Not only are they letting Brooke Slusser misgender her teammate in the paper of record, they’ve made it A PHOTO CAPTION. Her teammate *is not a man*, she’s a trans woman.
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I completely agree with everything you’ve written about this article and the Times but does it matter that she is quoting Slusser? So while it is obviously completely offensive, wouldn’t it be bad journalism to not include it as a quote?
If you include it, there should be a followup clarifying that trans women are not men. That would be good journalism—clearing up factual inaccuracies. And calling a trans woman a man is a factual inaccuracy
Absolutely agree on this point. It is extremely damaging to parrot 🦜 or quote someone who is engaged in a lawsuit - clearly making factually inaccurate claims as to defame an individual and harm their reputation. It is appalling they didn’t provide context to this quote.
Slusser just got an endorsement from anti-trans sports apparel company XX-XY Athletics. She now joins other female collegiate athletes such as Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan, who use their transphobia as the default excuse for personal failures, as well as social media fame.
Scarlett Jenkinson, from the UK, was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 22 years for the murder of the 16-year-old transgender teen.
VICTIM STABBED 28 TIMES....
The NYT quotes SJSU’s assistant coach saying that the trans woman on the team jumps higher & hits harder than the cis women she plays against—but doesn’t check to see if that’s true (it’s not—the screenshot on the right is ESPN’s reporting from earlier this week disproving those claims.
I was just coming to say that their coaches must be fully insupport of and condoning the transphobia, because to sue a teammate and harass her like this is just so unsportsmanlike
This is so fascinating and horrifying to me because every time I’m reminded that transphobes want us to discuss their delusions as if it’s reality and awnser on their terms. It’s fucking crazy.
As a trans woman, this is “give an inch, take a mile” with giving into conspiracy theories with conservatives. Push back and they’ll stop. Not enough people do that as much as they should.
My understanding is that it's part optical illusion, part learnable skill. The body's center of mass goes in a parabola, but the head is pulled down as the body goes up at the top so that the eye level stays at a constant height, which can give the player more time to make decisions.
"Hang time" is absolutely a thing sports people talk about as being a skill/attribute of specific athletes. As with "clutchness" and "the hot hand," the fact at it does not exist has not stopped them.
What if the trans girl is the shortest on the team? The lowest scoring player? Has to deal with medical issues her teammates don't? Has less testosterone?
CIS women are now being attacked for having masculine qualities. Some people are born with physical advantages. That's life.
The average speed of 50mph seems to match what the average is for professional women's players. No idea how college athletes compare to professionals, though.
Also, I typically am a huge fan of Juliet Macur’s work and think she’s an excellent journalist. The failures of this story speak to the editorial tack on reporting about trans issues rather than directly to the reporter in this case, imo. The issues are consistent across sections of the paper.
She's absolutely not an excellent journalist - or even a remotely ethical one - if she wrote this. Like I get the overall direction's coming from the higher-ups, but the reporters bear the blame here too.
While I agree that the editorial slant in this piece can’t be ignored, it seems too charitable to exculpate the author. The product was hers and she allowed her name to be put in it. She needs to own it as well.
Juliet Macur USED to be good. That's the takeaway here. She's caved to her Nazi owners. That is all.
Doesn't matter; I've kicked the Vichy Times to the curb, period. Never again.
They also just flat out quote defamatory “he’s a man” — which is easily legally disproven. Both articles should clarify for readers and settle the fact that the player is regarded as female by the law and that is not up for debate. It really pisses me off!
I’ll be doing a full breakdown of the issues with this article in my newsletter tomorrow. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox: https://thefrankiedlc.news
Transphobia and female athletics is fascinating. After Katie Ledecky, Imane Kehlif and a few other biological females were accused of being trans, it appears that that gender wasn't the problem, so much as women not looking feminine enough to fulfil conservative guidelines for physical appearance.
In her recent book, Britney Griner wrote about having security called on her in a US airport because she was using the women's restroom. Funny how none of the "fairness in women's sports!" crowd ever came to her defense.
Performative femininity is expensive. The hair, makeup, nails, clothes, etc., keep women broke and keep the beauty industry profitable. Telling women strength is ugly is another thing keeping women down. Riley Gaines didn’t complain about the 4 cis women who beat her. It was never about sports.
Cuz it's all rooted in misogyny and people setting their own boundaries on femininity for others. It's all a grift to take away bodily autonomy from women of all kinds. It's no coincidence that here in the US this massive spike in transphobia came hand-in-hand with losing reproductive rights.
If she is not even in the top 150 women players in the Mountain West division, how can it be argued that because she is transgender she has an unfair advantage over cis women?
The argument, I think, is something like "if she hadn't transitioned, she wouldn't be in the top 200 men." (Her performance relative to her peers is higher than it would be if she hadn't transitioned.) But really, at heart, it is a refusal to accept a transitioned woman as a woman.
This seems to be how these things go. For example, the transgender weightlifter who… came last in her Olympic category. The runner who didn’t medal at the Paralympics. The swimmer whose best time was seconds slower than a cis woman. The claims of advantage don’t add up.
Here are SJSU’s stats against UNM. She led in kills and aces (they went four games) but not significantly. She *does* get set a lot—but she SHOULD; she’s their main outside hitter. Also, some of her kills were dumps.
Also, the fact that it's always referred to as an unfair advantage means that these bigots know that there are always going to be players with advantages. Those are deemed fair, though. The only difference is bigotry
She is just trying to live her best life. These scumbags don't care about women's/girls sports or women/girls rights at all. Transphobia plays well with Orange's base. That's it. And in the meantime they're systematically trying to take down public and higher education. It's the 50s all over again.
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VICTIM STABBED 28 TIMES....
“Mindy’s opponents claim that she can flip over cars, fell a tree with a single swing, and even that she once drank 156 beers in a sitting”.
I guess partly it's a function of vertical leap, but there's also a lot of magical thinking.
CIS women are now being attacked for having masculine qualities. Some people are born with physical advantages. That's life.
The average speed of 50mph seems to match what the average is for professional women's players. No idea how college athletes compare to professionals, though.
https://olympics.com/en/news/volleyball-most-asked-questions-womens-volleyball
"Excellent journalist" and "writes anti-trans hit pieces" don't go together, for me.
Doesn't matter; I've kicked the Vichy Times to the curb, period. Never again.
She chose evil.
The Russians started the story AGAINST Imane Khelif because she beat their boxer and they were mad.
What became ironic was Martina Navratilova jumping on the anti-Trans wagon when her own former Wimbledon coach, Renee Richards is trans.
Only kind of fun, though
like, exactly the face i was expecting