#Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS)

[coochiequeens]

A 6'1 dude is competing against women and injuring them in the process. Yes contact sports always have the risk of injury, however the women are being injured more frequently when competing against him. And he's taking time away from his female teammates who should be the ones playing. But he doesn't care.

By Anna Slatz April 17, 2024

Reduxx has learned that a feminine male has been participating in elite women’s collegiate sports in California after his biological sex was reportedly withheld from his teammates and his opponents. Blaire Fleming, born Brayden, is currently playing women’s Division I volleyball for San Jose State University in the reputable Mountain West Conference.

Speaking to Reduxx, the mother of an opposing player revealed that her suspicions were first raised during the 2022-2023 season.

“I first watched my daughter play Blaire via live stream and then in person for a second match,” the mother, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “My daughter mentioned to me before the second match that there were rumors about Blaire being a male.”

Upon attending the match, she immediately noticed that Fleming appeared to be male, both in the way he looked and his mannerisms on the court.

“He jumped higher and hit harder than any woman on the court. There was no other female athlete on the court that day that could compare with Blaire’s athleticism. He also had very narrow hips. I took notice of how he was dressed with a longer shirt in the front as well.”

During the match, the anonymous parent noted that her daughter was suffering far more physical injuries and strains than she ever had before in her volleyball career, and was constantly icing and rubbing her arms after blocking shots from Fleming. She says her daughter’s teammates were also struggling, with the defenders being unable to react quickly to his high-intensity strikes.

“He was basically unstoppable at times. He was jumping so high that I was concerned our blockers could not defend against such a fast moving hit,” she says.

On average, the difference between upper body strength in the sexes is 52%, with men having 10% larger hands on average and being 7% taller. These factors have contributed to a volleyball net height difference of over 7 inches between male and female games. According to his San Jose Spartans profile, Fleming stands at 6’1.

“Coincidentally, those two games, my daughter’s stats were not as good as most other games. Her stats were dramatically different because she was trying to compete against a male who my daughter said would stare her down after plays and was extremely arrogant.”

The mother also revealed that despite widespread speculations that Fleming was male, officials from San Jose State let it slip to her daughter’s team that even they were unaware of his biological sex. She adds that the policies must change to ensure fairness for female athletes.

“I watched those San Jose State female athletes sit on the sidelines while a male took away their chance to play. These women only have 4 years to compete and they are losing those years to a male. Not only that, but the chance of injury is greatly increased for women when they play against a male with very clear physical strength advantages. It’s just dangerous above all else.”

Prior to transferring to San Jose, Fleming was participating in women’s volleyball in South Carolina for Coastal Carolina University. He appears to have fled to California just before the Save Women’s Sports Bill became law in the state, which would have prohibited him from continuing to play on female teams.

Fleming had also played on the girls varsity volleyball team at John Champe High School in Virginia, where he was raised. During this time, Fleming set the school record for most kills in a match, and single season record of 266 kills.

While the exact age Fleming was transitioned is unknown, early photos posted to his aunt’s Facebook show he was raised as a boy, and only began presenting in feminine clothing in 2016 when he would have been approximately 14 years old. His family members have been careful not to publicly identify him as transgender, but his grandmother referred to him as her “grandson” in an early photo.

Fleming is currently participating in Division I volleyball, which is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Division I (DI) volleyball teams can offer a maximum of 12 full-ride scholarships, meaning athletes will have all expenses related to their college experience paid for.

While it is currently unknown if Fleming has received a women’s DI scholarship, the NCAA has recently become the subject of a lawsuit by over one dozen female athletes for allowing males to compete against them in women’s categories.

The lawsuit, the first federal action of its kind, seeks to force the NCAA to change its policies to clearly define, rendering any biological males ineligible to compete against female athletes. It demands the NCAA revoke all awards given to trans athletes in women’s competitions and “reassign” them to their female contenders. It also asks for “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants’ wrongful conduct.” 

Exclusive funding support for the lawsuit is being provided by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), which has been calling attention to the presence and impact of male athletes in women’s categories.

Speaking to Reduxx on Blaire Fleming, ICONS’s Marshi Smith condemned the NCAA for failing to guarantee transparency or protection to female athletes who are forced to compete against men.

“The NCAA is defrauding female athletes by withholding information about a teammate or opponent’s true sex,” Smith says. “Women are not given the chance to decide whether they want to face heightened safety risks on the court or share women’s locker rooms with men. The NCAA’s reward system encourages deceit, leading to financial and academic advantages for males at the expense of girls and young women in sports. This harmful practice must be stopped immediately.”

Fleming is not the first trans-identified male athlete to conceal his biological sex for the purposes of participating in women’s collegiate sports.

As previously reported by Reduxx, a volleyball player from California was briefly set to become the first known male recipient of a women’s NCAA Division I athletic scholarship after successfully hiding his biological sex from his teammates.

Tate Drageset, 17, verbally committed to the University of Washington, but following the expose revealing his was a biological male, it was learned that the University rescinded the offer.

#Save women's sports Saturday #Title IX #california #usa #San Jose State University #Mountain west conference #Blaire Fleming is Brayden #Save Women’s Sports Bill #South Carolina #National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) #Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS)

[justinssportscorner]

Karleigh Webb at Outsports:

A group of 16 female student-athletes filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA to the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia Thursday in regards to the NCAA’s transgender student-athlete inclusion policies and regulations. The suit seeks a total ban of transgender women in all NCAA sports, and also demands that all titles and positions won by transgender women are retroactively revoked. The suit was organized by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, who also have ties to a number of conservative anti-trans organizations. At the top of list of athletes who are part of the suit is former University of Kentucky swimmer-turned anti-trans activist Riley Gaines.

Since tying for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle event with former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA Division I Swimming Championships in 2022, Gaines has become a face of this issue. Thomas, who became first transgender woman student-athlete to win an individual NCAA Division I title during those championships, has been the centerpiece of opposing concerns about the NCAA policy. The filing itself mirrored several of Gaines’ speeches, and some of the accusations she has personally made against Lia Thomas over the last two years. “The NCAA imposed a radical anti-woman agenda on college sports,” the filing states. “Reinterpreting Title IX to define women as a testosterone level, permitting men to compete on women’s teams, and destroying female safe spaces in women’s locker rooms.” [...]

Plaintiffs include various college student-athletes

Other plaintiffs in the suit include former Virginia Tech swimmer Réka György. She was 17th in the 500-yard freestyle event at the 2022 NCAA Championships. She claims that Lia Thomas, who won the national championship in that same event, unfairly kept her out of the consolation final. “That final spot was taken away from me because of the NCAA’s decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete,” György stated in a letter to the NCAA in March 2022 that was reprinted in the filing, “It hurts me, my team and other women in the pool.”

A group of 6 swimmers from Roanoke College (Va.) also signed on. Prior to the start of the 2023-2024 season, a number of members of their team staged a public demonstration, with Gaines in attendance, after a prospective trans women student-athlete petitioned join the team. The student withdrew their request prior to the demonstration. The NCAA hasn’t responded publicly, but this lawsuit comes with further changes in the NCAA policy ahead. In the 2024-2025 academic year, each NCAA sport will cede to the policies set by either their respective national or world governing bodies to decide the eligibility of transgender women. In the cases of swimming and track and field, transgender women will be banned from competition in women’s NCAA sports because that is the policies of World Aquatics and World Athletics.

16 female NCAA athletes, including Riley Gaines, Kaitlynn Wheeler, Réka György, and Ainsley Erzen, filed a class action lawsuit against the NCAA to demand a total ban on trans women in NCAA sports and retroactive revocation of all titles and positions obtained by trans women in NCAA competitions.

The Gaines v. NCAA suit is being organized by anti-trans inclusion group Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), and the suit erroneously claims trans-inclusive policies violate Title IX. The Gaines v. NCAA lawsuit is nothing more than a transphobic temper tantrum by Mrs. 5th Place Crybaby.

See Also:

Sportico: NCAA TRANS POLICY, TITLE IX SUIT MAY HINDER CONGRESS ON NIL

#NCAA #Title IX #Women's Sports #Transgender Sports #Transphobia #Anti Trans Extremism #Gaines v. NCAA #Réka György #Riley Gaines #Lia Thomas #Kaitlynn Wheeler #Ainsley Erzen #Kylee Alons #Independent Council on Women’s Sports #ICONS #LGBTQ+

[mightyflamethrower]

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova took aim at the United States Tennis Association (USTA) for its policy allowing men claiming to be women to compete in the women’s category, calling the policy “unfair.”

Navratilova took to her X (formerly known as Twitter) account on Sunday to respond to a post by Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) founder Kim Shasby Jones who was also critical of allowing men to play pro tennis as women.

Shasby Jones wrote, “women’s tennis is turning into a laughing stock because of these terrible policies prioritizing the mental health and identity of men over women who have discovered a love of tennis.”

Navratilova agreed and added that women’s tennis should not be a destination for failed male players.

“Come on @USTA- women’s tennis is not for failed male athletes- whatever age,” Navratilova wrote. “This is not right and it is not fair. Would this be allowed at the US Open this month? Just with self ID? I don’t think so.”

In her post, Shasby Jones added that female players are beginning to complain privately about how unfair it is to allow men to compete against them.

“Men are winning national titles, taking the place of women on team tennis, and competing in women’s tournaments across the country,” Shasby Jones wrote.

“We need to let the women and girls playing tennis know that they deserve to be treated fairly and recognized for their accomplishments no matter when they pick up the sport. They do not have to reach any kind of elite status,” she said.

“There is already a category for male athletes to enjoy this privilege. Let female athletes enjoy the game of tennis too.”

“Change the policy and @BillieJeanKing change your stance – don’t abandon these women and this sport any longer,” she concluded.

The discussion comes on the heels of a transgender athlete winning a women’s tennis tournament in Philadelphia last month, Fox News reported.

The U.S. Tennis Association maintains that trans athletes must identify as the opposite gender for “four years”. It adds that a gender switch is not legitimate if it is “only for sporting purposes.”

“Hormonal therapy appropriate for the assigned sex has been administered in a verifiable manner and for a sufficient length of time to minimize gender-related advantages in sport competitions,” the police also states.

For its part, the World Tennis Authority policy contains specific testosterone levels for men claiming to be transgender women and maintains that testosterone must be “below 10 nmol/L for at least twelve (12) months prior to her first WTA Tournament.”

“The player’s total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to enter into and participate in any WTA Tournament,” the policy says.

Navratilova has been an outspoken opponent of transgender athletes competing in women’s categories. In one of her recent comments, for instance, Navratilova slammed U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe when the soccer player announced that trans women should be allowed to play as women in any sport they desire.

In June, Navratilova called out a North Carolina cycling competition for allowing a man to race as a woman. And when the man won the race in the women’s category, Navratilova called the race a “joke.”

[virtual-lara]

The Croft Times - Interview With Toby Gard

This interview was published in 'The Face' Magazine and written up on the fansite, 'The Scion Sanctuary' by Tim 'Raider'. It was then added to The Croft Times.

