It’s been a long year for Tumwater, a politically purple town with 24,852 people and three craft breweries that’s become a pawn in a political chess match over transgender rights.
And the whole year, it’s never gotten far from the paint. It began with a high school basketball game. It was February, and the girls’ JV Tumwater High School Thunderbirds basketball team was playing the Shelton High School Highclimbers.
Fifteen-year-old Thunderbird Frances Staudt was warming up when she noticed a girl on the other team was trans. She later told KOMO that she feared the girl would injure her during the game, and complained. But in Washington, trans girls and boys have played with, and against, cis girls and boys for nearly two decades. The trans girl could play, no matter how much Frances complained. She sat out in protest. So did one of her teammates. They still won, 33-16.
Frances said the situation “put her on the spot in the whole gym.” She said she looked over at the trans girl and said, “You are a man.” That was her First Amendment right, she later told KOMO.
The President and Republican Party were behind her. The day before, Trump had signed an executive order banning trans girls and women from playing sports against cis girls and women. Not that there are very many, or that there’s credible scientific evidence proving athletic advantage. But Washington State and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), the state’s governing body for high school sports, were not on Staudt’s side. The Washington Law Against Discrimination protects transgender people in places of public accommodation, which include school athletic programs, and the WIAA was the first state athletic association in the nation to adopt a trans-inclusive policy.
The WIAA slapped Frances with an ethics violation for calling her opponent a man. This was a catalyst.
First came a civil rights complaint filed on Staudt’s behalf by a right-wing nonprofit called the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, or FAIR. Cofounded by Bari Weiss, the “anti-woke” opinion columnist now running CBS news, FAIR’s purpose is to dismantle diversity efforts, like when it sued the Washington State Housing Finance Commission over a homebuyer assistance program for nonwhite people, or when it sued Arkansas for reserving one board seat on a medical board for someone “of a minority race.” The complaint led the Department of Education to investigate the Tumwater School District over alleged Title IX violations. Last April, the Biden Administration expanded Title IX, a 1972 law against sex discrimination in education, to cover anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination. The legal rationale is simple: Discrimination against a gay or trans person is a perception that someone is not performing their sex or gender the right way. Trump promised to do away with the change during the campaign, and a federal judge struck it down in early 2025.
Three weeks later, on February 27, the Tumwater School Board held a vote. The WIAA was considering rolling back its trans athlete policy. Back in December, 14 out of 294 Washington school districts had voted to amend these WIAA rules, but not in Tumwater, where the board had not taken up the vote. But then the executive order and the basketball game happened. A resolution to support those amendments passed three to one.
School board member Melissa Beard cast the lone vote against the measure. Nationwide, conservatives have created panic over trans people to mobilize their base, get elected to public office, and warp curriculum. Republican lawmakers in 28 states have effectively banned trans kids from playing sports, even in places where there had never been issues, or even evidence that trans kids were competing.
Conservatives are attempting to use trans kids as a political wedge here, too. The Let’s Go Washington’s ballot initiative campaign targets queer and trans kids under the banners of protecting “parents’ rights” and “fairness” in girls’ sports. Extremist Moms for Liberty candidates have won several school board elections statewide. Beard’s lonely vote was evidence that not all elected officials would speak out against bigoted policy.
Months later, she had a new political challenger. It was Aimee Staudt, Frances’s mother.
Tumwater is situated in one of the only legislative districts in Thurston County with Democratic representatives—Rep. Beth Doglio and Rep. Lisa Parshley—but like its blue neighbors Lacey and Olympia, the conservative politics of nearby rural towns often encroach on the small city.
Those conservative politics prompted the vote to change WIAA’s trans athlete policy. When the vote came, Melissa Beard sat on the dais and reread what she was going to say. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this is it. Tumwater may not be ready for this. You may lose the election,’” Beard told herself. “And I was okay with that, because I was willing to go down on this issue. It was that important that people knew where I stood.”
Every seat in the room was taken, a few by people wearing “Protect Trans Kids” shirts. Standing in the back, teens with dyed hair held a trans flag.
Even though the room was packed with people who agreed with her, Beard knew her vote could cost her the election this November.
