become "lesbians". But with fake vaginas in their pants (most of them get the bottom surgery), I can't imagine that any lesbian woman would want them.
Most of them are terribly disappointed. They've been sold the Brooklyn Bridge. Doctors should call the vagina the birth canal instead. No man wants a birth canal. I'd love to give them fibroids and morning sickness to have under their imperial control. They can have that.
I played pick-up sports with my brother and the two neighbor boys as a teenager (no other girls around). The neighbors were my age and my brother was older. They were competitive but not excessively aggressive, that is, they were not trying to hurt people but trying to win. My brother and one of the boys were pretty skinny and I'm solidly built and almost as tall. Probably outweighed at least one of them. Even so, I'd get banged up playing with them, especially basketball which had the most contact. They never got banged up by each other, or by me. And this was nowhere near as physical as high school teams get, much less older players. It's also abundantly clear in all the middle school and high school sports I watch my family members play in now. The girls just can't physically compete at the same level.
Taking testosterone might give a girl more muscle but it will cause enough other problems that she'll probably also not be very competitive against boys, at least not for long. Those differences only grow as you go up in level.
> "... though I hear they reliably outcompete ‘cis’ men in the whole ‘giving birth’ department."
🙂👍 Indeed. Reminds me of a famous quote from Oscar Wilde who had been asked by a woman as to the fundamental difference between men and women. To which he, as an inveterate punster, had replied, "Of that madam, I cannot conceive (comprehend)."
But your "practice to self-deceive" reminds me of another quote from the patron saint of physics, Richard Feynman:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/richard_p_feynman_137642
What a perfectly fitting metaphor, love the photo and title for this piece however as well as you have captured the self reinforcing fantasy world and indoctrination that seems to predominate in such online spaces as well as in the public sphere, as a clinician who has worked with a variety of people over many years (granted this includes a previous generation of transitioners) I have been pondering the question of whether I can still support some individual people pursuing transition who are capable of responding to all this pressure from within the community by being realistic about the process and the outcome (perhaps a distinct minority or just not as outspoken or visible). Would these be people we might want to just “let be”, and if these people are now marginalized and lost in the noise because we who are critical view the entire community as a monolith—that is something I still think about when challenging myself to sort out where I ultimately stand on gender medicine, and I’m a bit afraid of how this ideology as it is appropriately described and exposed might miss those who aren’t as captured by it, and have no such illusions but still prefer to pursue transition or are reasonably comfortable with their existence and their limitations that go with it
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
I now have confused teens contacting me for advice because even they have doubts about the TQ clubs claims. Below, link to "Paul" and my interactions. My reactions really. He gave me permission. He's a boy whose mother miscarried a female fetus when he was 7 or so and he has this feeling he should have been a girl. He's not old enough to have acquired his male face, I told him. I got a "Nanny Blue Box" from the Trevor Project, probably because I titled it "Paul" is Not Trans!
It should be helpful for parents seeking cognitive behavior strategies. (I give advice, not therapy, so I'm not doing "conversion therapy.")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDNnXPaqSaI&t=70s
Ute, what does "blue box" mean in this context? I asked in a comment under yours at YT, but I expressed Wrongthink about the Trevor Project, and it looks like it got deleted by the Google Gremlins. It's a good thing you're doing, and it will be interesting to see how long the video stays up, how long it will be before the TRAs weigh in with their insults in the comments, etc. I was pleased you said you limited the time for interaction to once a week. Boundaries like that are important. Do be careful, though; your personal experience as a trans widow is valid and useful, but could represent a potential threat too. Watch out for strong emotions and acting on them. I think your approach is good. It's difficult finding the right balance between directing someone away from danger and respecting their autonomy and finding their own way forward, but I think it's probably best to be honest about what you think, while making it clear that other opinions are available, and you are there as a friend and advisor, but they can make their own decisions and you won't abandon them or be angry whatever they do. That's important, because these youngsters will almost certainly want to please you, and while that's a benefit in helping them find the rational path, it can backfire in various ways (you may know, for example, of the "Karpman Drama Triangle" of Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor).