Here's the interview with Toby Gard, the designer who gave life to Lara:

The Face:

Has Lara changed much (physically, character-wise) from your original idea of her?

Toby:

Well, she went through a period of wearing slightly more military-looking clothes, but she looked too Nazi-like. For a while she looked a bit like Neneh Cherry; baggy trousers and crop tops, but before long she found her hot pants and leotard and away we went!

The Face:

Is she based on anyone you know?

Toby:

No, it's not often you meet gun-toting psychopaths down the pub.

The Face:

So what's with the unfeasibly large knockers then?

Toby:

Slip of the mouse. I wanted to expand them fifty percent and then - whoops, one-hundred and fifty percent. Darn.

The Face:

Did they get bigger when marketing became became involved?

Toby:

Not really; they were just focused on more. The marketing men just saw them as the easy route to take with their campaign. I reckon they must have thought, "How are we going to market this? Hey, look at her enormous oojahs! I have a cunning plan." Clever lads.

The Face:

Did your girlfriend mind you spending so much time with another woman?

Toby:

If you want a girlfriend, avoid working in computer games like the plague. If you work seven days a week, fifteen hours a day for almost two years, with barely enough time for a pint, you have no time whatsoever for relationships. Plus computer-games makers are regarded as being about as hip as abbattoir workers.

The Face:

What do you think of a 'real' Lara being used in promotion - will you be buying her single?

Toby:

I think it's really wierd when you've drawn a character and then you meet someone who's actually paid to dress up the same and pretend to be her. Very strange. As far as I'm aware the single is no longer going to happen. If it does, though, yes, I'll buy it. I like a laugh.

The Face:

Is Lara a feminist icon or a sexist fantasy?

Toby:

Neither and a bit of both. Lara was designed to be a tough, self-reliant, intelligent woman. She confounds all the sexist cliches apart from the fact that she's got an unbelievable figure. Strong, independent women are the perfect fantasy girls - the untouchable is always the most desirable.

The Face:

Would she work if she wasn't a posh bird?

Toby:

I can't somehow imagine her in a council house wearing whote stilettos and sporting a fake-blonde perm. She was made to be as quintessentially British as possible. It's generally held that unless you have an American hero you won't be able to sell a game in America. I though that by deliberately reversing as many rules as possible, ie female (but strong, not tarty), a British not American lead character, and American not British villains, we'd make something that was unusual and fresh.

The Face:

Which is more important: the character or the game?

Toby:

The game is always the most important thing: the way it plays, the interface, and the content. A good character is useful to bring the thing to life.

The Face:

Are you still in love with Lara or are you sick of the sight of her?

Toby:

Neither. It's good to see the character around still, quite satisfying in fact. I don't think it would be quite normal for you to love something you made up though, a bit too Bride of Frankenstein for my liking.

All rights belong to The Face Magazine, The Croft Times & The Scion Sanctuary. I only intend to introduce people to old articles and preserve them before they are lost.

#All Interviews #VL Posts

[dubsism]

Today’s Movie: A Woman Called Golda

Year of Release: 1982

Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Ned Beatty, Franklin Cover

Director: Alan Gibson

This movie is not on my list of essential films.

NOTE: This installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called The 5th Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blog-A-Thon being hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema. She hosted the first blog-a-thon in which I ever participated; you might say she helped create the monster you see now some 90 episodes later.  At one time, I wondered why she kept having me in these events; after all, she has to be smarter than that considering she just earned an advanced degree in “filmy stuff.”  Then I realized her genius…she has me around as my thick-headed slop makes the other participants look that much better 🙂

You can see all the contributors to this blog-a-thon here:

Days One, Two, and Three

The Story:

Have you ever heard the old saying “save the best for last?” No doubt, there are some hardcore Bergman-o-philes who might recoil in horror at what I’m about to suggest, but for my money, Ingrid Bergman’s final performance may very well be one of her best.

For purposes of full disclosure, I’m not the world’s foremost Ingrid Bergman fan. I don’t get far off the “beaten path” when it comes to her work; I couldn’t take a discussion much beyond “Casablanca,” “Gaslight,” or “Notorious.” I could barely tell you if Rossellini is a pasta dish or a director, but I can tell you this. Anybody who does consider themselves a fan of Bergman needs to have this movie in their “watched” folder.

The Necessary Backstory

If it weren’t for “Movie for a Rained-Out Ball Game,” I wouldn’t have discovered this gem either.  Now, you can’t be a “movie snob” and still appreciate “A Woman Called Golda.” Going in, you have to understand this is a “made for television” effort; it has the inherent flaws of such a movie.

First, it’s pretty clear this movie lacked the luxury of a large budget. Second, having such low overhead is why local television stations had this film in the bank ready for the “rainy day.” Lastly, there’s the issue of casting. Most such films have three core characteristics:

1) A Collection of “That Guy” Actors

This is a tactic shared by disaster movies as I explored in the low-budget Martin Milner 1976 TV epic “Flood!” The difference is the price tags on the cast of familiar faces.  “A Woman Called Golda” is no exception.  The first-time viewer of a sufficient age is certainly going to recognize some faces of the time.  If you were a fan of “The Jeffersons,” you might recognize Franklin “Mr. Willis” Cover playing Senator Hubert Humphery.  Fans of the “Star Wars” franchise might recognize this movie’s “Mr. Macy” as General Rieekan from “The Empire Strikes Back;” the guy who looks like he’s wearing throat lozenges on his uniform.  Then’s there’s the ever-present Ned “Squeal Like a Pig” Beatty.

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That’s just for openers. If for no other reason, you need to watch this movie to spot all the familiar faces. This cast features one Oscar winner and four Oscar nominees in a melange of the recognizable. You can even make a drinking game out of spotting them all.

2) A Television Legend

Arguably the biggest legend to date is television history in William Shatner.  But if his first series didn’t become so iconic, Shatner is likely little more than a footnote in the grand scheme of the small screen; he’s forever the guy who sees gremlins on the wing in “The Twilight Zone.”

Let’s be honest, “Star Trek” doesn’t become a staple of television history with out Leonard Nimoy; Shatner lived long and prospered because of “Spock.” In the very same vein as the green-blooded Spock did for Captain Kirk, Nimoy’s presence in this film as Golda Meir’s husband lays the foundation for the capital piece of casting for any film of this ilk…

3) Honest to Goodness Hollywood Royalty (albeit an aging one)

Character actor extraordinaire Robert Loggia’s portrayal of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered the opportunity to portray one of the great dynamic characters of all time. Sadat was one of the military officers who staged a coup d’état against King Farouk in 1952. He became prominent in Egyptian politics serving as Vice President and Minister of State under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat succeeded Nasser as President of Egypt in 1970, the year after Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel.

The problem is Loggia was normally known for playing “Mob” type uber-hoodlums and he simply just wasn’t up to the task of playing a statesman like Sadat.

Frankly, there are times when Loggia’s performance borders on the clownish, but putting him in that role was either the definition of “accidentally successful” or pure, unadulterated genius. If an actor capable of exploring the depth of a character like Anwar Sadat had been cast in that role, it very easily could have forced a pivot in perspective of the whole film.  If they had been able to put Anthony Quinn in that role, they might as well have re-worked the whole picture to “A Man Called Anwar” rather than “A Woman Called Golda.”

In terms of world history, the tales of Anwar Sadat and Golda Meir are inextricably linked, which makes telling the tale of one without making a co-star of the other intrinsically difficult. Besides, as previously mentioned, Paramount Domestic Television only had budget for one Hollywood monarch, and that was Ingrid Bergman.

Even if they hadn’t re-worked the picture, the Sadat character could have easily stolen the movie.  When Sadat comes to power in 1970, he is the leader of a nation orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than Israel.  Not only is that nation thirsty for revenge for the loss of the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 “Six-Day War,” but the Soviet Union is Egypt’s main source of foreign aid and also wouldn’t mind seeing the Jewish state wiped off the map. Sadat know that being hostile to both the United States and Israel was a hindrance to industrialization and modernization of Egypt, but changing those things was not going to be an “overnight” project.

But by 1973, the Arab states, particularly Syria, Jordan, and the Egyptian Army – those who had lost territory to Israel in 1967 – were ready to unleash the dogs of war yet again in a bid to recapture the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the other lands lost in the previously. This leads us to the defining moment of Golda Meir’s life.

The Brilliance of Ingrid Bergman

Golda Meir with Anwar Sadat during his visit to Israel in 1977.

“A Woman Called Golda” was a four-hour “made for television” movie originally aired in two-hour halves in 1982.  As the aforementioned “Hollywood Royalty,” Bergman’s main role was to lend gravitas to the film. The film opens in 1977; the scene being Golda Meir has returned to her old school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is telling the students the story of her life.  Through a series of flashbacks woven together with Bergman’s narrative, the audience is drawn into the story-telling. In one fell swoop, all the problems are solved. The way this movie was made eliminated issues created by the the quirky casting, the also aforementioned “Sadat” problem, and opens the door for Bergman to deliver a tremendous performance for a story which richly deserved it.

Meir was born on May 3, 1898 as Golda Mabovitch in Kiev, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). Her father went to find work in America in 1903, and once he had saved enough money, the rest of the family emigrated to Milwaukee in 1906 to escape the ever-present persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Those struggles fed Golda’s dream of an independent Jewish state.  In the meantime, she attended college, became a teacher, met and married Morris Meyerson (played by Leonard Nimoy) in 1917.

Morris and Golda moved to the British Mandate of Palestine (land that would eventually become Israel) in 1921 to live and work on a kibbutz.  While Golda was not performing her duties of picking almonds, planting trees, tending chickens, and running the kitchen, her leadership abilities were noticed. As a result, the other members of the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the General Federation of Labor known as the Histadrut.

Despite the fact they left the kibbutz in 1924, Golda’s rise in the political world would continue.  The couple eventually settled in Jerusalem where they have two children; a son Menachem and a daughter Sarah.

The next step in Golda’s ascension took place in 1928 when she was elected secretary of the Working Women’s Council (Moetzet HaPoalot).  This position required her to spend two years as an emissary in the United States. While this was a major step for her, it also marked the beginning of the end of her marriage to Morris.  The children went with Golda to America, but Morris remained in Jerusalem. Over the next two decades Morris and Golda grew apart, but never divorced; despite their estrangement, they remained married until his death in 1951. The next two decades saw Golda serve in a variety of roles in service of Israel.

Meir with President Kennedy when she was Israel’s Foreign Minister. 1962

By 1969, Meir was in a state of semi-retirement due to health concerns, but after prime minister Levi Eshkol’s sudden death, Meir was elected as his successor.  She took office in March of 1969 and maintained the coalition government between her own Mapai party and two others, the Rafi and Ahdut Ha’Avoda. Eventually, these three would officially merge to form the Israeli Labor Party.

But early in her term as prime minister, Meir eschewed politics to court other world leaders regardless of their ideology with her own vision of peace in the middle east. This included the President of the United States Richard Nixon, Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausesçu, and and Pope Paul VI. In a highly controversial move, Meir even hosted a visit to Israel by West German chancellor Willy Brandt in 1973.