But she knew she was right.
Beard says that when board members are sworn in, they take an oath to “uphold the constitution and the laws of the United States and the state of Washington.” Trans people are a protected class in Washington. Supporting the measure would go against state antidiscrimination law and violate her oath, she says.
She said exactly that from the dais to the crowded room. “I’m concerned that this resolution communicates that we do not see these students as an equal part of our community,” Beard said. The crowd cheered.
After she said her piece, only one of the four other school board members spoke. Jill Adams, who abstained, worried out loud about Trump’s executive order. “Federal laws have supremacy over state and local items,” Adams said, saying she was caught “between a boulder and a hard surface” with this vote.
A woman in the crowd shouted, “Executive orders are not law!”
“We’re not going to do this,” Beard said. “No.”
She moved on to hear comments from the rest of the board.
Casey Taylor, Ty Kuehl, and Darby Kaikkonen said nothing. Then they voted yes.
“They were all very upset. They were all very frustrated with me,” Beard says. “I don’t know what they thought. I don’t know why they were frustrated.” She paused. “I mean, I lost the vote.”
Beard likes finding common ground. She cut her teeth as an analyst in the Washington State House of Representatives during a deadlock between Republicans and Democrats 25 years ago. She even found compromises during COVID on this board, when other members bristled at the state mask mandates and school closures she supported.
“For whatever reason, they did not want to have that conversation about this particular resolution,” Beard says.
When asked for comment, Kaikkonen sent links to comments she made at a different school board meeting two weeks after the initial vote. Kaikkonen started off by criticising the February 27 meeting for not following the board’s rules of order—criticism of Beard and how she ran the meeting. Having a crowd present that did not support the policy “created a situation” where Kaikkonen felt she could not “express my point of view… [and] be listened to in an open, fair, and impartial manner.”
“This issue is impossible,” Kaikkonen said about trans kids playing sports. “[It’s] a stalemate, a game of tic-tac-toe in which there’s no winner.” She supports the transgender community, Kaikkonen says, but she also supports women. By way of explanation, Kaikkon told a story.
“I started swimming competitively when I was 8 years old,” she said. She detailed her whole swimming career, at one point holding up her collegiate All-American award for breast stroke.
A week later, Kaikkonen was fired from her job at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Superintendent of Public Education and Kaikkonen’s boss at OSPI Chris Reykdal has been vocally supportive of trans kids competing in school sports. In a lawsuit, Kaikkonen alleged her firing was retaliation for her vote. The Office says it filed a motion to dismiss the case because Kaikkonen’s “legal claims all lacked legal merit.” The US District Court in Tacoma dismissed the case in early November.
The other board members did not respond to The Stranger’s request for comment.
Two months after the vote, the rest of the board asked Beard to resign as board president, and she did. Beard explained she’d planned to rotate the presidency throughout the year, so this was a good opportunity to do so. But it seems as if she just wanted the issue to go away so she could keep working with her fellow board members.
“I will always put organization over self,” Beard says. “So rather than make them extend any of this pain, they asked me to resign, and I said, ‘Fine, I’ll just resign.’ Can we just get past this?”
Aimee Staudt saw an opportunity. Four days after Beard filed to run for a third term, Staudt filed to run against her. Beard didn’t think it was personal. They lived in the same district. She assumed Staudt would have run anyway.
As an experienced campaigner, Beard normally reaches out to her opponents before the race heats up. But she didn’t do that with Staudt. (“I just didn’t get the sense that she was in it for what’s best for the district,” Beard says.)
Staudt did not respond to our request for an interview.
She also didn’t run much of a campaign. She raised just $1,063. Staudt didn’t spend any money on mailers herself, but was included on a $5,100 mailer campaign from Sarah Overbay, a candidate for the District 1 school board position. Those mailers praised Overbay, Staudt, and other more conservative candidates. On the back, the mailers went negative on their opponents, claiming Beard and the other progressive school board candidates running only cared about “gender politics,” which ironically seemed to be Staudt’s sole issue.
