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As the world approaches Sodom and Gomorrah like morality, one of the signals is the abandonment of biological sex. God curses such things, Deuteronomy 22:5. They are an abomination, like the actions of the men of Sodom, Genesis 19.
Blame IOC over transgender weightlifter at Tokyo Olympics, say experts – as rival calls saga ‘like a bad joke’ for female athletes
31 May, 2021 15:31
Laurel Hubbard (left) and Anna Vanbellinghen © Henry Nicholls / Reuters | © Instagram / justliftinc
A lawyer and weightlifting expert has told critics of the transgender athlete heading for the Olympics to "hate the game" rather than the "player", with his views on the IOC echoed by other leading voices including a competitor.
In a detailed yet succinct analysis of the complexities around the current rules for allowing transgender athletes to compete against rivals who were born as women, Mark House, a US attorney and International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Technical Official, said that he did not feel Laurel Hubbard, the New Zealander who was confirmed to be heading for Tokyo on Sunday, should be at the games.
Hubbard has been at the center of controversy since news broke that they would compete in the over-87kg women's super-heavyweight category at the cherished showpiece, and House says that the 35-year-old is not the advocate supporters of transgender rights in sports should be seeing them as.
No, she is more like an example of what happens when you take something to its logical conclusion.
"There are plenty within the sport – you have only to look at social media to see how many – who think Hubbard should not be there," said House, who describes himself as "active in governance issues with the IWF and USA Weightlifting", for Inside the Games.
"I admit to being one of them, not because of any outrage at how Hubbard qualified – there is nothing wrong with that – but because her participation will seriously diminish the chances of having a rational discussion about transgender policies. She should not take her opportunity."
I disagree with most who comment on this story. I think the way Hubbard qualified is disgraceful and makes a mockery of IOC qualifying rules. The Olympics are supposed to represent fairness and sportsmanship. Hubbard displays anything but that.
"Laurel was born as Gavin, who competed at a reasonably high level through the junior ranks, hitting a 300kg total in the over-105kg men’s category.
"To put that in perspective, that total would have won the past couple of Junior National events in the United States, but would not come close to earning a place on an international team.
"At the 2019 Junior World Championships, a 300kg total would have been good enough for last place by 31kg. In short, Gavin was talented, but not a world-caliber athlete.
"At age 35, Laurel started competing as a woman in the over-90kg – now over-87kg – women’s category.
"If an American or a Briton is displaced by Hubbard on the podium in Tokyo, it will spotlight transgender policy, at least in the western world, to a far greater degree.
"The question then becomes: Is Laurel Hubbard the person advocates want to be the face of transgender policy?
"The question is rhetorical because the answer is obviously 'no'. Having an individual who spent most of her adult life as a man, transitioning at age 35, as the face of a movement will surely spell disaster for any real transgender policy from ever taking effect or even being considered."
Hubbard has come under fire from critics who agree with House that their inclusion is unfair, with part of his informed reasoning coming because, he said, the set level of testosterone allowed for athletes in Hubbard's position is "arbitrary" and based on "no science."
"There is nothing in the IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism to indicate what science supports the policy," he explained.
"If she wins a medal, she will highlight the fact that men should not be competing in women’s sports, that it is patently unfair.
"The only thing people will notice is that an above-average male lifter just placed at the Olympics as a woman, and that the laudable efforts of other women were devalued, in real terms, because of that.
"To believe 'people' will view this any other way is simply delusional."
House pointed out that athletes potentially stand to miss out on medals, tens of thousands of dollars in prizes, places on teams, scholarships, funding and other rewards when they are displaced by opponents who should not necessarily be competing against them.
One of the athletes who could take on Hubbard in Japan, Belgium's Anna Vanbellinghen is among those who could be directly affected by regulations that House claims are flawed.
"First off, I would like to stress that I fully support the transgender community and that what I’m about to say doesn’t come from a place of rejection of this athlete’s identity," said Vanbellinghen, echoing House's insistence that her misgivings are neither personal nor prejudiced.
"I am aware that defining a legal frame for transgender participation in sports is very difficult since there is an infinite variety of situations, and that reaching an entirely satisfactory solution, from either side of the debate, is probably impossible.
It's so difficult because it is so illogical and so unscientific.
"However, anyone that has trained weightlifting at a high level knows this to be true in their bones: this particular situation is unfair to the sport and to the athletes."
Part of the 27-year-old's concerns are around late transitioning. "Why is it still a question whether two decades, from puberty to the age of 35, with the hormonal system of a man also would give an advantage [in competing against women]?" she asked.