Through Bergman’s portrayal and narration, viewers start to see Meir’s overall strategy of making Israel a sympathetic figure by being the side seeking peace.  This is only exacerbated in the wake of the Palestinian terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. This strategy becomes pivotal in Meir’s finest moment.

Early in 1973, Meir cemented her relationship with American President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when she agreed to Kissinger’s peace proposal based on “security versus sovereignty” in which Israel would accept Egyptian sovereignty over all of the Sinai Peninsula, while Egypt would accept Israeli presence in some of the Sinai’s strategic positions. However, this back-fired; in October of 1973 the Arab states began massing troops on the Israeli borders.

Prime Minister Meir, President Nixon, and Secretary of State Kissinger in 1973.

This is the moment when Bergman’s portrayal fulfills the “gravitas” role – and then some – because this is the moment where Meir is faced with a decision with the fate of a nation hanging in the balance.

On the eve of the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” war, Israeli intelligence could not conclusively determine that an attack was imminent, but the signs of a heavy troop build-up in the Golan Heights and in the Sinai were clear. Meir was convinced this was a set-up identical to the Six-Day War six years earlier. On one hand, there were advisors telling her an attack was not likely. The Israeli public shared that sentiment, especially given the crushing defeat which was  inflicted on the Arab states in 1967.  Despite the fact she had complete authority to order a full-scale mobilization for war, Meir did not do so.

But a few days later, it became clear an attack was imminent, and Meir’s delay only allowed the enemy forces to grow in strength. Mere hours before the outbreak of war, Meir met with Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff General David Elazar. While Dayan continued to argue that war was not likely and felt that only the Israeli Air Force and two Army division needed to be called up, while Elazar felt a full-scale mobilization was necessary along with launch of a devastating preemptive strike on the Syrian and Egyptian forces.

Meir agreed to the complete mobilization of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), but would not order the preemptive attack. Meir told Dayan and Elezar that Israel’s survival would depend on foreign aid. To that end, she believed they were not able to depend on European nations to supply Israel with military equipment, and the only country which would possibly come to Israel’s defense was the United States, but that wouldn’t happen if the Americans felt Israel initiated the hostilities. Meir placed her bet; million of lives including her own and the survival of a notion were at stake.

At 2 p.m. on October 6th, the armies of Syria and Egypt poured into Israel. The IDF launched a series of blocking actions against the Syrians and launched a mostly ineffective counter-offensive against the Egyptians in the Sinai.  By October 11th, the invading forces had been pushed back by the IDF, but the Israeli Air Force and Army had suffered massive casualties and had no reserves.  If the Arabs counter-attacked at this point, the Israelis could have easily suffered a defeat ensuring the destruction of the entire nation and a blood-bath of unimaginable scale.

But Meir’s gamble paid off. On October 12th, President of the United States Richard Nixon ordered the launch of Operation Nickel Grass, and within 24 hours American military hardware began flooding into Israel. Within days, the re-armed and re-supplied IDF was back on the offensive with forces across the Suez Canal threatening Cairo and breaking out of the Golan Heights on the road to Damascus.

One of the reasons why Meir made the right call on the preemptive strike is she hedged that bet by letting Nixon and Kissinger know her decision and why she made it. After Operation Nickel Grass was launched, Kissinger told Meir that she made the right choice; that if she had ordered the firing of the first shot, he and Nixon “wouldn’t have given Israel so much as a nail.”

Ironically, it was Meir’s triumph in the Yom Kippur war which led to her political downfall. In the aftermath, the Israeli public demanded answers for why the IDF seemed so -ill-prepared for the initial attack which led to it taking such heavy casualties. Both Meir and Chief of Staff Elazar became scapegoats and were forced to resign.

The Legacy of Golda Meir

Israeli 10 Sheqalim Banknote commemorating Golda Meir

The film ends by coming full circle with Ingrid Bergman bringing the tale of Golda Meir’s life story to a close with the audience of school children. Meir died shortly after this trip to her school; she had been suffering from lymphoma for years. Bergman passed away on her 67th birthday only a few months from the end of filming “A Woman Called Golda.”  Like Meir, Bergman was also suffering from cancer.

But despite the ignominious end to her political career, Golda Meir is still a revered figure in Israel.  Not only is she on a bank note, she is buried on Mount Herzl, the site of Israel’s national cemetery. The first and only woman to hold the office of Prime Minister in Israeli history to date, and only the fourth woman to be a head of state in the world at the time, Golda Meir was known as the “Iron Lady” of Israeli politics; this term would later be used to describe Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion called Meir “the best man in the government” and “strong-willed, straight-talking, gray-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people.”

Similar glowing words for Ingrid Bergman came from her daughter Isabella Rossellini after she had seen “A Woman Called Golda.”

She never showed herself like that in life. In life, Mum showed courage. She was always a little vulnerable, courageous, but vulnerable. Mother had a sort of presence, like Golda, I was surprised to see it…When I saw her performance, I saw a mother that I’d never seen before – this woman with balls.

Like I said, if you consider yourself a fan of Ingrid Bergman, and you’ve never seen this film, you need to change that. Even if you already agree with the words of her daughter, once you see “A Woman Called Golda,” you’ll have a whole new appreciation for them.

Look what it did for me…the guy who still thinks Rossellini is something that comes with a red sauce.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

Give or take a few years, Golda Meir was born right around the same time as Joan Whitney Payson.  They both died within a few years of each other as well. But other than today’s hidden sports analogy, the similarities stop there.

Meir came to America as a penniless immigrant escaping the pogroms of Russia of the turn of the 20th century. Her father was a carpenter who sweated for every cent he ever had. Payson was the essential “trust find baby;” She inherited a trust fund from her grandfather William C. Whitney of the prominent Whitney family and on her father’s death in 1927, she received a large part of the family’s fortune…which goes all the way back to the colonial days.  She was “old money” of the first order, was pedigreed at Barnard College, and was known as a businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and renowned art collector.

Joan Whitney Payson

But Payson was also a dedicated sports enthusiast who also happened to be a minority shareholder in the old New York Giants baseball club. Albeit on a different scale, post World War II Palestine shares a crucial characteristic with Major League Baseball of the same time; for both this was a time of complete upheaval. The effect of establishing a Jewish state in land held by Muslims since the Crusades speaks for itself.  But the 1950s represented an equally tectonic shift in the demographics of the United States…and consequently those of it’s biggest sport at that time.

The Baseball Diaspora

The 1950s ushered in an era for franchise relocation and expansion for Major League Baseball. By 1957, the lure of new and untapped markets was so strong it reached the de facto capital of baseball, New York City. The “Big Apple” was home three teams; two of them being the biggest franchises in the game. To this day, no team has won more games than the Giants, and no team has won more championships than the New York Yankees. Conversely, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the “red-headed step-child” of New York baseball.  The Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley wanted to buy land on which to build a stadium to replace the dilapidated Ebbets Field. For a host of reasons, this proved difficult.

Meanwhile, emissaries from the city of Los Angeles were looking to entice a team to move to California.  After the war, the advent of transcontinental airline travel meant the obstacles of slow rail travel and the distance to the west coast were no longer in play.  Nobody really thought a team would leave New York; as such the Angelino’s target  to move west was the Washington Senators.  It was no secret that Senators’ owner Calvin Griffith was open to be courted for a move.  But when stories began to appear of O’Malley’s dissatisfaction with New York, the faction from Los Angeles shifted their focus.

In no time, O’Malley and the city of Los Angeles had a deal in place, but there was one snag. Citing travel and scheduling concerns, National League president Warren Giles would not allow O’Malley to move the Dodgers to the West Coast unless he could find another owner also willing to move. O’Malley began to put out feelers, but It was starting to look like Giles’ mandate was going to kill the deal. There were only eight teams in the National League at the time; the process of elimination left O’Malley with what he thought were no “real” options.

August Busch just had the city of St. Louis handed to his Cardinals as their exclusive market when the American League’s St. Louis Browns left to become the Baltimore Orioles in 1954, so there was no way he was moving. One of the biggest proponents of westward expansion was the Chicago Cubs’ owner William Wrigley; the Cubs were the first team to move their Spring Training facilities out of Florida, and he already owned the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. But for a host of reason, the idea of the Cubs abandoning Chicago was almost heretical as a team leaving New York.  The one team which might have moved west with him was the Boston Braves, but they already made their move when they headed to Milwaukee in 1953.

Just when O’Malley was about to give up on the Los Angeles deal and the Brooklyn fans were beginning to rest assured they weren’t going to lose “dem Bums,” the bombshell hit that both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants were leaving the “Big Apple” for Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively.

Horace Stoneham and Walter O’Malley right before they head for the airport.

What nobody knew that O’Malley discovered was the Giants’ majority owner Horace Stoneham was having similar difficulty finding a replacement for his team’s antiquated home stadium, the Polo Grounds. While all this was going one, the city of Minneapolis was already constructing Metropolitan Stadium in an attempt to lure a baseball team and/or a football team to the upper mid-west. The Minneapolis Millers were the New York Giants top minor-league affiliate at the time and Shoreham was noted to have said “there were not two better major league stadiums.”

That’s when O’Malley put “two and two together” deducing Shoreham was at least entertaining the idea of moving the Giants to the Twin Cities.  Being open to leaving New York was the only opening O’Malley needed; he persuaded Shoreham to move the Giants San Francisco, fulfilling Warren Giles’ dictate the Dodgers would have a National League rival closer than St. Louis.

Redrawing Baseball’s Borders

As a minority owner of the the New York Giants, Joan Whitney Payson was staunchly opposed to the move. She knew what this would do to the fans. Baseball fandom in New York in the 1950 enjoyed the same fervor as any religion.  It was a major component of your personal identity; race, creed, national origin, and Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees. It was that simple and well-defined, and you couldn’t change any of them.

In one fell swoop, legions of New York National League fans were cast into the baseball desert. Their teams were gone, and there was nothing they could do about.  While Dodger and Giants fans enjoy of the great rivalries in all of sports, they do have one unifying factor. They both have an eyeball-splitting hatred of the New York Yankees.

Imagine what would have happened if in 1973 Golda Meir had said something like “In order to escape the never-ending cycle of war, we’re going to move the State of Israel to Utah. It’s just like Palestine; it’s got a big, salty lake and plenty of desert. It’ll be great!” Granted, that comparison leans a smidge to the absurd side, but it makes the point. It also sets the table for something even more absurd which actually happened.  Imagine that after Israel made the move to Utah, somebody told the Jews left in Palestine that they could always just convert to Islam.

That’s essentially what National League president Warren Giles told Dodger and Giant fans after their teams were ripped out from underneath them.  Giles was a huge proponent of expansion or relocation; anything that would put his league into new markets. During his term as president from 1952 to 1969, the National League broke out of it’s borders not having any teams farther south or west of St. Louis. In much the same way the borders of Israel were redrawn by military conquest, the borders of baseball territory were being redrawn by Warren Giles and his quest to chase the ever-shifting American population demographics.