That became clear during a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters, the only forum she attended. Staudt—who didn’t even have a campaign website—said she was running to “use common sense and put education first again.” Schools were wasting too much time on political and social agendas and not enough time on teaching students how to read, she said. She called for transparency, to give families a choice and to make sure schools partnered with parents instead of trying to replace them. Her talking points emphasizing a need for parental power and control are textbook for right-wing candidates.
Beard worried about her chances of beating Staudt. She stressed over the possibility of her campaign becoming a national talking point. And for good reason.
In the last month before the November election, anti-trans politics flared up in Tumwater once more.
A sore loser, hedge fund manager Brian Heywood is again funding a signature-gathering campaign for his anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-public-education ballot measures.
Heywood’s campaign, Let’s Go Washington (LGW), is gunning for two initiatives on next year’s November ballot.
The first would reinstate the parents’ bill of rights that already passed as an initiative last year. But, much to Heywood & co.’s chagrin, the Legislature mostly nullified it during this year’s session. So, LGW is trying to volley it back.
“We don’t co-parent with the government,” Heywood said in a statement first reported by the Washington State Standard. “No government employee can care about or love your child like you do.”
What Heywood really wants is to do away with student privacy and control public education. The Parents Bill of Rights initiative allows parents to “examine” curriculum decisions and school policies, something they already had the right to do, while granting access to their child’s mental health and counseling records. The rule could force teachers and guidance counselors to out LGBTQ kids to their parents, which could be dangerous for those living in unaccepting homes. In an emailed statement, LGW wrote that the initiative would strengthen “communications between parents and school.”
Heywood’s second initiative would ban transgender athletes from playing girls’ sports. The initiative would require athletes to have a doctor certify their sex before they can participate in girls sports. This could require a genital examination.
As Seattle Police Department detective Beth Wareing said at a WA Families for Freedom press conference in November—a campaign to kill Heywood’s initiatives—genital examinations “would increase the risk of sexual abuse for girls participating in sports.”
The LGW campaign seems unbothered by the criticism. Campaign spokesperson Hallie Herzberg called the risk of sexual abuse a lie. “The opposition is proving again how little they care about females in sports,” she said. And the campaign is asking people to literally rally around them inside schools. It’s held five so far, with eight more planned between now and January 2, when LGW plans to turn in its signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office.
In late September, days before she jetted off to Washington, DC, for Trump’s antifa roundtable, right-wing commentator Brandi Kruse promoted LGW’s signature-gathering event at Tumwater Middle School. Kruse has no official or financial association with LGW, but volunteered to speak at the event, a “Super Signer Kick-Off” for its anti-trans initiatives.
Board member Beard thought holding the event in Tumwater was bizarre and opportunistic. Liza Rankin, Seattle Public Schools board director and member of the Washington State School Directors Association, also thought it intentional and “a little bit weird.”
Holding the rallies at schools can show voters that the initiatives are “about children,” so they can say, “If you love children, you’ll come to this thing,” Rankin explains. But it could also be setting up a confrontation.
The Tumwater rally was planned for October 4, a month ahead of the Beard vs. Staudt race. Kruse spent the days leading up to the event drumming up attention for the rally. When The Stranger asked why, she told us “radical gender ideology belongs in the dustbin of American politics.”
The week before the planned rally, her tweets turned angry. Tumwater School District had denied the event permit.
“In Washington state, schools will grant facility use permits for grown men in panties to dance for little children. But want to hold an event to support parental rights? Sorry, no can do!” Kruse tweeted, citing a drag event at a school.
Kruse tweeted that the school district “caved to left-wing activists.” Kruse said it was the only LGW event denied a permit.
Schools are sensitive places for politicking. State law doesn’t allow any campaigning involving public resources. Public schools count as a public resource. However, because the LGW initiatives aren’t yet on the ballot, it creates a gray area.
“If they aren’t allowed to do it, they can throw a tantrum,” Rankin says. “What they want is to say they’re being politically persecuted. They want the narrative that ‘We’re just standing up for parents… and it’s the liberal lawmakers who are being mean to us.’”
LGW denies that. “We aren’t looking for a freedom of speech fight,” Herzberg said. The public schools offer a space for people to “turn in their petitions without being harassed, attacked, or stolen from,” Herzberg said.