"I understand that for sports authorities nothing is as simple as following your common sense, and that there are a lot of impracticalities when studying such a rare phenomenon, but for athletes the whole thing feels like a bad joke.
"Life-changing opportunities are missed for some athletes – medals and Olympic qualifications – and we are powerless.
"Of course, this debate is taking place in a broader context of discrimination against transgender people, and that is why the question is never free of ideology.
"However, the extreme nature of this particular situation really demonstrates the need to set up a stricter legal framework for transgender inclusion in sports, and especially elite sports.
"I do believe that everyone should have access to sports, but not at the expense of others."
House said he could imagine a situation in which second-tier male athletes were coerced into declaring their gender as female and complying with the testosterone rule to earn medals in women's events as part of a 'win-at-all-costs attitude' from some nations.
"With the requirement of sex reassignment surgery removed, the athlete could compete as a woman for a couple of Olympic cycles, then stop taking the suppression therapy after winning for a decade.
"All of this leads me back to my opening statement that Laurel Hubbard should not compete in Tokyo.
"But let me make one point clear – if she is allowed, and elects, to compete, I will cheer her on just like any other athlete.
"Hubbard has broken no rules, has qualified in accordance with the policies in place, and for that she has earned our respect."
Seriously! That's just stupid!
Jerry Wallwork, the President of the Samoan Weightlifting Federation, which seen athletes under his banner competing against Hubbard since they transitioned in 2017, and subscribes to House's view that singling out individuals for criticism is unhelpful.
"I was one of the people who opposed [Hubbard's involvement in Olympic qualifying] greatly, back in 2018," Wallwork said. "But I do feel that we cannot keep throwing mud at Laurel and blaming her, even though our female athletes are in direct competition with her and could miss out on competing at the Olympic Games.
Good grief!
"Changes must be made from the top, from the IOC. More research should go into this issue, or a separate category must be established for transgender lifters.
"Especially in contact sports and power sports like weightlifting, there is a disadvantage for female athletes against transgender athletes."
The weightlifting action in Tokyo is scheduled to start in early August.
'Going off BIOLOGY, not IDEOLOGY': Florida Governor DeSantis signs bill banning biological males from girls' sports
1 Jun, 2021 19:01
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has once again pressed a hot-button conservative issue, signing legislation prohibiting biological males from competing in female sports to protect the “fairness and integrity of women's athletics.”
DeSantis signed the bill into law on Tuesday in a ceremony at Trinity Christian Academy in his native Jacksonville. It was perhaps no coincidence that the Republican governor enacted the law on the first day of Pride Month, pushing back against LGBTQ activism in his latest appeal to conservative voters.
“We're going to go based off biology, not based off ideology, when we're doing sports,” DeSantis said on a stage with female student athletes standing behind him. He added,
In Florida, girls are going to play girls' sports and boys are going to play boys' sports.
The new Florida law follows similar bans on transgender females competing in girls' sports in other Republican-controlled states, including Arkansas and Mississippi. DeSantis and other proponents have argued that such laws prevent girls from being put at an unfair disadvantage to biological males, preserving the integrity of their competitions and the rewards, such as college scholarships, that are at stake.
But transgender activists have argued that such legislation is discriminatory and attacks a non-existent problem to score political points. (Read article above). International NGO Human Rights Watch said in a statement reported by local media that it plans to sue Florida over the new law. Idaho last year became the first US state to enact such a ban, but a federal court ruling has held up its implementation.
The Florida legislation goes a step further than merely banning transgender females from girls' sports. It also allows for civil remedies, which DeSantis referred to as "enforcing fairness and equality on behalf of girls and women."
Any girl or woman who is deprived of an athletic opportunity because of the new law being violated can sue for damages, as can anyone who suffers retaliation for reporting a violation. A school that suffers harm because the law has been violated by a government entity, accrediting organization, or athletic association also can sue. Athletes will compete based on the biological sex on their birth certificate.
DeSantis noted that corporations “get spun up” and athletic organizations threaten to cancel events when states enact legislation opposed by LGBTQ groups. “In Florida, we're going to do what's right,” he said. “We'll stand up to corporations. They are not going to dictate the policies in this state. We will stand up to groups like the NCAA, who think they should be able to dictate the policies in different states. Not here. Not ever.”
The governor added that if events are canceled, hurting the state economically, “I would choose to protect our young girls every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”
The new transgender sports law marks just the latest profile-raising move by DeSantis. In the past year, he has taken such controversial steps as banning local governments from enforcing Covid-19 mask mandates, blocking the use of vaccine passports in the state, and enacting a law that allows Floridians to sue Big Tech social-media companies if they are unjustly de-platformed.
