Losing My Perspicacity June 14, 2024

Good Morning and Happy Free Friday! I hope it’s nice and cool and dry wherever you are, as we’re getting some awfully August-y weather here in Chicagoland for Mid-June. There’s a lot of great sports on TV this weekend, including the US Open, The US Gymnastics Olympic Trials, and an Angel Reese-Caitlin Clark rookie rematch on Sunday. So if the weather isn’t cooperating where you are, there’s not much you can do to avoid watching sports, right? And don’t forget: Bridgerton, S3, Part II is out, and House of the Dragon is back on Sunday.

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Today, Lia Thomas is denied the chance to compete at an elite level, we might finally get the Joey Chestnut/Kobayashi showdown we’ve all dreamed of, I’d like the men to go back to not watching the WNBA, and bad news for Title IX in at least one state.

Here we go.

Lia Thomas loses challenge to swimming’s gender policy

Former NCAA swimmer Lia Thomas, who has become the poster girl for the ban on trans women competing in college sports, lost her challenge to World Aquatics’ 2022 gender policy. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) denied Thomas’ claim on the grounds that she lacked standing under Swiss Law. World Aquatics gender policy only allows trans women to compete in women’s events if they transitioned before the age of 12 or the onset of puberty.

It’s important to note that CAS did not rule on the legitimacy of swimming’s trans ban, only that Thomas, who was not enrolled in any international competitions governed by World Aquatics, was not the correct person to challenge the rule. But by not allowing Thomas to challenge the rule on its merits, she is effectively left with no legal outlet to move forward.

Athlete Ally, an organization that champions LGBTQ+ inclusivity in sports, called the decision “deeply disappointing:”

As I wrote earlier this week, this case is getting a lot more press from the “protect women’s sports crowd” than NCAA Champion Kensey McMahon getting caught doping and banned from competition for four years is. McMahon was found to have intentionally taken a drug that was illegal in the US at the time and has always been banned by the World Anti-Doping Code. Thomas abided by NCAA rules, competing on the men’s team at Penn before qualifying for the women’s team based on hormone therapy requirements.

While there’s been a lot of handwringing about trans women competing in women’s sports, mostly from a group of white men who never gave a rat’s ass about women’s sports before they could use them against trans people, a 2024 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that trans women are actually at a physical disadvantage in certain areas.

Specifically, the study found, in part:

Understandably, this information throws a big wrench in the “any man can beat any woman at any given time” line that anti-trans activists love to trot out, but it’s clear that 1) that’s just not true (Thomas won one NCAA race and finished fifth in another, and didn’t break a single NCAA record, and I’d confidently put Katie Ledecky up against a lot of male swimmers and feel confident she could win); and 2) trans women who are undergoing hormone therapy are not biological men by any definition of the term. (But let’s be clear, trans women are women, and dead-naming and misgendering a trans person is always a shitty thing to do, even if they aren’t undergoing hormone therapy.)

I am firmly against keeping trans women out of sports at any level, but if I were going to agree that there’s one place where even the tiniest physical advantage could make or break a race, it would be in Olympic-level events. After all, we’re literally talking about fractions of a second in swimming races. But it’s become very clear in recent months that whether or not trans women have an advantage over cis women is far more complicated than “A man will always beat a woman at sports!” trope, If I had to guess, I’d bet money that whatever advantages and disadvantages transitioning to a woman bestows on a competitor, they pretty much even out.

It’s worth remembering that a big part of the reason a guy like Michael Phelps had such success in the pool is because he, too, was given certain advantages at birth that his competitors were not. Phelps is double jointed, which gives him an advantage when it comes to his kick, his wingspan is disproportionately large for his body, he reportedly produces just half the lactic acid of other swimmers. All of these sound like enormous boons to competitive swimming, certainly more than any amorphous “advantages” Thomas is purported to have.

I’ll give Thomas the last word here, because I think it’s apt:

By the way, at least one of the Ivy League and school records that Thomas set at Penn has already been broken by a cis-woman.

Joey Chestnut is finally free

Look, I am not into competitive eating, which my husband likes to call “speed gluttony, at all. Frankly, I can’t even watch it, so upsetting to me is the idea of dipping a hot dog bun water before cramming it into your piehole and hoping it’ll slide right down your gullet with it’s…ugh….moistness. But! While I’ve gotten to meet quite a few celebs in my line of work, the encounters I truly treasure are the ones where the person was unbelievably nice (Ben Zobrist, Ernie Hudson) or kind of bizarre (Billy Zane, Kobayashi). So yes, I basically brought up this proposed Netflix eat-off between Chestnut and Kobayashi, who cut ties with Nathan’s years ago) so I could tell this Kobayashi story.