Sorry if that sounds patronising - I realise you're a wise woman with long experience of helping children - I just didn't want it to go unsaid, and it's for general consumption for anyone else in similar circumstances. It's not officially "therapy", and therefore not "conversion therapy," as you say, but it shares many features with therapy, or merges with it in grey areas, and the thing to stress is that whether it's therapy or not, it is definitely NOT conversion therapy. And that depends on clearly, overtly, establishing and maintaining their confidence in their autonomy. That is then a million miles away from the coercive methods of conversion therapy.
People are calling it the "Nanny Box" and it's the light blue wide rectangle under any video in youtube where their moderators "warn" viewers that the opinions relate to the political take by YT. Any video saying you don't have to be trans just because you have a thought, will get the Trevor Project box. This is indoctrination on the part of YouTube. They must have a good point score from Human Rights Campaign for putting these boxes under videos they don't like. I'm just going along with "Paul" offering him my version of a critical thought process to counter "trans" indoctrination. I just found another dead young person, collateral damage in the trans brainwash. Samuel Walter Cassidy, from Lancaster PA, went to college and got transed, took name Thea and apparently got on estrogen, based on photos showing breast development. He killed himself through carbon monoxide poisoning in a parked car in Millerton, PA. He was barely 18. I don't know if he was on finasteride, a drug used by these dudes to stop hair loss, which has been related to many deaths. Unfortunately, the lying Trevor Project will count this as a "trans" suicide, not a suicide related to consumption of wrong sex hormones and possibly finasteride. May his memory be for a caution to all physicians and may the group who lured him into this cult be forever damned.
Thanks, Ute. I don't know if the blue box wasn't there when I first saw the video or I just wasn't observant and missed it. I went there again and it is. Following the link "Why am I seeing this?" gives me some verbiage that raises more questions than it answers:
"When you search or watch videos related to topics that are prone to misinformation, such as the moon landing, you may see an information panel at the top of your search results or under a video that you're watching.
[Hmm, OK, so are they also on pro-trans nonsense videos about chest feeding?]
"Information panels show basic background info, sourced from independent, third-party partners, to give more context on a topic. If you want to learn more, the panels also link to the third-party partner's website."
[Erm, isn't "independent ... partner" an oxymoron? One chooses or vets partners, presumably.]
"These information panels will be shown regardless of what opinions or perspectives are expressed in a video."
[OK, so they are shown in pro-trans videos. Yeahrite.]
Under "Feedback" it says:
"YouTube doesn't endorse or create any of the info shown in information panels on YouTube. If you disagree with info in a particular article, please contact the website owner that published the article. If you see an information panel that violates our Community Guidelines, send us feedback."
So all that leaves the question of how the Trevor Project, or anyone else, gets to be putting "background info" on "videos related to topics that are prone to misinformation," not to mention who decides what misinformation is and what "background info" ought to be presented. This is all bullshit, avoiding the obvious intended purpose, which is to correct it with officially sanctioned truth, and also avoiding any mention of how that's determined (let me guess, the cash offered, or as you say, the "human rights" points).
I will have to dig a bit more, methinks, maybe check out some videos on the Moon landings, flat earth, or ancient aliens building the Pyramids, see what the background info is.
Exactly. It is an attempt at censorship that "can't be called censorship." However, kids are trained to steer away from the blue "nanny boxes." by their sources on reddit and tik tock. I am not willing to spend time ferreting out all of that. (which is an insult to ferrets, I know)
The toxic culture of trans subreddits (the bad advice, incorrect information, half truths, outright lies and emotional manipulation and abuse that abounds there) is yet another reason to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and make the platforms accountable to individuals who are harmed by users' posts.
Since moderating oceans of bad content would likely prove impossible or prohibitively expensive, offending platforms such as Reddit might decide to manage their regulatory and financial risk by closing high risk subreddits such as the one that was the source of the quoted material in this essay.