Attention-grabbing announcements have helped make DeSantis one of the early frontrunners for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination. He ranked behind only former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence last month in a Morning Consult poll.
LGBTQ lobbies have no sense of when they are pushing too hard, but, they're pushing too hard!
Stonewall shakedown: LGBT charity wants govt to call mothers ‘parents who gave birth,’ or risk exclusion from ‘equality list’
4 Jun, 2021 15:34
FILE PHOTO: Protesters hold up placards during the first ever Trans Pride March in London, Britain, September 14, 2019 © Reuters / Simon Dawson
LBGT charity Stonewall has advised government departments and companies to swap the word “mother” for the gender-neutral “parent who has given birth,” or risk slipping down its exclusive “equality index.”
As LGBT groups go, Stonewall is held in high regard. Multiple corporations, universities and government departments, including the Ministry of Justice, MI6, and the Greater London Authority, pay more than £2,500 ($3,542) per year to become “diversity champions” – a badge that earns them advice from Stonewall on all things LGBT, and a chance to appear on the charity’s “Workplace Equality Index.”
The cost of appearing on that prestigious index is more than just a financial one. Stonewall attempts to dictate how these companies and departments talk about sexuality and even gender. According to a Telegraph report on Thursday, Stonewall recently messaged organisations on its list, asking them to drop the word “mother” from their literature, in favor of the sanitized and gender-neutral “parent who has given birth.”
After poring over documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests from other organisations, the Telegraph found that dropping gendered language is just one of a litany of demands Stonewall makes of companies hoping for a spot on the list. These include “ditching all gendered language [and] outlawing single sex toilets and changing rooms,” running rainbow-colored shoelace campaigns, avoiding terms like “husband or wife,” and providing “multiple passcards with different forms of gender expression” for those who identify as a different gender on certain days.
Multiple passcards with different forms of gender expression”
for those who identify as a different gender on certain days
I have accused transgenders of switching gender as they will, but this is the first time I have seen someone from the LGBTQ lobby admit that it happens. It's an excellent reason for not having bi-sexual bathrooms or transgenders in prisons that don't match their biological sex.
Additionally, board members and senior management are asked to attend pride parades, and to make speeches and social media posts containing “specific messages of bi, nonbinary and trans equality.”
Organisations applying for a place on the list were eager to tout their compliance with Stonewall’s demands. In its application for last year’s list, the Welsh government wrote that its maternity policy was rewritten to “incorporate gender neutral language, removing binary gender references wherever possible.”
“Breastfeeding” was dropped for “nursing,” though “specific references to chestfeeding” were left intact for the sake of trans employees. “All pronouns were updated in line with all of our HR policies (they/their instead of gendered he/she/his/her etc),” the application continued.
After London’s Metropolitan Police didn’t make Stonewall’s shortlist in 2020, an internal review suggested inviting the charity to review all of its human resources policies to bring them up to a higher standard of wokeness.
Not every organisation is as keen to toe Stonewall’s line on gender issues. The Equality and Human Rights Commission pulled out of Stonewall’s paid programme earlier this year, stating that membership “did not constitute best value for money.” Equalities Minister Liz Truss has also advised all 250 government departments who pay to take part in the scheme to withdraw, and feminist activists have accused Stonewall of “Orwellian” silencing of viewpoints critical of trans ideology.
The feminist backlash against the trans movement – which posits that a biological male identifying as a woman is every bit as female as a born woman -– has grown louder in recent years, with ‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling one of its most recognizable faces. Rowling’s opposition to the excesses of trans ideology has earned her death and rape threats from its most zealous adherents.
Named after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, Stonewall is the largest LGBT charity in Europe. Despite the growing controversy around its stances on transgender issues, it remains partly funded by the British taxpayer, both through government departments paying membership fees, and through direct cash grants.
Trans activists tried to censor a book on potential harm
of hasty transitions for children
Debbie Hayton is a high school teacher and trade union officer. She teaches science to 11-18-year-olds at a school in central England. As a transgender person, she has written extensively about what it means to be trans and how trans people can be included in society without compromising the rights of other vulnerable groups. Her work can be read in publications from across the political spectrum, where rational scientific debate is allowed and encouraged. Follow her on Twitter @DebbieHayton
4 Jun, 2021 17:35
FILE PHOTO. NEW YORK, UNITED STATES. © AFP / YANA PASKOVA
Abigail Shrier’s ‘Irreversible Damage’ is a superb piece of investigative journalism that exposes the damage done to teenage girls by transgender ideology, but it divides opinion. Should controversial books ever be censored?