The reasons were more mundane, according to records obtained by The Stranger. LGW’s campaign submitted a permit application three days before the planned event. Tumwater School District requires that applications for permitted events be submitted seven days prior to the event.
“Due to the short timeline, the request wasn’t approved,” a spokesperson with the district said. “It’s our understanding that they met outside of the fencing at Tumwater Middle School on the date they requested use of the building.”
At the event, Staudt’s daughter, Frances, spoke about her experience and about the lack of fairness in girl’s sports. Kruse amplified it online. From the internet attention, the issue seemed big, but only a few dozen people had shown up to the rally.
That could explain the election results in Tumwater.
Beard defeated Staudt with 61 percent of the vote. Beard thinks voters valued her experience, and her record, more than this one issue.
They also valued progressive Julie Watts over Sarah Overbay, the conservative who sent out those negative mailers, in a race for an open seat. On her campaign website, Watts wrote, “Our district is caught in unnecessary political fights—like banning transgender athletes—instead of focusing on what matters. These aren’t abstract debates; they’re about real kids who just want to belong.
“When a school board tells students they don’t deserve inclusion, it’s heartbreaking,” the website read.
But Tumwater is still purple. Incumbent Kuehl, who voted to change WIAA’s policy, and newcomer Rob Warner, who said at a forum that he would not rescind the policy, made it through.
That split feels apt for Tumwater, Beard says.
I don’t understand the mindset of competing with an unfair advantage.
“The majority of transgender women who follow the usual approach prescribed in the United States are unable to reliably lower their testosterone levels into the typical female physiologic range with medicine alone…
Only a quarter of transgender women taking a regimen of spironolactone and estrogens were able to lower testosterone levels within the usual female physiologic range. Another quarter could not achieve female levels but remained below the male range virtually all of the time, while one quarter was unable to achieve any significant suppression…
The researchers believe future studies could pinpoint specific characteristics of patients who fall into each quartile of average steady state testosterone. “Identification of reasons why certain patients have better testosterone suppression could help improve anti-androgen therapy and allow for targeted interventions to advance the U.S. medical regimen for transgender women. As well, future study could determine the specific impact of testosterone at different levels even if not entirely in the female range,” said Safer, also the Medical Director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Boston Medical Center.”
https://www.bumc.bu.edu/camed/2018/02/20/medicine-alone-does-not-completely-suppress-testosterone-levels-among-transgender-women/
None of these boys in girl’s sports have gender dysphoria – kids who actually have it will do anything not to call attention to themselves which inevitably occurs in physical competition. No, these are autogynephilia boys who have been mislead by gender ideology indoctrination in our public schools into transitioning with who knows what kind of life lies in store for them. These boys are a victim of this state sanctioned child abuse.
“Conservatives are attempting to use trans kids as a political wedge here, too. “
Really? It’s the girls and their parents who are protesting. They’re dems, most probably are anyway.
I don’t think we can quite definitively label this autogynephilia. A trans person could quite plausibly be aware others know they are trans and be unconcerned with “calling attention” to themselves. They also presumably have a different definition than “man” or “woman” than you do, and feel theirs applies to them, rather than “autogynephilia”.
“You shall not pass!”
– Gandalf
Only religious prudes and a certain kind of pedophilic pervert get worked up about this issue, which impacts a truly minuscule portion of the population, both cis and trans.
The trouble is that the prudes and pervs are so self-righteous about it (and some for a profit motive) that it’s made out to be a much bigger deal than it is. Stupid people, who tend to be extremely gullible (therefore their devotion to Christianity and Republicanism) hear the prudes and pervs and join in, mostly because they enjoy feeling sorry for themselves and engaging in self-righetous anger.
I come from that first generation of Title IX, where they integrated Physical Education. Suddenly, instead of a curtain in the school Gym, separating boys from girls, we were competing with and against them in gender neutral sports like badminton, volleyball, and what we called “soccer” (although it was basically baseball with a soccer ball). We probably would have played basketball, but Iowa at the time had a weird rule for women’s basketball, and they were probably afraid that that would turn the boys fey. Wrestling and Football, of course, were off the table, mostly because of the spectre of sex.
No one cared. Well, no one important cared.