The first step was the two New York teams heading for California. But it was in the 1960s when the expansion of baseball really took off. At the dawn of the decade, Giles announced plans to add four teams to the National League, with two being added in 1962 and two more in 1969. The plan called for the 1962 expansion to target Texas and the South, while the 1969 additions would focus on the West and possibly even a foray into Canada.

When questioned as to why there was no thought towards establishing a new National League presence in the “Big Apple,” Giles’ notorious reply “Who says you have to have a team in New York?”

The Rise of a New Baseball State

Naturally, Giles’ comments didn’t sit well with New Yorkers.  But what baseball fans didn’t know was Giles’ visions of expansion were the direct result of the founding of a third Major League. While the Continental League never played a game, the fact that it had investors ready to move big-time baseball into cities where it did not exist yet made both the National and American leagues take notice.

Founded in 1958 by prominent attorney William Shea, the Continental Baseball League (CBL) had prominent prospective franchise owners like Bob Howsam (who would help create the American Football League and become the founder of the Denver Broncos), Wheelock Whitney, Jr. (who was influential in bringing professional sports to Minneapolis and was an owner of the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings) and Toronto’s Jack Kent Cooke (who at one time owned the NFL’s Washington Redskins, the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the NHL.). That was a formidable line-up, but the CBL acquired its gravitas when Joan Whitney Payson threw open the door of her Fort Knox-ian bank vault to fund the start-up league.

Once she knew she couldn’t stop the Giants from leaving New York, Payson immediately sold her interest and began efforts to get another team in the “Big Apple.” But once she heard Warren Giles’ comments about New York, she knew the National League president did not want to give her an expansion team.  But once she heard of the Continental Baseball League, Payson knew one way or another she was going to bring baseball back to Brooklyn and Queens.

When Warren Giles found out that Payson had just been awarded the CBL’s New York franchise, he knew he could not have somebody with her wealth and dedication to New York as a rival in the nation’s largest market. As a result, Warren Giles and the National League awarded an expansion franchise in 1960 for New York City to Joan Whitney Payson.  At this point, both her and Shea abandoned the CBL to focus on their new National League franchise. This effectively marked the end of the CBL, which formally disbanded later that year.

Many have speculated over the years that the CBL was simply a canard used by Shea and Payson to illicit an expansion franchise out of Warren Giles. True or not, the fact is they brought the National League back to New York. The rest is history.

The Legacy

The New York Mets took the field for the first time in 1962. They had a record of 40 wins and 120 losses, making them easily the worst team in all of Major League Baseball.  The wins and losses didn’t matter; what was important was baseball was back for Brooklyn and Queens. In those boroughs, there was no baseball; the hated Yankees were for Manhattan and the Bronx.  Building on that,Payson managed to merge the fan bases of the departed Dodgers and Giants in much the same manner Golda Meir unified three political parties in Israel. The Mets’ uniforms featured both Dodger blue and Giant orange, and for their first two seasons they played their home games in the Giants’ old home, the Polo Grounds.

William Shea and the stadium that would bear his name.

In 1964, the Mets moved into the newly-constructed William H. Shea Municipal Stadium, or “Shea” for short. Payson insisted the new venue bear Shea’s name in tribute for all he did to bring the Mets to New York.  As for Payson, she retained majority ownership of the Mets and functioned as the team president from it’s inception until her death in 1975.  But she was no “figurehead” in the corner office. Payson was “hands-on” for the day-to-day operations of the New York Mets every day of her life. She was a fixture in the team’s facilities and was well admired by the team’s personnel and players, and all around baseball as well.

Joan Whitney Payson was the first woman in a major North American sports league found a franchise from the ground up, to buy majority control of a team rather than inheriting it, and as such was the first to have her team capture championship when “Miracle” Mets won the World Series in 1969.

Joan Whitney Payson was there from Day One of the New York Mets, and she gambled hard with her own money to bring the dream of a new franchise in New York to reality.  Golda Meir was there from Day One with Israel, and she literally bet her own life to save her dream of an independent Jewish state. As mentioned, Payson and Meir came from very different backgrounds; Payson had money, and Golda Meir ended up on money.

But they both created something which means a great deal to a great many people to this day.

The Moral of the Story:

Even the largest of historical figures can’t make history alone. but Joan Whitney Payson and Golda Meir got pretty damn close.

FUN FACT: There was a television mini-series made in America in 1983 about the life of Anwar Sadat. He was played by Louis Gossett, Jr. and it was banned Egypt.

BONUS FUN FACT: This is not the first time Ingrid Bergman’s portrayal of Golda Meir has been mentioned on Dubsism. She was actually one of our first Sports Doppelgangers.

Check out Dubsism’s Movies and Blog-A-Thons page for a full schedule of projects past, present, and future!

Got a question, comment, or just want to yell at us? Hit us up at  [email protected], @Dubsism on Twitter, or on our Pinterest,  Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook pages, and be sure to bookmark Dubsism.com so you don’t miss anything from the most interesting independent sports blog on the web.

Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies – Volume 90: “A Woman Called Golda” Today's Movie: A Woman Called Golda Year of Release: 1982 Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Ned Beatty, Franklin Cover…

#Baseball #Classic Movies #Golda Meir #History #Movies #New York Mets #Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/todays-sports-news-what-you-need-to-know/

Today's sports news: What you need to know

Latest – Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield has said he is open to facing one-time rival Mike Tyson in a trilogy fight for charity on the condition that Tyson asks for the bout to be set up.

Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Tyson, 53, fought two epic bouts with Holyfield, 57, during their professional careers, including their controversial 1997 encounter in which Tyson bit off a chunk of Holyfield’s ear.

‘Iron Mike’ had released several training videos in recent weeks fuelling speculation he could be returning to the ring, while Holyfield announced his return for a charity bout on Instagram earlier this month.

“If I ask him it’s almost like me being a bully saying I want to go against somebody I’ve beaten twice,” Holyfield told the BBC. “I don’t want pressure on me that ‘you just want to fight Mike because you know you can beat him’.

“If he hits me I’m going to hit back. I’m going to be 58, he’ll be 54, you talk about being in good health and doing things the proper way that respects it. I don’t have no problem with it.”

Tyson, the first heavyweight to hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles, retired after a loss to Kevin McBride in 2005, while Holyfield called time on his career nine years later.

If they do return, they will be following in the footsteps of Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao in coming out of retirement for an exhibition fight.

-Reuters

England womens football called off

England’s womens football competitions, stalled by the Covid-19 crisis, have been ended with immediate effect.

Manchester City women Photo: PHOTOSPORT

The FA says the decision was taken to end the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship following “overwhelming feedback from the clubs” and to give them the chance to “prepare and focus on next season.”

Manchester City were leading the Super League by a point from Chelsea, who had a game in hand.

The FA said no decision had yet been made on how the league winner or relegation to the Women’s Championship would be decided, or how entries for the 2020-21 UEFA Women’s Champions League would be determined.

Aston Villa were six points clear at the top of the Women’s Championship.

Top-flight English football’s men’s teams were given permission to resume training in small groups last week.

-Reuters

Remembering Jesse Owens

It was 85 years ago today that American sprint legend Jesse Owens set four world records.

Described by Sports Illustrated as the “Greatest 45 minutes ever in sports” history, Owens set records in the 100 yard, 220 yard, 220 yard hurdles and long jump.

He achieved the feat running for Ohio State at a College meeting in Michigan.

His tally was in fact six world records as he also achieved metric milestones in two of the races.

A year later Owens went on to win four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

-World Athletics

Baseball returning to Japan

Pro baseball is set to return in Japan with the Nippon Professional Baseball league to begin its 2020 season on June 19, as the government lifts restrictions aimed at stopping the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Games will initially be played without spectators, NPB Commissioner Atsushi Saito announced, without saying when fans may be able to return.

The NPB season was supposed to start on March 20 but has been delayed because of the coronavirus.

New cases in Japan have decreased significantly recently and a state of emergency imposed in April to help stop the virus is gradually being lifted and professional sport is being allowed to resume.

Two Japanese teams held intra-squad practice games in empty ballparks yesterday as they gear up for a return to action.

Several of Japan’s top football clubs, including Andres Iniesta’s Vissel Kobe, also began training on Monday.

-Reuters

Indian hockey legend dies

India’s three-times Olympic hockey gold medallist Balbir Singh has died at the age of 95 after a prolonged pulmonary illness.

Singh helped India win its first Olympic gold as an independent country at the 1948 London Games when they beat Britain 4-0 in the final. India then went on to defend the title at the next two Games in Helsinki and Melbourne.

Singh scored five goals in India’s 6-1 victory over the Netherlands in the 1952 final — a record that still stands. He also captained the country at the 1956 Games when they scored 38 goals in five matches and conceded none.

Following his retirement, Singh coached the Indian team which won the World Cup in 1975.

-Reuters

Reds okay with departing team-mates

Queensland Reds players harbour no ill will towards Wallabies lock Izack Rodda and two other team mates for rebelling against pay-cuts, the Super Rugby team’s captain Liam Wright said.

Rodda, flyhalf Isaac Lucas and lock Harry Hockings were released from their contracts last week after refusing to take pay-cuts signed off by the players union and governing body amid a financial crisis brought on by the coronavirus shutdown.

The three have been criticised heavily by former players and pundits for their stance, which has effectively ended their career in Australian rugby for the foreseeable future.

Wright, however, said the trio’s departure could bring the rest of the Reds playing group closer.

“It’ll definitely be a positive for us,” Wright said.

“We’ve lost some good mates but they’ll still be our mates and they’ve made their decision. This group can only get stronger through it.

“It just makes sure that everyone who wants to be here is really willing to put in.”

Rodda missed out of the Reds captaincy to South Africa-born flanker Wright and there were reports of friction between the lock and the team’s hard-nosed coach Brad Thorn.

The three players, who are all managed by the same agent, are expected to look overseas for playing opportunities.

-Reuters

Kvitova happy to be back

Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova is happy to finally play tennis again for fans around the world – even if they can only watch on television.

Czech tennis star Petra Kvitova. Photo: Photosport/Icon Sportswire

The world number 12 will headline an all-Czech tournament in Prague starting today without spectators, handshakes or the usual towel service.

The return to action is one of the first after pro tennis tours were suspended in early March as countries went into lockdown to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Some exhibition events without fans have been held in countries like Germany and the United States while more are planned elsewhere in the coming weeks.

Kvitova last played at the Qatar Open in February where she lost in the final to Belarus’s Aryna Sabalenka. She said finding rhythm and playing without support would be the hardest part returning.

“That it will be without people is something I still can’t imagine at all,” she told a news conference on Monday.

“We will play some nice tennis… I think we are mainly here to bring tennis back not only to the Czech Republic, but to the world, too.”

The tournament, with eight players in both the men’s and women’s draw, will resemble regular tennis as much as possible.

-Reuters

Ban on cricket spit only temporary

A recommendation banning the use of saliva to shine a cricket ball when the sport resumes after the novel coronavirus shutdown is only a temporary measure, Anil Kumble, the chairman of the International Cricket Council’s Cricket Committee, said.