The public library in Halifax, Nova Scotia had come under pressure for stocking Shrier’s book. Transgender campaigners had made the usual hyperbolic accusations that it presented a “safety issue”, one claiming, “the impact of this book on, like, even one kid is potentially their life”. Utter nonsense, of course, but those campaigners will stoop very low to get their own way.
In fact, the very opposite is true.
Last week, the library announced it was not going to be removing the book from its shelves. In a statement it said, “Public libraries exist to provide equal access to resources for everyone and support individuals’ freedom to seek information and form their own opinions. When we act to suppress access, we engage in censorship.”
Perhaps with a view to the inevitable outrage that it knew would follow, it quickly re-committed itself to support trans people and the “broader LGBTQ2S+ community” before suggesting not one but 18 books that take an approach that is different from Shrier’s.
However, nothing short of total capitulation is ever good enough for the transgender thought police. Halifax Pride promptly announced its decision to end its partnership with the Halifax Public Library, including events planned for the 2021 festival. Let them go, would be my advice to the library. The trans community needs far better representation than Halifax Pride and their assertion that Shrier’s book could possibly put “local trans youth in immediate harm.” It is Shrier who is calling out the real and tangible threat to transgender-identified youth. They are being captivated by a dangerous ideology that pushes them into unnecessary medical treatment that could leave them sterile and medicated for life.
And a very dramatic jump in attempted suicide rates.
Sadly, we have got far too used to the petulant moaning of groups such as Halifax Pride. It doesn’t help transgender people like me, but the damage may be limited if we pay no attention to it. But that’s harder when the Canadian state broadcaster CBC publishes a news report that reads more like an op-ed. It started with the pull quote “This book is definitely debating the existence of trans people”, and quoted Halifax Pride and the author of one of two petitions that had called for the book’s removal. In a ludicrous non-attempt to balance the piece, the report quoted a professor of health promotion, “whose research includes LGBTQ health and gender”. She saw the book as harmful “junk science” that should be openly discussed, but not pulled from the library.
“I don’t know that taking the book out of the collection is necessarily going to resolve the bigger problem, which is transphobia and trans hatred.”
CBC might not have given Abigail Shrier a right of reply, but RT.com was keen to hear from her. Shrier told me, “My book does nothing more than point out the medical risks of hasty transition for teen girls. The notion that that makes anyone feel unsafe is a lie that the activists are using, very effectively, to silence all debate over the medical protocols of transition. I don’t know what’s more disgraceful, the attempt to suppress a book, or all the people who have fallen for it. But I’m grateful to the Halifax Library for standing up to this madness.”
But the madness runs deeper than local issues in Halifax, Nova Scotia. CBC appears to have been captured. It cited author Tom Ryan, who said he now plans to cancel his upcoming library-sponsored presentation out of concern for the LGBTQ teens he writes about. However, in an atrocious failure of editorial judgment, the original piece illustrated Ryan’s quote with two of his tweets. In them, he likened Shrier’s concern for transgender-identified girls with the anti-Semitic writings of David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Without criticism or comment, CBC embedded two tweets in which Ryan had written the following:
“A quick search tells me that Halifax Public Library does not carry ‘Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question’ by David Duke. Is it censorship of HPL so [sic] choose not to carry this book? Would people crawl out of the woodwork to defend the library if they did carry Duke’s book? If you answered no, ask yourself why so many people are quick to defend this book. It’s not about free speech – it’s about granting transphobia a veneer of respectability.”
It's about truth! Which has no place in LGBTQ2S+ philosophy.
Ryan later withdrew those appalling remarks – and they also disappeared from the CBC report – but what was a state broadcaster thinking when it selected them for publication? It’s far too easy for libellous accusations to be propagated on social media, but that doesn’t excuse professionals who should know better than to repeat them. To link Shrier to Duke is not only potentially defamatory, it misleads the Canadian public. Either CBC is hopelessly naïve and does not know what it is doing, or this was a deliberate attempt to discredit Shrier’s book by the most scurrilous tactics imaginable.
I vote for both!
I’ve read Shrier’s book. Last year, RT.com published my review. ‘Irreversible Damage’ is neither transphobic nor anti-trans, whatever those terms might mean, and it is not “definitely debating the existence of trans people.” It is controversial only because some people seem determined to suppress it at all costs.
If Shrier is right – and I think she is – we are witnessing an appalling failure of safeguarding, which is leading to the systematic abuse of vulnerable girls. Her claims need to be investigated, and therefore her book needs to be read.
If CBC is trying to actively suppress this book, Canada has a very serious problem indeed.
This has been obvious to some of us for several years now.
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