It’s all moot. The Supreme Court is going to rule on this in 2026, and guess what? 6 – 3 will be the final vote, and not in favor of trans people. It’s also evident that the Supreme will define the term “woman” before the Trump presidency ends, anyone care to guess on how that will go?
Cis is a slur because trans militants decided they could just upend language for everyone around them to make them feel better about their identity. Please make a note of it.
How can you sit back and say it’s only religious prudes and perverts that get worked up over this, when it’s the girls themselves who are seeing naked boys in their locker rooms, much less having an edge over them in sports? Think about what you’re saying.
https://www.roseburgscanner.com/students-walk-out-at-roseburg-high-over-locker-room-access-debate/
@8: A sliver lining of the Trump administration, for sure.
@9 is for that dingbat in @7.
Straight people said the same thing about hetero that these fragile babies are saying about cis today. Not surprising since the trans panic is just a repackaging of homophobia, right down to the paranoia around indoctrination.
This was a long article.
@7: That’s gym class. Everyone participates but nothing else is on the line.
The extracurricular sports progams are often a gateway to college scholarships or professional leagues. It may only affect a miniscule portion of a schools population, but that tiny group still stands to walk away with a disproportionate chunk of the available rewards.
I propose a system of “general teams”, where any gender of athelete may participate. And a women’s team, reserved for CIS females. Now lets see the marginal atheletes try to “fight below their weight class” with that arrangement.
Coolidge dear, I suspect that you are a combination of both perv and prude, based on your obsession with naked teenagers in locker rooms. And here’s a life hint dear: teenagers love been outraged over all manner of things, and many will walk out of class just to get out of class.
Holmes, the spectre of trans athletes only affects a miniscule population of a very few schools. And most of the outrage is about transgirls, in both locker rooms and competition. But here’s a life hint for you, dear: Male athletes who have professional aspirations are not clamoring to transition to a gender where the opportunities are fewer, the salaries are lower, and the endorsements scarce. And most cis men are not anxious to experience the side effects of transitioning.
Transpeople are a tiny percent of our population. Of that percentage, a smaller subset is interested in sports (much like the general population). This is a stupid issue that is hurting people who are just trying to live their lives.
@14: “This is a stupid issue that is hurting people who are just trying to live their lives.”
The alternative then is to hurt the rest of the womens team who are just trying to live their lives.
Weird how the people preaching about protecting kids are always the ones who wanna require they show their genitals to a stranger before they’re allowed into extracurricular activities or private bathroom stalls. A very consistent feature, that.
@14: Your flippant vulgar put offs just point to your total ignorance not only on trans issues but a whole lot of other things. You think you’re so hip in your Queen of Slog crown, but you’re really not.
@16: That scenario only occurs because of the absurdity of boys and men in girls and women’s sports to begin with.
@17 nobody’s ever presented any actual evidence of harm coming from trans kids playing on sports teams, so this proposed exam to validate adults’ insecurities and baseless fears seems a net negative in that regard
@18 but have you considered the harm to coolidge’s imagination because he can’t stop thinking about teenagers having their penises cut off or boys changing in the girls locker rooms
All this talk about how purple Tumwater is but no mention of Shelton’s political leanings, and Shelton schools supported their student, who provided the excuse Tumwater mom & Brandi Kruse were trolling for.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Transgender_Surgeries/
Behold the amazing natural beauty of “vaginoplasty” surgery! Read the glowing testimonies of the… uh… women, who are totally satisfied with their outcomes!
Those are real, valid, 100% genuine vaginas on real, valid, 100% genuine women!!!
@18: If there’s no harm there wouldn’t be an objection over it from the students themselves. See the link in @9.
Looks like catalina was onto something because we’ve got another transphobe in the comments outing himself as a perv
@16
All it takes is a cheek swab for a chromosome test to determine the sex of an individual. This could be done during the Washington State’s required physical examination for participation in high school sports.
barth always regresses into the back rows of 10th grade English class ignoring everyone and just snickering out insults from the peanut gallery, only far more vulgar.
Answer this barthbarf: How about a medical code for doctors to treat detransitioners and others who are having medical complications? Is that too much to ask? That would help that population.