Since pigs are likely to fly before the US imposes meaningful and effective regulatory oversight on Internet platforms, Ms. Mondegreen's sources are safe for the foreseeable future..
You are delusional if you think enforcement will ever turn its eye to left wing sites.
Not only are these individuals misinformed and too interested in protecting a fantasy to see the truth (sub-consciously, of course), but they lack basic logic.
For example, saying that a female professional soccer player might beat “most” non-professional male soccer players - assuming that were true - says absolutely nothing about whether a female competing in a male professional soccer league would have a real chance of excelling. While I am sure there is a woman out there who can beat the professional male players, it is sheer folly to ignore the odds.
To make an informed choice to pursue this, a female player would have to say to herself that she doesn’t care if it is highly unlikely that she will do well as a professional player in a male league and go from there - rather than pretending there is no hurdle to overcome! But being realistic doesn’t seem to be in vogue in these circles.
The terrible irony is that there is a growing female football scene and if she were good and dedicated herself to this goal she might actually have a chance, she would certainly have more enjoyable competition along the way.
As a fan of women’s soccer, I wish you wouldn’t perpetuate the myth that lost to “a league of 15 year old boys.” The USWNT scrimmaged against a a boys’ team a decade ago; there was never a match or anything formal. This is constantly thrown up at women’s soccer fans by men seeking to gloat over the inferiority of women’s sports. Yet the National Women’s Soccer League is expanding and thriving.
This doesn’t undermine your point about this delusional girl who hopes to compete on a men’s soccer team after “transitioning.”
Ok, please help me understand so I can characterize it correctly because I don't know what it means that it was a scrimmage game. How would you describe what happened?
It was a casual practice game. Nothing on the line. No reason to risk injury to starters. Just to get practice after the team hadn’t been together in camp for awhile.
George is right, Anna. In sports, men are superior. Does that make men superior to women overall? Of course not. Any man who gloats at the inferiority of women because of sports is simply a misogynist. If men are superior to women because of their size, then I suppose that men are inferior to bears and lions and elephants and whales and even antelopes -- i.e., inferior to any animal that is bigger than men are. Superiority/inferiority is not measured by size or strength (thank God).
Unfortunately there are a lot of them who come out of the woodwork whenever the USWNT is successful, as when it won gold in Paris this past summer.
The popularity of women's sports says nothing at all about the ability of female athletes to compete against male athletes.
Women cannot compete against men in soccer or any contact sport. Playing women against women, they play a different game than do the men. It's equally valid as a competitive activity, just as women hoops is not men's hoops. Recently, a group of manly trans men (actually women with beards) formed a team to show men how manly and tough they are. First game - 0-19.
Head to head, women cannot keep up. Of course, professional athletes can beat amateurs, and there are sports were there is more parity - tennis, others. But remember that the 2 Williams sisters put out a bet that they could beat men at a given level in the male power rankings. They both played a guy ranked 201, and lost decisively.
There are a ton of reasons why women cannot compete head-to-head. But it's simply a fact.
It's not just that women play a "different game" from men: women cannot compete against the numerous physiological advantages conferred on males by going through puberty. These include a larger frame, bigger heart and lungs, bigger musculature with much greater strength in kicking, throwing etc. This is why men's and women's sports are segregated: for any semblance of "fairness".
I used ro compete in equestrian sports. Even though male strength actually can be an advantage there, women can do as well or better than men because they tend to be better at the horse communication side of things.
Christine, I assume women being smaller is also an advantage for equestrian sports, no? Also, and I swear I am not trolling and I am just curious: Are male or female horses better in equestrian sports?
Extreme endurance sports is another field where women can outcompete men, as they are able to maintain a higher percentage of fat stores.
This is a multi-level marketing scam, pure and simple. How many of our kids will be shocked to find themselves at the bottom tier, when the music stops?