Cricketers have used the age-old method of shining one side of the ball with a combination of saliva and sweat to help bowlers generate more movement in the air as it travels towards the batsman.

However, as part of efforts aimed at minimizing the risk of spreading the virus, the governing body’s cricket committee has recommended the ban on using spit.

“We have been very critical and we have been very focused on eliminating any external substances coming into the game,” former India leg-spinner Kumble said on Star Sports’ Cricket Connected.

“This is only an interim measure and as long as we have hopefully control over COVID in a few months or a year’s time then I think things will go back to as normal as it can be.”

Australia quick Pat Cummins has said cricket’s lawmakers should approve the use of an artificial substance to shine the ball if the ban on saliva was enacted, while compatriot Josh Hazlewood has said it would difficult to police such a ban.

-Reuters

New Zealand to host tennis tournament

The prize-money is paltry, the field lacks star power and the tournament director is busy hammering out the draw while locked down in quarantine.

But New Zealand will be proud to revive elite tennis next week when it stages the “Premier League” in Auckland, marking the southern hemisphere’s first pro competition since the Covid-19 pandemic brought global sport to a halt.

The men’s team-based tournament will run for three weeks from June 3, giving tennis-starved fans something to watch in the absence of the pinnacle ATP and WTA tours, which have been suspended since early March.

It will also have the sporting spotlight exclusively in New Zealand for its opening 10 days, having left professional rugby’s June 13 restart in the dust.

All 112 matches will be staged without the general public in the terraces but the games will be broadcast live on Sky Sport’s Youtube channel, Sky Sport Next.

“Yeah, it’s a big thing,” Tennis New Zealand’s commercial manager Gareth Archer told Reuters.

“As soon as rugby starts there’s probably no more talk about (anything else) in New Zealand so to get a week or two on them is a good thing.”

-Reuters

#Sports

[coochiequeens]

The "2SLGBTQI" cult loves to use any marginalized community to make themselves look inclusive until someone dates to criticize them. Even if that someone is a woman and survived addiction

By Shay Woulahan November 25, 2023

A museum in London, Ontario, has removed a female powerlifter from an exhibit on resilience in apparent retaliation for her vocal opposition to males participating in women’s sports. April Hutchinson said the move quickly followed her suspension from the Canadian Powerlifting Union.

Launched in October at the Museum London, the exhibition, titled “Resilient London: Meet Your Neighbours,” was intended to be an inspiration for the community and featured a diverse panel of locals alongside obstacles they had overcome. Hutchinson was featured not just as a local athlete, but also as a survivor of addiction.

But on November 10, Hutchinson received a letter from the Executive Director of the museum saying they were removing her feature from the exhibit. They stated their reasons were due to Hutchinson’s media appearances where she commented on male athletes competing in female sports. The letter accused Hutchinson of being at odds with the values of the museum, and claimed she was “denying” the existence of “transgender women.”

Signed by the museum’s executives, the letter continued by implying her public comments went against the Ontario Human Rights code, stating: “Misgendering someone intentionally is a form of discrimination.” The letter ended by saying they had made the decision to remove her from the exhibition because her comments were harmful to the “2SLGBTQI community.”

Speaking to Reduxx about her removal from the exhibit, Hutchinson expressed anger and sadness over the decision, which she says was a sudden, decisive move. Hutchinson says museum administrators were already aware of her views prior to her inclusion in the exhibit, and had still sought her out and worked with her on developing her contribution. At the time, the board director reportedly told Hutchinson that they would not police her online activity.

“I was devastated when they told me this information. I’m still so hurt. My friends and family and tons of people came out to support me. I’m still very angry and disgusted,” Hutchinson told Reduxx.

Hutchinson notes that it was only after she was suspended from the Canadian Powerlifting Union for her outspoken stance on women’s single-sex sports that the museum decided to take the opportunity to remove her display.

“The museum is basically telling women they don’t care about us. Our safety or our sports. It’s absolutely wrong. I am standing for truth and saying the things that 99% of society thinks. I will not lie to myself. I will not play charades and I will not give in to delusional thinking.”

After the Museum London removed Hutchinson, another member of the community who was featured in the exhibit celebrated the decision on social media.

Stevie Bees, a trans-identified female, took to Facebook to praise the museum for removing Hutchinson’s contribution.

“I am EXTREMELY proud to be on that wall and I also want everyone to know that Trans Women ARE Women! April Hutchinson SHOULD be deplatformed for spouting garbage like this,” Bees said, providing screenshots showing Hutchinson discussing her suspension from powerlifting for her stance on fairness in women’s sports.

Hutchinson has been outspoken in her defense of women’s sports, both in interviews and on social media. She appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored in August of this year where she argued that males should not be allowed to compete against females in powerlifting due to their inherent biological advantages.

Hutchinson has also spoken about how she approached Canada’s powerlifting governing body, the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU), about the issue of males participating in female competitions.

During an event hosted by Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) in June of this year, Hutchinson said the CPU told her the issue wasn’t a concern because there weren’t many trans-identified males competing in female divisions.

Earlier this month, Hutchinson was suspended from competing and is now potentially facing a two-year ban from the Canadian Powerlifting Union for airing her grievances with biological males competing in women’s sports.

The suspension and potential ban follows Hutchinson voicing concerns about Anne Andres, a trans-identified male powerlifter who had bragged about beating women and labeled female competitors “weak.” Anne Andres recently set the all-time record at the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s 2023 Western Canadian Championship after scoring over 200kg more powerlifting points than the top-performing female in the same class.

Despite her removal from the exhibit and suspension from powerlifting, Hutchinson says she’s received an outpouring of support, including from other female athletes like Martina Navratilova. She also explained that her activism is motivated by a desire to ensure safety and equal opportunities for women in sports.

“Women need and deserve their own sports. The female category has always been protected,” she says.

“My platform is about fairness and women’s sports. It has nothing to do with hate or [being] anti-trans. The museum is basically sending the message that trans rights are more important than women’s rights … but women are fighting back and we will send a stronger message: Bodies play sports not identities.”

#Canada #ontario #London #April Hutchinson is just telling the truth #the Canadian Powerlifting Union #Museum London #Resilient London: Meet Your Neighbours #The 2SLGBTQI community #Deplatforming women #Stevie Bees is a man who is happy that a woman was deplatformed #Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) #Women’s sports is for women #Women’s sports is not a backup plan for mediocre males

[mideastsoccer]

Papal visit boosts UAE effort to redefine concepts of tolerance

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr

The United Arab Emirates is projecting itself as a leader of inter-communal and inter-faith harmony with the first ever visit by a Catholic pope to the Gulf and an inter-faith conference that is as much about dialogue as it is about absolute political control.

There is no doubt that the UAE is a leader in the Muslim world in promoting concepts of religious tolerance and prevention of religiously packages militancy.

The UAE has bolstered perceptions of its leadership by declaring February, the month of Pope Francis’s visit and the conference, a month of tolerance. The UAE is one of a few if not the only country that has a government ministry of tolerance.

The UAE, unlike its ally and more powerful neighbour, Saudi Arabia, increasingly allows adherents of other faiths like Jews, Christians and Hindus, to openly worship and practice their beliefs.

“Today, the UAE is home to 200 different nationalities, more than 40 churches and approximately 700 Christian ministries. Sikh and Buddhist temples welcome multinational congregations. Last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke ground for a new Hindu temple. Evangelical Christian ministries abound in the country. The Jewish community is vibrant and growing,” Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the United States, noted in an op-ed in Politico.

In hosting the pope as the star of an inter-faith dialogue organized by the UAE-sponsored Council of Elders, entitled International Interfaith Meeting on Human Fraternity in the United Arab Emirates, the UAE hopes to cement its position as the icon of Muslim tolerance.

The council is a brainchild of Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the revered 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim learning.

It groups Muslim scholars that in its words purportedly are “known for their wisdom, sense of justice, independence and moderateness…(to).,,to promote peace, to discourage infighting and to address the sources of conflict, divisiveness and fragmentation in Muslim communities”

The council is part of a broader UAE and Saudi effort that includes groups like the Global Forum for Prompting Peace in Muslim Societies and the Sawab and Hedayah Centres that aim to counter the influence of controversial, Qatar-based Islamic scholar, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood, and more political and militant Islamist forces.

The effort targets any political expression of Islam and promotes an interpretation of the faith that dictates absolute obedience to the ruler. It competes with Turkish efforts to globally promote a more activist form of Islam supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarianism and Morocco’s projection of itself as a paradigm of Islamic moderation.

Timed to coincide with the council’s meeting, Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, a former Saudi justice minister and secretary general of Saudi Arabia’s Muslim World League, once a major vehicle for the propagation of the kingdom’s intolerant ultra-conservative strand of Islam, highlighted his inter-faith outreach in an op-ed in Newsweek magazine.

“I have travelled to the Vatican to elevate interfaith understanding with His Holiness, Pope Francis. I visited the Grand Synagogue of Paris and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I welcomed the highest-level delegation of U.S. evangelical Christian leaders ever to visit Saudi Arabia… Among my proudest achievements (as justice minister) was licensing Saudi Arabia’s first women lawyers. I also reformed the Saudi judiciary system,” Mr. Al-Issa wrote.

While segments of the justice system were indeed reformed, it remains a system that equates atheism with terrorism, enables authorities to imprison people for the slightest expression of criticism and allows for an anti-corruption campaign that lacks transparency and accountability and has the appearance of a power and asset grab.

In line with ultra-conservative precepts, Mr. Al-Issa’s past track record includes denunciation of witchcraft defined as including, among other things astrology, the use of plants for medicine, palm-reading, and animal calling.

In a bid to deprive the council as well as the league of a monopoly on Muslim empathy with non-Muslim groups, Iranian-born Australian Shiite Muslim imam Mohamad Tawhid tweeted on Sunday about his visit to Auschwitz, one of Nazi Germany’s foremost extermination camps for Jews.

“I am proud to be the first ‘Shia’ Muslim Imam to pay his respects at Auschwitz,” Mr Tawhid said in a tweet hashtagged #NeverAgain and featuring a picture of himself sporting a black T-shirt with the slogan #WeRemember.

While there can be no doubt that the UAE’s example of tolerance of non-Muslim belief systems constitutes an important contribution to more harmonious inter-faith relations, there is also little question that it is part of an effort to fortify autocratic rule in the greater Middle East and cement an environment that is intolerant towards any form of criticism or dissent.

In doing so, the UAE’s advocacy of religious tolerance and political intolerance is part of a global struggle about values that underlies tectonic shifts shaping a new world order. That struggle involves a redefinition of concepts of tolerance designed to ensure autocratic regime survival and enhance ways of avoiding and/or resolving conflict without bolstering transparency, accountability and a free flow of ideas.