If you don’t know who Takeru Kobayashi is, he basically popularized competitive eating. I’ve actually met Kobayashi twice. Once when I worked for the Chicago Tribune and he came and watched an Italian Beef-eating contest, and once at a sports conference where he was “performing.” The performance consisted of Kobayashi drinking an entire gallon of milk in a very short period of time, which I guess is impressive? Anyway after he got off-stage, Kobayashi and his interpreter sat down right next to me in the front row. Kobayashi didn’t look so good, and I asked his interpreter if he was okay. Kobayashi clearly understood me because he leaned over and answered in Japanese. According to his interpreter, he was upset that the milk had been stored in the fridge (I mean, where else were the organizers going to put it?), and that meant it was going to expand in his stomach. Apparently, he needed room-temperature milk to do this properly. He basically told me that he wasn’t going to have a very enjoyable next few hours, but in much more graphic detail than was probably appropriate for our first meeting.

Ta-Da! Talk about seeing behind the curtain!

Anyway, I will hate-watch this Netflix thing because I feel that Nathan’s, in trying to restrict Kobayashi to only doing their events, wrongfully handed the speed gluttony title over to Joey Chestnut, and I would see it returned to the rightful king. (Saruman voice) To war!

How do we get the men to stop watching the WNBA?

For years, we WNBA fans bitched and moaned about the women’s game not getting the same level of coverage and marketing as the men’s. We dreamed of a time when the W would be as popular as the NBA. We wanted WNBA superstars to rival the stars of the men’s game.

In hindsight, we may have overshot, because the men are finally watching and covering the WNBA, and it’s been nothing but weirdness ever since. I have not the energy tonight to rehash all the dumb shit Stephen A Smith, Pat McAfee, and plenty of others have said about Caitlin Cark this week, but I’m confident you already know all about it.

Enter Antonio Brown, who can always be called on for a misogynistic comment at any given time. Earlier this year, Brown tweeted something so vulgar about Caitlin Clark that I really don’t want to share it here. Then yesterday, he felt the need to say this:

(Going into Brown’s Twitter timeline to retrieve that tweet was one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever done. Do not recommend.)

Multiple women have accused Antonio Brown of sexual misconduct, including forcible rape, an accusation with which Brown was never charged, but ultimately settled a civil case over. Despite making over $80 million in his career, Brown recently filed for bankruptcy and is reportedly $3 million in debt. He was arrested in 2023 for allegedly owing $30,000 in child support. And he supports Trump.

Hey Antonio, you know how you said no one watches the WNBA? How about you go back to not watching and ignoring women’s sports? And women. Interacting with us never seems to work out well for you.

Thanks in advance.

As Predicted…

A few weeks back, I wrote about the red state pushback on the Biden Administration’s long-awaited Title IX allegations, which made changes such as incorporating sexual orientation and gender identity into its purview, as well as undoing so much of the damage former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did to the regulations, particularly surrounding how schools handle sexual assault allegations.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Texas struck down some similar guidelines that were a few years old, in which the Department of Education advised schools that it would use Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in any school that receives federal funding, to protect LGBTQ+ students.

The ruling only applies to Texas schools and doesn’t affect the guidelines that the Biden administration issued in April, but the ruling is still troubling. The reason is that though the judge was referring to older guidelines, he held that the administration had no authority to expand Title IX to cover sexual orientation and gender identity without Congressional approval. (Another great reason you should vote in November.)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who seems to have made it his mission life to make LGBTQ+ kids miserable, of course had something stupid to say, issuing a statement that read, “Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks.” Hurr Durr. Black is white. Up is down. Joe Biden is the one with the extremist agenda. Guys like Ken Paxton make me glad I believe in karma.

Finally…

Please enjoy this video of an absolute unit of a gator casually strolling off to brunch or something, in Florida, where people purportedly live on purpose:

I thought I knew at what height he was going to enter the video, but I was so wrong!

Before I go, I wish a very happy Father’s Day to all the Fathers and figures out there. Some of you know I lost my Dad, who was my coach in just about every sport I ever played in one way or another, about 18 months ago, and I often feel like I’ll never be whole again. I hope you get to spend some time with whoever filled the “Dad” role for you this weekend.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Have a great weekend. See you all on Monday.