Of course you’ll negate it as less than 1% as if any stats are known whatsoever. Always a cop out response. Barth and that backstreet blonde here don’t look at the whole picture.
Coolidge dear, calm yourself. You’re distraught. Spending your life obsessing over nonsense that you have been groomed to be outraged about can’t be much fun.
Holmes, where’s the harm to ciswomen? Other than that sore loser who lost a swimming match and the other one who thinks she might have gotten spiked by a transwoman, but they’re in it for the money and the victimization. That’s much easier and more profitable than getting a real job.
@26: You’re a girl hater, pure and simple. “sore loser” is so disingenuous and offensive to these girls I hope you someday realize how hateful that is.
I don’t begrudge anyone their grift, Coolidge dear, but I’m not going to pretend it’s not a grift.
@28: Grift you say girl hater? Explain in detail – who’s processing the credit cards transactions dear? You must be desperate to conflate that “out”. It’s not working.
@24 tell that to Imane Khelif
Imane Kheilf is male, has male chromosomes (XY), male gonads (testes), and male-typical development from puberty, placing “her” in the male sex category despite external female appearance and female upbringing. This isn’t a judgment on her gender identity or character; it’s about immutable biology. DSDs like 5-ARD affect ~1 in 100,000 births and can lead to misassignment at birth, but they don’t change the underlying sex. Sports bodies increasingly recognize this for eligibility, as male advantages persist even without full male external traits.
Hi Dale,
At least Imane Khelif’s DSD is objective in that there are undescended testicles which show as being genetically male. Unlike the purely subjective notion of a trans identity. World Boxing now mandates cheek swab to test for Y chromosomes.
Coolidge dear, here’s your grifters…..
Payton McNabb: The one who claimed her injury in volleyball was caused by a trans athlete, but doesn’t have proof.
January Littlejohn: A mother who claimed that child’s middle school had “secretly socialized” her child.
Riley Gaines: The slow swimmer.
All three of these women have been working their transphobia to the point where they have been guests at the State Of The Union, and appeared at such facist gatherings as CPAC. Who do you think is bankrolling that?
@33: So you’re finding tangential spin to get out of the immorality of boys in girls sports and showing their exposed penises in the locker room? Why are you against allowing girls and women to have their own protected spaces and to be free from unfair competition?
Listen to Tish Hyman, Listen to Buck Angel, Listen to Alexis Blake, Listen to Jeffrey Starr, Listen to Marcus Dibbs, and yes, Listen to Blair White and Caitlyn Jenner.
These are gay and transgender voices who want to protect girls and women’s sports and the privacy in the bathrooms and locker rooms. They know far more about the matter than you or I (or barth) will ever know.
I appalled that you, a liberal who cares about suffering, are going down this dark path of condoning cheating and belittling what these young women are going through.
@33: Are you saying McNabb was faking?
Facts of the matter:
McNabb sustained a traumatic brain injury, concussion, neck injury, brain bleed, and two black eyes. Long-term effects include impaired vision (including loss of peripheral vision), partial paralysis on her right side, chronic headaches, anxiety, depression, and cognitive challenges like memory retention and comprehension issues. These forced her to miss the rest of her senior volleyball season and ended her chances of playing college softball. As of 2025, she continues recovery and requires academic accommodations at Western Carolina University.
McNabb and her family have publicly identified the player as transgender (a biological male competing in the girls’ category under North Carolina High School Athletic Association policies at the time). Neither the opponent’s school nor the athletic association has confirmed the player’s gender identity, but McNabb’s testimony and multiple reports consistently describe the incident this way. The player reportedly sent McNabb an Instagram message post-incident saying, “Wow I really am living rent-free in your head, aren’t I?” but did not apologize.
25 i have no idea what you’re even talking about or what it has to do with this discussion but i have no problem with detrans people seeking medical care for themselves because everyone deserves access to the health care they need
It’s ironic that you’re always the first to be making nasty, dismissive comments about trans people any time the opportunity presents itself but you’re accusing others of behaving like children. I’m just giving back to you what you dish out against an entire population of people and i am only using your own admissions as my fodder. If you don’t want to be accused of being a teenager-obsessed pervert don’t constantly obsess over naked teenagers or dismiss their sexual assault as “kisses and cuddles” or whatever disgusting excuses you made for trump’s time on epstein island. You’re just getting back what you’re putting out into the world and if you’re not enjoying the experience i have bad news for you.