The dark side of the UAE’s concept of tolerance manifests itself in the country’s conduct together with Saudi Arabia of its four-year old war in Yemen, the 20-month old rift in the Gulf with Qatar, and its harsh repression of dissent and freedom of expression

In a letter to the pope, Human Rights Watch called on Pope Francis to use his visit to press the government to address “the serious human rights violations by its forces in Yemen and to end its repression of critics at home.”

The human rights group asserted that the Saudi-UAE military coalition in Yemen had “indiscriminately bombed homes, markets, and schools, impeded the delivery of humanitarian aid, and used widely banned cluster munitions. Domestically, UAE authorities have carried out a sustained assault on freedom of expression and association since 2011. And the many thousands of low-paid migrant workers in the country remain acutely vulnerable to forced labour.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East and North Africa director argued that the Pope was in a position to capitalize on the fact that the UAE is sensitive about its international image that is to a significant extent dependent on projecting itself as a cutting-edge proponent of tolerance in the Muslim world.

In a more hard-hitting comment, Islam scholar Usaama al-Azmi warned that “whether engaged in brutal wars like the one in Yemen with hundreds of thousands displaced and tens of thousands killed, or crushing dissent and political liberties at home, the UAE government is no better than its neighbour next door. Yet its savvy PR means that such matters frequently fall below the radar of international observers.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa and recently published China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom

#islam #islamic #uae #saudi arabia #saudi #yemen #yemen war #human rights #middle east

[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: Celebrating 70 years of UK-Sri Lanka friendship: Speech by H.E. James Dauris

Honourable Minister, Faiszer Mustapha, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Suba sandiawak weeva, Elorukum Vanakam, Asalam Alaikum

This evening, Helen and I, together with all of our colleagues in the High Commission and in the British Council, are honoured to have so many friends here together. Some of you have travelled a long way to be with us tonight. A special welcome to [former President Nasheed and] our other guests from Maldives, neighbour of Sri Lanka and long-standing friend of both of our countries.

I recently came across a useful bit of advice for people giving speeches. It was this: “Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.”

The Minister and I will do our best to finish speaking before you have finished listening, but we will need your cooperation. In advance, thank you.

The playwright Oscar Wilde commented: “I can resist everything except temptation”.

This evening I can resist almost everything except the temptation to tell you something about why seventy years of the relationship between Sri Lanka and the UK gives us lots of good reasons to celebrate.

1948 was not, of course, the beginning of our relationship. But with Independence came the beginning of a new chapter. Throughout the past seventy years ours is a relationship that many people have valued, invested in and cherished.

We have many reasons to celebrate today:

We are proud of our people to people links, and of the hundreds of thousands of people of Sri Lankan origin living in the UK who help to make our country as successful as it is today.

We are proud of our links through parliamentary traditions, the law and the Commonwealth. It’s a pleasure to have Members of Parliament who have recently been in London with us tonight. We were very pleased to have President Sirisena lead Sri Lanka’s delegation at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London in April.

We are proud of our flourishing educational and cultural links, a large but by no means the only part of the important work being done by the British Council in Sri Lanka, ably represented by its director, Gill Caldicott, and members of her team this evening. It’s good to lots of the many Sri Lankan organisations that make these educational and cultural faces of our relationship as successful as they are with us.

We are proud too of our links through sports. We are looking forward to having the England cricket team here (and will be hoping they fare better than did against Scotland last weekend).

We are proud of the many business links we enjoy, some of them more than a century old, others new and equally exciting.

And we are proud of the work that our High Commission does, with all the organisations we work with and the projects we fund, from supporting Sri Lanka to achieve its objective of being free of mines by 2020, to promoting inter-religious dialogues in Trincomalee and Batticaloa, from working with the Sri Lankan Police Service on tackling violence against women, to supporting Sri Lanka’s Peacebuilding Priority plan. The British government is currently providing more than £50 million of funding to development support in Sri Lanka. My special thanks to all of my colleagues on the High Commission team, without whose talent and hard work we could not do what we are doing.

Mention of the businesses that link us gives me an opportune moment to thank our five sponsors this evening for their generous support.

De La Rue – one of the world’s leading producers of secure documents, a company that manufactures here in Colombo and exports from Sri Lanka to the region.

Finlays – a company whose relationship with Sri Lanka goes back more than a hundred years. If you have had the good fortune to try one of our tea cocktails tonight it was made with Finlays’ Earl Grey tea.

HSBC – HSBC needs no real introduction. With a history spanning well over a century in Sri Lanka, they are the oldest bank in the country as well as a global ambassador for Britain’s financial services industries.

Jaguar Land Rover and their authorised local distributor, SML Frontier Automotive. This year Land Rover, one of UK industry’s most iconic brands, celebrates its 70th birthday as well as 70 years in Sri Lanka.

And Unilever, alphabetically last but by no means least – another champion of the UK’s long trading relationship with this country, in the local market since the nineteenth century and a manufacturer here for the last 80 years.

They deserve our applause.

These companies’ stories of successful investment in Sri Lanka illustrate the traditional and the modern in the business our two countries are doing together. Each of their successes tells its own tale of commitment, talent, opportunity and ambition. Theirs are exciting examples that illustrate the possibilities for doing business in Sri Lanka today, opportunities that will only grow with sensible economic reform.

As many of you will know, we don’t have a national day in the UK. But we do celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s birthday. This year we celebrate her 92nd birthday and her 66 years – two thirds of a century – on the throne. We were delighted that Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex were able to represent The Queen at the official celebration of Sri Lanka’s 70th anniversary of independence in February.

Winston Churchill, historian as much as politician, commented: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.”

It think it can equally be said that if we continue today to build on friendships founded in the past, they will be stronger still in the future in ways that benefit us all. And that is our firm ambition.

Ladies and gentlemen, can I ask you to join me in a toast:

To His Excellency, Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka and to the people of Sri Lanka.

from Announcements on GOV.UK https://ift.tt/2yS3gs4 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Announcements on GOV.UK

[wionews]

Sexual abuse in sports: The most notorious cases

Former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who has been accused of sexually assaulting more than 100 young girls, was jailed for 60 years on Thursday for child pornography charges. 

Here a look at notorious abuse cases to rock the world of sport in recent years: 

 USA GYMNASTICS 

Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor, could face life in prison when he is sentenced on sexual assault charges next month.

Nassar has been accused of molesting more than 100 female athletes during the three decades he worked with USA Gymnastics.

Olympic gold medalists McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas are among the members of the USA Gymnastics team who have said they were sexually assaulted by Nassar.

Nassar's case was part of a wide-ranging scandal which forced the resignation of USA Gymnastics chief Steve Penny in March. Penny was accused by victims of failing to quickly notify authorities about abuse allegations.

USA Gymnastics adopted a new "safe sport policy" in response to the Nassar scandal that requires "mandatory reporting" of suspicions of sexual abuse.

A civil lawsuit has been filed on behalf of about 100 of Nassar's victims. Their attorney, John Manly, estimated that the total number could be as high as 160.

ENGLISH FOOTBALL 

English sport has been rocked by a wave of allegations of sex abuse, mostly affecting football.

According to figures released in July by the National Police Chiefs Council, 741 victims have come forward to detail allegations against some 276 figures according to information obtained in Britain's inquiry into child sexual abuse named Operation Hydrant.

Football is at the centre of the investigation, with some 328 clubs from Premier League to the amateur level being investigated.

Several ex-professional players have come forward publicly to allege abuse at the hands of youth coaches after Andy Woodward revealed last November he was abused by a convicted child molester at Crewe Alexandra.

English football's governing body, the Football Association (FA), is also carrying out an independent review into its handling of abuse allegations in the years before 2005.

Although football is the main focus of the British probe, other sports have been implicated in 27 referrals.

These include basketball, rugby, gymnastics, martial arts, tennis, wrestling, golf, sailing, athletics, cricket, and swimming.

USA SWIMMING 

 USA Swimming was engulfed in scandal in 2010 when a television news investigation revealed myriad cases of sexual misconduct of various forms by coaches.

Cases uncovered included Andy King, a coach who was sentenced to 40 years in prison after authorities discovered a pattern of sexual abuse that stretched over three decades at clubs up and down the West Coast and involved more than a dozen teenaged female victims -- one of whom said she had an abortion after he got her pregnant when she was 14.

Another case involved a coach who installed a secret camera to film young women swimmers showering.

While more than 100 coaches were eventually banned for life from working for USA Swimming-affiliated clubs, the federation was blasted for an inadequate response to complaints that in some cases allowed coaches to evade their accusers and authorities, moving to new cities and gaining coaching jobs at new clubs where they continued the predatory behavior.

King, who was sentenced in 2010, had passed a USA Swimming background screening in 2008.

PENN STATE SCANDAL 

The world of college American football was rocked in 2011 when Pennsylvania State University assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted on dozens of counts of child molestation.

Sandusky, who coached one of America's most illustrious college football teams, recruited his young victims through a charity he founded for troubled youths.

The case scandalized the United States and tarnished the legacy of the university.

It led to the sacking of Penn State's legendary head coach Joe Paterno, a national icon, just weeks before his unexpected death from lung cancer in January 2012 at the age of 85.

Paterno was fired for failing to notify authorities when he was told Sandusky had been seen molesting a boy in the shower. The university's president, Graham Spanier, was also sacked.

Sandusky was given a 30 to 60 year prison sentence after being convicted in 2012 of 45 counts of abuse relating to 10 boys.

Penn State later paid out $60 million in settlements to 26 victims abused by Sandusky. Although his crimes related to a period between 1994 and 2009, prosecutors suspect his abuse may have begun in the 1970s.

]]>

[coochiequeens]

A transgender swimmer at a New Jersey college has ignited controversy after she broke a women’s school record last weekend after three years competing on the men’s team.

Meghan Cortez-Fields, a senior at Ramapo College of New Jersey, set the new record and took home first place in the 100-yard butterfly at a meet in Pennsylvania last Saturday.

Her time of 57.22 was 0.68 seconds faster than the previous record set in 2017, the school’s latest figures show.

Cortez-Fields, who hails from College Station, Texas, also won the 200-yard individual medley at the Cougar Splash hosted by Misericordia University.

The school initially celebrated her new record in a congratulatory Instagram post, but swiftly deleted it after critics started slamming Cortez-Fields’ win — specifically pointing to how she had only joined the women’s team this season.

Former collegiate swimmer-turned-activist, Riley Gaines, was among those to lead the outrage, posting on X that Cortez-Fields had gone from a “less than mediocre male swimmer to a record smasher competing against the women.”

“Those who choose to remain blind to the injustice of allowing mediocre male athletes to become record-breaking female athletes are either incompetent or misogynists. There is no in between anymore,” Gaines added in an interview with Fox News.

“The incident at Ramapo College shouldn’t be a shock to anyone considering we’ve seen virtually the same story time and time again with no people in leadership positions willing to take a stand for women.”

The Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) also chimed in on X, accusing Cortez-Fields of having “erased a woman’s name from the record books.”

Ramapo College, however, defended Cortez-Fields, saying the school follows NCAA policies and that it “supports all of our student athletes.”

“There are strict measures that the NCAA makes trans athletes go through. You have to meet certain criteria to show that you are able to, as a trans athlete, compete with women,” a spokeswoman said.

