..
Transgender sprinters finish 1st, 2nd at Connecticut girl's
indoor track championships
By Pat Eaton-Robb - Associated Press
Sunday, February 24, 2019
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Andraya Yearwood hears the comments, usually from adults and usually not to her face.
She shouldn’t be running, they say, not against girls.
Yearwood, a 17-year-old junior at Cromwell High School, is one of two transgender high school sprinters in Connecticut, transitioning to female.
She recently finished second in the 55-meter dash at the state open indoor track championships. The winner, Terry Miller of Bloomfield High, is also transgender and set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Yearwood finished in 7.01 seconds and the third-place competitor, who is not transgender, finished in 7.23 seconds.
Miller and Yearwood also topped the 100-meter state championships last year, and Miller won the 300 this season.
Critics say their gender identity amounts to an unfair advantage, expressing a familiar argument in a complex debate for transgender athletes as they break barriers across sports around the world from high school to the pros.
“I have learned a lot about myself and about other people through this transition. I always try to focus most on all of the positive encouragement that I have received from family, friends and supporters,” Yearwood said. “I use the negativity to fuel myself to run faster.”
Connecticut is one of 17 states that allow transgender high school athletes to compete without restrictions, according to Transathlete.com, which tracks state policies in high school sports across the country. Seven states have restrictions that make it difficult for transgender athletes to compete while in school, like requiring athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate, or allowing them to participate only after going through sex-reassignment procedures or hormone therapies.
The other states either have no policy or handle the issue on a case-by-case basis.
Yearwood acknowledges she is stronger than many of her cisgender competitors, but says girls who are not transgender may have other advantages.
“One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” she said. “One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.”
Miller, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has said that if she felt a competitor had an unfair advantage, it would simply push her to try to improve.
One of their competitors, Selina Soule, says the issue is about fairness on the track with wider implications. The Glastonbury High School junior finished eighth in the 55, missing out on qualifying for the New England regionals by two spots.
Soule believes that had Miller and Yearwood not run, she would be on her way to race in Boston in front of more college coaches.
“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” she said. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”
The Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which governs high school sports in Connecticut, says its policy follows a state anti-discrimination law that says students must be treated in school by the gender with which they identify.
“This is about someone’s right to compete,” executive director Glenn Lungarini said. “I don’t think this is that different from other classes of people, who, in the not too distant past, were not allowed to compete. I think it’s going to take education and understanding to get to that point on this issue.”
Joanna Harper, a medical physicist and transgender runner from Portland, Oregon, says the issue isn’t that simple. She believes there needs to be a standard based on hormone levels.
Until hormone therapies begin to work, genetic males have a distinct advantage over genetic females, she said. Most transgender teens don’t begin hormone therapy until after puberty. Younger teens can be on puberty-blocking drugs, but puberty is very individualized and testosterone levels can vary greatly from one transgender girl to another, she said.
“The gender identity doesn’t matter, it’s the testosterone levels,” said Harper, who studies transgender athletes. “Trans girls should have the right to compete in sports. But cisgender girls should have the right to compete and succeed, too. How do you balance that? That’s the question.”
Yearwood is hoping to qualify for this year’s National Scholastic Athletics Foundation national championships in March. The group recently adopted new rules allowing pre-pubescent girls to participate with their affirmed gender, though no ages are specified. Post-pubescent transgender girls must have completed sex-reassignment surgery and “a sufficient amount of time must have passed” after the operation or hormone therapy “to minimize gender-related competitive advantages.”
Transgender girls who are not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete in female competitions, the organization said.
Jon Forrest, whose daughter is teammates with Soule, is among a group of parents seeking a similar change to Connecticut’s state policy.
He said they’d like to see the state adopt a hormone standard or allow transgender girls to run with other girls but have their results placed in a separate exhibition category.
“The facts show Glastonbury would be the state champion based on cisgender girls competing against cisgender girls,” he said. “You don’t realize it until you see it in person, the disparity in the ability to perform.”
Lungarini said the state organization is not in a position to perform hormone testing of athletes and simply relies on the schools to tell them who identifies as male or female.
Yearwood’s coach, Brian Calhoun, said his runner also matters. As Yearwood kneeled behind a teammate, braiding her hair between races at another recent meet, Calhoun said the track team and community have provided the runner with a safe, welcoming place to be.
“There’s never been an issue in our town,” he said. “These kids, many of them have known Andraya since elementary school. They know who she is. So when she signed up, the attitude was: ‘OK, Andraya is running with the girl’s team. Here we go.’”
And now, as it costs the girls real opportunities, is there no resentment?
Amazon mysteriously pulls book critical of transgender movements,
gets accused of ‘digital book burning’
23 Feb, 2021 18:14
© REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
Author Ryan T. Anderson has blasted Amazon for removing his latest book on the rise of the transgender movement without explanation, a move that has many criticizing the company for playing politics and accusing it of censorship.