Coolidge dear, you’re letting your hysteria get in the way of your reading comprehension. I did not accuse her of faking her injury. I’m accusing her of using it as a way to get attention to pimp her bigotry. She and her family say it was a trans athlete. She is yet to present proof. Are you saying women are too meek and weak to inflict injury?
I find your obsession about your perversion to be tedious.
Lol yes, listen to a bunch of influencers who make their living as trans avatars for anti-trans talking points, and ignore every other trans person or advocate. While you’re at it you can ask blaire white why she moved back to California after making a huge deal about escaping to Texas. These people don’t practice what they preach because they don’t believe a word of it. They’re just doing a job so people like feebs can use their identity as an escape hatch when they’re calling trans women autogynephiles.
@36: Nasty you say? Nothing could be nastier, more hateful, more damaging than using one’s physical prowess of a biological male to cheat a biological female at athletic competition – and then to make girls and women feel uncomfortable in the locker room. If that doesn’t make you want to vomit, you’re a sick perv yourself.
Nice try at deflecting by extrapolating observations about Epstein’s age choice in victims. You get desperate when boxed into a corner.
@37: So noted. But really, people are not Machavellinan like that just to get attention. Especially a female athlete. Your comment is dreadfully misogynistic.
@38: “These people don’t practice what they preach because they don’t believe a word of it.”
Oh yes, assume you have supernatural powers of mind reading to ascertain what is impossible to ascertain and expect others to take your word for it.
Oh barth, that’s a gem!
You just accused every trans woman athlete of transitioning for an advantage at sports but you’re accusing me of mind-reading because i noted blaire white is eating her own words about moving to a red state.
I’m not extrapolating anything. You repeatedly minimized actions that amount to statutory sexual assault when no one asked. You also keep talking about naked boys in girls locker rooms when i have never heard any mention of this from anyone else. I can’t imagine it’s that hard to find a way for trans athletes to change their clothes in private but i hadn’t given this a single thought at all until you kept bringing it up. The amount of time and consideration you give to these particular details is very revealing and i’m just sharing that with you because it’s something you might want to keep a lid on.
@41: “You just accused every trans woman athlete of transitioning for an advantage at sports.”
No, don’t put words in my mouth. I never commented on their motivations for transitioning. In fact, I saw reporting of a trans athlete realizing the harm they’ve done and have quit physical competition with women.
“You also keep talking about naked boys in girls locker rooms when i have never heard any mention of this from anyone else. “
See the link in @9 from the students themselves. Are you saying they’re lying? It’s really sick how you don’t want to allow high school girls the privacy they deserve.
“… very revealing and i’m just sharing that with you because it’s something you might want to keep a lid on.”
Oh, is that a threat? You are desperate. Chill. Level heads always prevail. The only thing I’m revealing is my bravery by saying what so many people have been wanting to say but don’t because you and other horribles will call them transphobes.
Oh right, you didn’t comment on their motives, you just said, let’s see… “nothing could be nastier, more hateful, more damaging than using one’s physical prowess of a biological male to cheat a biological female at athletic competition – and then to make girls and women feel uncomfortable in the locker room.” You’re not speculating on their motives, you just think they are just nasty and hateful cheaters and perverts. Glad you cleared that up.
How could i possibly threaten you? I don’t know who you are beyond your being a boomer techie in seattle who self-identifies as a gay conservative and sometimes as an older woman from wallingford. I am saying that if you don’t want to be accused of being a child sex predator you shouldn’t make comments that indicate you think about naked kids a lot and don’t think sexually assaulting them is a big deal.
I’m also not saying the kids are lying, i am saying it’s very easy to accommodate student athletes of any gender to change in private for any reason. This is an easy problem to avoid but to hear it from you this is a valid reason to shut out trans athletes from participating in sports entirely. I repeat myself but you’re spending way too much time obsessing over this particular issue.
“people are not Machavellinan like that just to get attention. Especially a female athlete. Your comment is dreadfully misogynistic.”
I’m not sure what your reality is barth dear, but people of all genders are “Machavellinan like that” all the time, but especially conservatives. Their whole existence is centered around being a victim and blaming others. The woman had an unfortunate injury. That is undeniable. She has chosen to interject an accusation that the injury was inflicted by a trans woman, which really is beside the point. Sports injuries are quite common, even in volleyball. But because of her insistence she has become a “cause célèbre” in the transphobic community. As I noted above, She was one of trump’s guests at the 2025 State Of The Union address and a keynote speaker at the 2024 Republican Convention.
@43: “I’m also not saying the kids are lying, i am saying it’s very easy to accommodate student athletes of any gender to change in private for any reason.”
There are only two genders. Men and women. They must have separate bathrooms, and separate locker rooms. That’s how you accommodate. And you don’t accommodate cheating by having biological males in female sports competition. Yes, that means shutting them out entirely. Got it? Entirely.
“that indicate you think about naked kids a lot and don’t think sexually assaulting them is a big deal.”
It’s your dirty prurient mind that always goes there — as if there’s another way of describing the horror girls go through by not having private spaces to comfortably dress and undress.
@45, well no, there are trans and intersex people — we wouldn’t be having this conversation if they didn’t exist — and it’s entirely possible to accommodate any child, even a cisgender one, who wants or requires privacy when changing.
I can talk about trans youth without ever mentioning or even thinking about their nude bodies or the status of their genitals. Can you? Doesn’t look like it.
@46: Intersex is an infrequent ambiguous formation of human genitalia and no more a separate gender than a person with only four fingers is a different species.
“and it’s entirely possible to accommodate any child, even a cisgender one, who wants or requires privacy when changing.”
You’re missing the point. The accommodation is separate facilities.
Cis is slur, as we don’t need an adjective for something that will never exist, because gender identity is always the expression of male or female separate or mixed in a spectrum of ways. There is no such gender as non-binary.
Again, you’re the one talking about nude bodies. You’re the one promoting the perverted access by boys into girls spaces.
Yes i know the accommodations are separate facilities. I’m the one who proposed it as the solution, genius.
You’re not the sharpest tool but you’re certainly a useful one.
@48: Oh, so you’re for the keeping of trans-women in mens facilities separated from women and girls spaces? That’s progress.
No I’m for giving trans people private accommodations like i’ve said several times now
@50: And the private accommodations includes restricting M2F trans from competing against girls and women in athletic competition.
To top it off, here’s a boy pretending to be a girl totally leaving the girls in the dust in a track completion.
https://x.com/i/status/1996931873160024196
@52 From an account named “Fan Trump Army”? (An impeccable source, I’m sure.) It’s anyone’s guess what’s really going on here as the post itself offers no explanation. But as far as I can tell it appears to be some kind of staged exhibition (perhaps for the specific purpose of filming a piece of anti-trans propaganda), not a real contest. Otherwise, why is the designated “boy” wearing a different color than everyone else, if not for ease of identification as the “bad guy”? Additionally, there don’t appear to be more than a handful of spectators, which would also suggest this wasn’t an actual track meet.
The reality is there aren’t enough truly competitive trans-femme athletes in the entire country for anyone not directly involved to get worked up over. (The very reason their names are well-known is that there’s only a handful of them to learn.) To the extent that it’s an issue at all, it’s one that could easily be handled rationally on a case-by-case basis by the relevant sports authorities if it weren’t so thoroughly politicized by cynical opportunists and straight-up bigots. I won’t speculate as to which of those categories you’re in but my advice is the same either way: Leave the kids alone.
@53: There are other examples. But none of your complaints about the video negate its validity, pointing to a remote “staged” possibility to discount it is so lame. Something is always possible, the question is it probable. That video certainly is.
I’m always amazed how now the low quantity of trans-athletes now is used to justify their invading of girls and women’s spaces. Infrequency does not dilute immorality. I can’t imagine taking advantage of girls and hurting them like that.
I agree leave kids alone. Let kids be kids and restrict transitioning to 19 years old. Keep adults out of it.