“We are an affiliate member of the NCAA. We are in compliance. We have done everything the NCAA says needs to be done regarding trans athletes competing on the team. All of the steps were taken, and documentation was provided for approval of Meghan’s participation.”

The school said the original Instagram post was deleted by a student “who wanted to protect their teammate from insulting comments.”

“We remain concerned about the vitriol that we have seen on social media and the threats of violence against some college members. We are going to continue to post all of our team and individual athlete’s student achievements for all of our athletics programs, as we always do,” the spokeswoman added.

The backlash against Ramapo’s swimmer comes after the University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas ignited a firestorm last year after she started winning meets after competing for three years on the men’s squad.

#usa #New Jersey #Ramapo college #Women's sports are for women #Women's sports are not a back up plan for mediocre males #Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS)

[coochiequeens]

Reduxx is focusing on his biological sex, which considering that water pollution is a very physical sport is a valid concern. But the dude is 31. This dude is over 10 years older than most of his teammates and competitors. Amd how many years of of not only athletic activity withnunaltered testosterone.

By Amy Hamm April 30, 2024

A trans-identified male is set to compete in a national women’s water polo championship this weekend, shortly after becoming a women’s chess champion in Michigan. Alicia, formerly Johnny, Paans, is a star member of the University of Michigan’s Women’s Water Polo club team.

Paans, 31, is expected to appear at the 2024 National Collegiate Water Polo Championships (CWPA), which will be held from May 3 to 5 at Texas A&M University. The competition includes 16 US-based teams vying for the women’s national title in their sport. Paans’ first game will be against Texas State University on May 3 at 9:00 GMT. 

Paans is expected to compete on the University of Michigan’s Women’s Club Water Polo team. The club’s official Instagram account recently named Paans as “player of the week,” boasting that he is also a state chess champion in the women’s category, having won second place at the Michigan Chess Association women’s open in 2022.

Paans also competed on the University of Michigan team in 2023, during which time they won the national women’s title against the University of California-Santa Barbara. In the same competition, Paans was noted to have scored goals in a 17 to 5 defeat against the University of Virginia, and in a 17 to 6 defeat against the University of Washington.

Outside of the sporting world, Paans has a history of involving himself in women’s issues, including volunteering as a counselor at a “hotline specialized in topics relating to female health and pregnancy.”

While it is unclear when Paans began to identify as a “woman,” a 2013 Facebook post reveals that friends still referred to him by his birth name while congratulating him for beginning his secondary education in his home nation of the Netherlands. Paans appears to have immigrated from Europe to California in 2017 when he began an internship for Volo San Diego — a social sports club — and has remained in the country for education ever since. In 2023, he began a social work degree at the University of Michigan.

According to the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), the parents of Paans’ opponents have confirmed that he uses the female locker rooms and facilities when he competes.

Speaking to Reduxx, Jennifer, the mother of a female NCAA water polo athlete who participated in the 2023 national championship with Paans, explained it had been “obvious” that Paans was male from the moment she had seen him. Jennifer’s full name is being withheld for the protection of her daughter.

“My husband and I saw him first, standing aside the pool before [University of Michigan’s] first game. We looked at each other in surprise, and immediately knew it was a man,” she says, adding: “I observed Alicia quite a bit over the tournament, partly out of concern for the women, and also wondering how his teammates acted around him.”

Jennifer says she had been distressed by the thought that her daughter might have been forced to participate against a male, and was “relieved” when the match-up did not come to fruition.

“None of these women were initially aware a man had been allowed to play,” Jennifer noted. “Many of the player’s on my daughter’s team were almost in shock at the situation, and spoke to one another about discomfort with it. But to my knowledge, no one spoke to the organizers of the tournament. They felt that nothing would be done given that it was allowed based on [CWPA] policy.”

In January of 2024, the CWPA released a transgender athlete policy which explicitly allowed males to compete in women’s categories. The policy reads: “Transgender athletes who identify as female are eligible to compete in both the Co-ed League and the Women’s League.”

Trans identified males are also required to provide a “letter of confirmation” regarding their gender identity, either from the athlete or, if underage, a parent or guardian; proof of testosterone levels below 10 nmol/L within 60 days of competition; and a physician’s note to prove that the athlete is starting “physical gender transitioning/testosterone suppression.” The association purports to ensure “fairness, respect, and equal opportunities for all.”

The policy has been slammed by ICONS as a “pathway for men” to enter women’s water polo.

In an official statement, ICONS condemned the CWPA, highlighting the safety risks associated with allowing males to self-identify into contact sports.

“The Collegiate Water Polo Association has made it clear in their policy that they do not prioritize safe or fair competition for women in water polo,” said ICONS co-founder Marshi Smith. “Their discriminatory policy announcement came after they had crowned the University of Michigan team with a national title, despite utilizing a male player – a secret weapon not accessible to other women’s teams in the tournament.”

Smith continues that despite water polo being a high-contact sport, female athletes were thrown into the water with no disclosure of the added risks of competing against a male.

“This year’s national championships are shaping up to be a tragic deja vu of domination for the female opponents who simply seek a fair chance to succeed.”

Most U-M students fall into the 18-19 age-range. Student age diversity is considered average

How physical is water polo?

A: Very. As said before, water polo is a full-contact sport. This means that players are nearly always in contact with one another. In order to defend an offensive player, the defender keeps at least one hand on their player at all times. Players jostle each other the water in order to get control of the ball. Pushes and kicks, while not strictly legal in all situations, are common.

However, the physicality of the game is controlled by the referees. Kicking off of other players as well as holding or pushing them under water is against the rules.

#University of Michigan’s Women’s Water Polo club #usa #Title IX #Did he wait until he was done developing as a male to transition? #He's a dude and 31 competing against college abed women

[coochiequeens]

In its official FAQ on the topic of transgender cyclists, the Cup notes that “discrimination or harassment of any kind on the basis of race, color, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identification, national origin, or any other stupid idea someone comes up with to belittle another racer will not be tolerated at [our] events and may result in disqualification.” Meaning men will win money ment for women and if the women complain they will be the ones disqualified

By Reduxx Team October 9, 2023

Two trans-identified males dominated women’s competitions at the Chicago CycloCross Cup yesterday, leading many women’s rights advocates to condemn the tournament for allowing men to self-identify into the women’s categories.

The CycloCross Cup was held at Jackson Park in Chicago, Illinois from October 7 to 8, and comprised of over one dozen different competitions for men, women, and junior athletes. But two trans-identified males topped the podium in two different competitions, taking home medals and, in one event, prize money.

In the Women’s SingleSpeed and Category 1/2 races, trans-identified male Tessa Johnson took first place. The Category 1/2 competition also came with $150 in prize money.

But Johnson wasn’t the only male on the podium in the Women’s SingleSpeed, with Evelyn Williamson taking silver in the competition. The result means that only one biological female, Allison Zmuda, was on the podium for that race, placing third for bronze.

Williamson also participated in the Women’s Category 1/2 race, placing fourth and winning $75 in prize money.

According to the Chicago CrossCup’s website, the competition prides itself on “first and foremost fostering a positive & supportive community built around competitive cyclocross racing,” continuing: “That means welcoming and challenging everyone who wants to contribute to the series and make it better in that regard.”

In its official FAQ on the topic of transgender cyclists, the Cup notes that “discrimination or harassment of any kind on the basis of race, color, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identification, national origin, or any other stupid idea someone comes up with to belittle another racer will not be tolerated at [our] events and may result in disqualification.”

On X (formerly Twitter), news of Johnson and Williamson’s victories was shared by user @i_heart_bikes, an anonymous female cyclist who frequently calls out males self-identifying as “women” in the sport. In response, many women’s rights advocates and sports enthusiasts condemned the competition for allowing the men to participate.

“What impressive men who can beat women with their testosterone,” one user said sarcastically.

“Male athletic advantage exists. It doesn’t belong in the protected category of women’s sports. More importantly, it is not the responsibility of any female athlete in any level of any sport to validate or affirm the identity of men. Ever,” Jess Kruchoski replied.

“Pathetic failed men proud of winning prizes meant for women. Total failures both of them,” user @crusepat wrote.

Speaking to Reduxx on the results of the Chicago CycloCross Cup (CCC), a spokeswoman from ICONS condemned the competition for not prioritizing fairness towards female athletes.

“The CCC states that discrimination will not be tolerated; however, they fail to recognize that by allowing advantaged male athletes to take podium awards in women’s races, they are blatantly discriminating against half the population,” she said.

ICONS, or the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, is a campaign group dedicated to defending the rights of female athletes to single-sex sport and has vocally advocated against policies which allow males to self-identify into women’s athletic categories.

Referencing the CCC’s FAQ on trans athletes, the ICONS representative points out a particular passage in which those who have an issue with gender self-identification are told they shouldn’t participate.

“If you are at a CCC event you are here to race your bike hard (or cheer on someone else who is), have a good time, and you are welcome as part of this big, goofy, oddball family … If you can’t do that without trivializing someone because they are different than you, then just stay home and enjoy the game on TV,” the FAQ reads.

The ICONS spokeswoman takes issue with the framing, and labels it misogynistic.

“Presenting old-fashioned misogyny as something their ‘goofy, oddball family’ does to ‘have a good time’ is insulting to female riders who suffer profound harm from being told that their accomplishments don’t matter, and they must take a backseat to the preferences of men,” she says.

Both Johnson and Williamson have been racing in women’s cycling for years, with Williamson collecting 18 first place titles in races across the country since 2017. 

In September, Reduxx reported that Johnson and Williamson competed as a team in two separate women’s races in Illinois, taking first place in both of them. During one of the competitions, Williamson and Johnson competed under the team name “TS-ESTRODOLLS,” a reference to cross-sex hormones.

Johnson and Williamson celebrated their initial first place win on August 27 after their victory at the xXx Racing-Athletic Relay Cross in Chicago. The two men surpassed nine pairs of women for first place.

Just days later on August 31, Johnson and Williamson beat out two teams of women at the Ed Rudolph Velodrome during the State Championship in Madison.

Williamson is reportedly in a polyamorous relationship with Austin Killips, another trans-identified male cyclist who has become notorious for his frequent participation in women’s competitions. Killips has similarly taken several first place wins in women’s categories and has forced at least one woman out of the sport after targeting her with physical aggression during a race.

UPDATE 10/9/2023: This article has been updated to include comment from the Independent Council on Women’s Sports.

#Save Women’s Sports Saturday #Chicago CycloCross Cup #SheWon #usa #illinois #Chicago #Jackson Park #Women’s SingleSpeed #Men taking prize money earmarked for women #Congratulations to Allidon Zmuda for being the first place woman

[coochiequeens]

This is the second story from Canada and I'm still on my first cup of coffee

ByReduxx Team July 27, 2023

On June 23, reports began to circulate that a male player who identifies as “non-binary” was removed from a women’s rugby match after he allegedly injured female competitors. Before he was removed from the game, three women had to stop playing and receive medical treatment due to the injuries they sustained while playing against him.

The information was first shared by Diana Murphy on Twitter, who emphasized in her thread on the matter that the three female players injured were injured as a result of being dump tackled. Murphy identifies herself in her account bio as a photographer for former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

The match where the incident reportedly took place was between the senior women’s divisions of the Fergus Highland RFC and the Stoney Creek Camels on June 17.

Much of the subsequent coverage of the viral thread did not identify the male player involved in the incident, with some outlets only referring to him simply as “Ash.”

The identity of the man involved in the incident has now been confirmed as Ash Davis, who previously played in the men’s division of the club and had been awarded the “hardest hitter” designation during the Senior Awards Banquet just last year.

According to a source within the rugby club, there has been “much opposition” to Davis’ participation in the women’s category, but club members are concerned about speaking up out of “fear of being labeled transphobic.”

The source also explained that “many people have known Ash for years, making it more sensitive.”

Davis participated in the Senior Women’s category of the club as recently as 4 days ago.

Speaking to Reduxx on Davis’ participation in the women’s category, Marshi Smith, the co-founder of Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), slammed the rugby club for not prioritizing the safety of the female players.

“Young women are being forced to jeopardize their physical safety to satisfy the desires of a man, Ash Davis, in Canadian rugby,” Smith said.

“Despite opposition within the rugby club, leaders like club President Jane Kirby are willing to risk the health and safety of young female players, prioritizing men’s preferences over ethical concerns and the potential for life-threatening injuries or death. This policy of sacrificing girls and women’s well-being for men’s eligibility preferences is unethical and perilous.”

ICONS has been tracking the participation of male athletes in women’s sporting competitions on an international level, and recently held a summit on the topic of protecting women’s single-sex sport featuring multiple displaced female athletes. Amongst the speakers was Riley Gaines, a University of Kentucky graduate and accomplished All American swimmer who once shared a podium with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

The sport of rugby in Canada is governed by Rugby Canada, which adopted an explicit “trans inclusion” policy in 2019.

According to their guidebook, rugby players in Canada “should be able to participate as the gender with which they identify and not be subject to requirements for disclosure of personal information beyond those required of cisgender athletes.”

The policy states that there is no requirement for a player to demonstrate they are medically or surgically transitioning prior to playing on the team of their choice.

Canada currently stands as an outlier, as many international rugby bodies have chosen to exclude biological males from women’s categories due to the highly physical nature of the sport.

As previously reported by Reduxx, England’s Rugby Football Union (RFU) announced revisions to their “gender participation policy” last year, excluding anyone “recorded male at birth” from participating in female contact rugby.

The RFU’s change in policy faced much scrutiny after one man who goes by the name Julie-Anne Curtiss was interviewed by ESPN UK, where he announced that he would be suing the RFU due to their ban on male players in the female category. 

In a video that was widely shared after this year’s interview, Curtiss can be seen towering over much younger female athletes. He stated that critics who oppose male players in sports for women and girls “need to be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary,” until policies favoring gender identity over biological sex are implemented.

The Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) followed RFU’s lead earlier this year and banned males from competing in women’s contact rugby and citing the safety of female players.

“Our Gender Participation Policy recognises the need to balance considerations of safety and fairness with our underlying desire to be as inclusive as possible. At this moment in time, Scottish Rugby has opted to make a decision which puts safety first, based on the current research,” the Union said in a statement regarding their decision.

#Canada #Women's sports are for women #Ash Davis

[coochiequeens]

If Drageset’s verbal commitment is finalized, it will result in a male seizing one of just twelve D1 scholarships intended for women’s volleyball at the University of Washington. The twelve scholarships are often spread out over the course of four years, with as few as two to three being offered per year."

He's OK with taking a full scholarship ment for a woman and women who object are told to "be kind". Kindness goes both ways, as in not taking scholarships and opportunities ment for others.

By Anna Slatz December 13, 2023

Reduxx has learned that a volleyball player from California is reportedly set to become the first known male recipient of a women’s Division 1 (D1) athletic scholarship. Tate Drageset, 17, has verbally committed to the University of Washington, and, if the offer is signed next fall, he would be seizing one of only twelve D1 volleyball scholarships available for females at the University.

The announcement of Drageset’s verbal commitment to the University of Washington was made in June to much fanfare within the volleyball community, with multiple sporting magazines and social media accounts covering the verbal commitment.

Drageset has long been considered a rising star within women’s volleyball, and he was the dominant force on two USA Volleyball teams in two separate age groups that both claimed national titles last summer. He was also named an MVP at the Girls Junior National Championships earlier this year. In addition to his club volleyball accolades, he was awarded the title of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Division 5 Player of the 2022-23 Year.

But Drageset’s transgender status has reportedly been concealed from public knowledge, with coaches, parents, and opposing players being left uninformed of his biological sex ahead of games.

Now, for the first time, a source close to the situation has anonymously come forward to reveal concerns about the steady escalation of Drageset’s participation in women’s volleyball, something which has now resulted in him preparing to take a rare, all-expenses-paid athletic scholarship opportunity

If Drageset’s verbal commitment is finalized, it will result in a male seizing one of just twelve D1 scholarships intended for women’s volleyball at the University of Washington. The twelve scholarships are often spread out over the course of four years, with as few as two to three being offered per year.

The source, who is the parent of a minor player within the Southern California Volleyball Association (SCVA) community, said suspicions were raised years ago when Drageset’s performance far surpassed that of his teammates. At the time, Drageset was 12-years-old but was playing against 14-year-old females in one effort to make up for his obvious advantages.

“You could tell even back then that he was different from the girls,” the parent says. “As he got older, it became more obvious that something was off. Anytime the subject of [Drageset] would come up EVERY PARENT from any SCVA team already knew about him. Parents look around before they speak in hushed tones. Some will wait to discuss until outside the gym.”

The parent revealed that most families have been hesitant to speak out due to fears that their daughters will be penalized.

“Everyone is scared of how their child will be treated if they speak up. It’s already so competitive to get on a good club team,” the parent said. “The stealing of positions and opportunities has been infuriating and so sad when you see how it affects the girls. There is no concern for their mental health or safety after being replaced.”

Speaking to Reduxx, representatives from the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) noted that a number of local families have become aware of Drageset’s participation in women’s volleyball, but that there had been silence from his family, who appears to be actively obscuring his status.

“We know many of the girls he’s playing against do not know that they are competing against a male. There has been no consideration from his family to tell female athletes or coaches the truth. They have not been transparent, so girls are repeatedly and unknowingly put at a disadvantage and not given the chance to opt out over increased safety risks,” Marshi Smith said.

Her colleague, Kim Jones, added: “We also know that many local families do know and they are angry that their daughters are continuously put in a position to lose to a male player in girls’ sports. They recognize it is unfair and potentially unsafe as more instances of concussion injuries inflicted by male athletes arise.”

ICONS, a non-partisan campaign group, was launched in 2021 to address the issue of male self-identification into women’s sport, with co-founders Smith and Jones both being former National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes. Jones’ daughter was also one of the female swimmers forced to compete against transgender athlete Lia Thomas.

While Drageset’s transgender status appears to have been carefully concealed by his family in recent years, his mother, Stacey Drageset, reportedly commissioned a short film to be made about Tate in 2016. Titled “Trans-mission.love,” the documentary-style film was produced when Drageset was 12-years-old. While his face is not shown in the film, Drageset can be seen holding a volleyball with his first name on it, and playing volleyball on the beach in sections from the trailer.

Around the same time, Drageset’s mother took his story to the Los Angeles Times, where she revealed that she became convinced her son was transgender due to his preference for “feminine” clothing and colors as a toddler. In the article, Drageset’s parents state that they showed him an interview with Jazz Jennings at age 6 and felt their son “related” to Jennings.

Curiously, the year before Drageset’s family began touting his journey as a “trans kid,” his mother published a children’s picture book on gender identity, one which was recently named in during inquiry into age-appropriate books in Texas schools.

While identifying as a “girl,” Drageset’s athletic performance has been far and above that of his female colleagues and competitors. Earlier this year, he took home a silver medal and $2,000 prize while competing against mature professional female volleyball players at the Teqvoly World Tour.

When compared to same-height female athletes within his volleyball club, Drageset’s standing reach, vertical jump, and other key physical metrics are all more favorable, something ICONS says is unsurprising even if Drageset had been placed on “puberty blockers” at a young age.

“No male is ever going to go through female development. Their bodies are not comparable in thousands of ways. Puberty blockers do not remove predicted adult height and males have a 5 or 6 inch advantage that influences athletic performance particularly in sports like volleyball,” Kim Jones said, pointing to a literature review completed by Drs. Gregory Brown and Tommy Lundberg.

The review, released earlier this year, stated that “the current evidence suggests that male children retain sex-based advantages in body height and lean body mass which may allow for retained male athletic advantages” even when placed on hormones or puberty blockers at an early age.

Jones also points to the fact that the net in women’s volleyball is set over 7 inches lower than in men’s, not just because men on average are six inches taller, but because the male vertical jump is at least 20% higher than that of a woman of the same height.

The ICONS representatives place much of the blame on the NCAA, the governing body which regulates collegiate athletics in the United States. Following the Lia Thomas controversy in 2022, the NCAA attempted to clarify its position on transgender athletes, but just sowed more confusion amongst critics.

“Right now, the NCAA guidelines and the upcoming Biden Administration’s Title IX reinterpretations incentivize male athletes and their families to hide their sex from women and girls,” Marshi Smith says, noting that the NCAA largely does not question any athlete’s biological sex, or allow for such interrogations to occur under “discrimination” policies. She likens it to “showing someone a pile of treasure” and then leaving it unguarded, as the NCAA provides substantial financial and professional incentives for athletes.

“We’re facing a situation where women aren’t even allowed to know if they’re putting themselves at increased safety risk. It’s as if men are allowed to do what they want to women so long as they can get away with it. The message to teams across the country is that if men excel at deception or if the NCAA effectively silences women, men are allowed to compromise women’s safety, dignity, and privacy.”

Smith adds: “The only solution to provide women with fair and safe sport is to have a female-protected category with no exceptions.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article mistakenly attributed a study on trans-identified male participation in women’s sport to Byron Wolter of the Center on Sport Policy and Conduct. Mr. Wolter provided editing, but the article was written by Dr. Gregory Brown of the University of Nebraska-Kearney and Dr. Tommy Lundberg of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The article has been updated to reflect the correction.

#usa #Tate Drageset is a man taking a scholarship earmarked for women #University of Washington #A male was an MVP at the Girls Junior National Championships #the California Interscholastic Federation’s Division 5 Player of the 2022-23 Year #Censoring girls and their parents for calling a male a male #Trans-mission.love #Male aligned mothers #Men taking prize money away from women #Stacey Drageset wrote a children's book about gender identity before her son came out #Puberty blockers do not remove predicted adult height #the net in women’s volleyball is set over 7 inches lower than in men’s #not just because men on average are six inches taller #the male vertical jump is at least 20% higher than that of a woman of the same height.