“I hope you’ve already bought your copy, cause Amazon just removed my book ‘When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment’ from their cyber shelves.... my other four books are still available (for now),” Anderson tweeted about the removal.
‘When Harry Became Sally’ had previously made best-seller lists on the retail site. The work aims to expose “the contrast between the media’s sunny depiction of gender fluidity and the often sad reality of living with gender dysphoria.” It includes accounts of people who have transitioned genders and later regretted it and looks at “beneficial therapies” that “focus on helping people accept themselves and live in harmony with their bodies.”
A search for the work on Amazon currently brings up books that argue the exact opposite, including ‘The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society’ and even a book carrying the title ‘Let Harry Become Sally’.
Many on social media have shown support for Anderson and demanded an answer from Amazon, which has yet to officially comment on its sudden removal of the book three years after it was first published.
“American oligarchs, cheered on by leftist politicians, are conducting digital book burnings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) tweeted on Tuesday.
“Some mid-level censor at Amazon appears to be conducting an experiment in what they can get away with,” conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat tweeted.
In a Tuesday article, Anderson said neither he nor his publisher were told the book was being removed from Amazon and pointed out that if the company has objections to the content of the work, then they should be looking at other books sold through their website like Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’.
He also called on policy makers to look at the “unlimited liberties” granted to Big Tech.
“My prediction is that in the short run I’ll sell thousands more copies of the book thanks to Amazon's censorship. In the medium run, things will get worse for those who hold to traditional American values,” he wrote.
This is not the first time Amazon has been accused of censoring a book for failing to align with the company’s liberal leanings.
Alex Berenson’s ‘Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1’ became a best-seller, but it was briefly flagged by Amazon and the author was told it did not meet their standards. After a protest on social media gained support from prominent figures like Elon Musk, Amazon allowed the book back on its site and said it was a mistake – something Berenson took issue with.
“They didn’t say to me that it was a mistake… I do believe that I’m not the only person who has run into this. They need to be clear what their position is on publishing controversial material on political issues,” Berenson told Fox News.
Anderson’s book on transgenderism was also briefly removed from Apple books, but quickly re-added and its cover, which is fairly minimal, was flagged as “potentially sensitive content” by Twitter.
How dreadful it is that tech entrepreneurs are making decisions on moral directions in the western world. There has to be a better way. Moving America further and further to the left is drawing it closer and closer to resembling Sodom and Gomorrah, and, consequently, the judgment of God.
=====================================================================================
1 in 6 Americans under 23 say they’re LGBTQ, as more people in the US than ever identify as non-heterosexual
24 Feb, 2021 11:54
According to a Gallup poll, more Americans than ever identify themselves as something other than heterosexual. (FILE PHOTO) © Bryan R. Smith / AFP
More Americans than ever identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) according to a survey of sexuality, with one in six people under 23 saying they are something other than heterosexual.
The Gallup Poll released Wednesday, found that 5.6 percent of Americans classify themselves as LGBTQ – up from 4.5 percent in 2017. That was the last time Gallup carried out polling on the issue.
Gallup surveyed 15,000 Americans above 18 years of age and found that of those who identified themselves as LGBTQ, 54.6 percent said they were bisexual, 24.5 percent said they were gay, and 11.7 percent said they were lesbians. Another 11.3 percent identified themselves as transgender while 3.3 percent said they preferred to use another term such as ‘queer’ or ‘same-gender loving’ to describe their sexual identity.
Respondents were able to choose more than one survey category for their answers.
Of the 15,000 surveyed, 86.7 percent said they are heterosexual or straight, and 7.6 percent did not answer questions about sexual orientation.
The poll also asked respondents about political ideology and party identification, and 13 percent of political liberals, 4.4 percent of moderates, and 2.3 percent of conservatives said they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. It said differences are “somewhat less pronounced by party identification than by ideology,” with 8.8 percent of Democrats, 6.5 percent of independents, and 1.7 percent of Republicans identifying as LGBTQ.
Women are more likely than men to identify as LGBT (6.4 percent to 4.9), and there was no meaningful educational difference – 5.6 percent of college graduates and 5.7 percent of non-graduates – when it comes to LGBTQ identification.
Gallup added that with younger generations far more likely than older generations to consider themselves LGBTQ, that growth should continue.
“The pronounced generational differences raise questions about whether higher LGBTQ identification in younger than older Americans reflects a true shift in sexual orientation, or if it merely reflects a greater willingness of younger people to identify as LGBTQ,” Gallup said.
“To the extent it reflects older Americans not wanting to acknowledge an LGBTQ orientation, the Gallup estimates may underestimate the actual population prevalence of it.”
I am inclined to believe that the younger generations are far more influenced by far-left LGBTQ lobbies that have taken control of school boards and universities. They, particularly girls, are far more influenced by social media. These numbers are no surprise at all.
Again, we are approaching Sodom and Gomorrah in the lifestyles of western cultures. God will not permit this to continue very much longer.
=====================================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment