Welcome to a Hump Day (“Te Rā o te Puku” in Māori), Wednesday, January 14, 2026, and National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day, celebrating another great contribution of America (and Jews) to world cuisine. Below is a huge sandwich from Harold’s Deli in Edison, New Jersey, right off Route 95 if you’re driving north. It’s my dream to go there. Note the pickle bar (I’d have a half-sour.) I wish a reader would go there and send photos and comments. (I wouldn’t recommend mixing corned beef and pastrami in one sandwich, though.
It’s also Caesarean Section Day (celebrating the “first successful Caesarean [also spelled as Cesarean] delivery or C-section, in the United States, which was made by Dr. Jesse Bennett on January 14, 1794″), International Kite Day, which started in India, and Feast of the Ass. celebrating all the donkeys mentioned in the Bible, including Jesus riding on his ass into Jerusalem before the Crucifixion.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The situation in Iran has become more and more serious, with the death toll of protestors reports as high as 3,000. (The NYT article is archived here.)
As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that the government is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade.
Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.”
Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags.
In videos uploaded by opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights.
The state broadcaster said the images show the danger that protests pose to Iran’s society: “There are individuals in these gatherings who want to drag ordinary people — people who have nothing to do with these events — and their families into this situation. So that they too are drawn into the chaos,” the reporter in the voice over said. “I have never seen images like these in my life before.”
Those who still support Iran’s theocratic government and those in the streets calling for its downfall agree: These are days of brutality unlike anything they have ever seen.
The toll of dead and injured across the country is unclear. Human rights groups are struggling to reach their contacts inside Iran and follow the methodology they normally use to verify information but say they have counted more than 500 dead.
Multiple American officials say that U.S. intelligence agencies have conservatively estimated that more than 600 protesters have been killed so far.The agencies have noted that both the current protests and the crackdown are far more violent than those in 2022 or other recent uprisings against the government.
A senior Iranian health ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said about 3,000 people had been killed across the country but sought to shift the blame to “terrorists” fomenting unrest. The figure included hundreds of security officers, he said.
Another government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he had seen an internal report that referred to at least 3,000 dead, and added that the toll could climb.
If confirmed, the death toll would be among the worst in recent Iranian history.
. . .For the past five days, the Iranian authorities have shut down the internet, international phone lines and sometimes even domestic mobile phone connections. That has left rights groups, journalists and families alike struggling to understand the scope of what has happened.
But videos trickling out of the country and the messages of some Iranians who occasionally get satellite internet connections offer a devastating picture of bloodshed.
The article goes on to describe snipers on rooftops killing protestors, emergency rooms full of gunshot victims, and in general protestors being shot down like so many clay pigeons. At least to me, this is the most absorbing story happening in the world. The government keeps killing protestors, and people, undeterred, keep protesting. This is a people who have had enough of the oppressive theocracy, and it’s time for that theocracy to step down. But that’s hard to envision, for, after all, it’s a theocracy, and they have the weapons. Sometimes, again my own reason, I hope that the U.S. can somehow intervene, and that would have to be via weapons since withholding oil won’t get rid of the government. But then who would form the new government? The son of the previous Shah, a Shah who was also dictatorial?
In the meantime, Trump has canceled scheduled talks with the Iranian regime and issued this statement:
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Tuesday. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
This sure sounds like he’s planning some kind of military intervention, but Trump has threatened a lot of stuff that he hasn’t done (viz., annexing Greenland).
*A Washington Post editorial board op-ed suggests what the U.S. needs to do—and should do—to help bring down the Iranian regime.
The Trump administration is split on how to proceed. Iran is offering to reopen talks on its nuclear program to get the U.S. to back off. Vice President JD Vance wants to give these talks a try before Trump launches airstrikes. Another faction sees the offer of talks as a desperate play for time. Indeed, Iran refused to engage in negotiations after the Twelve Day War, saying the U.S. was making “unreasonable demands.” What’s changed? For his part, Trump has signaled that he may do both: strike first, talk after.
Trump has military options to make good on his threats. A kinetic approach might involve bombing the bases that belong to security forces or directly targeting top government officials. It could be as simple as directing drones to take out paramilitary militias as they drive to violently put down protests.
Trump has already imposed added tariffs on any country that trades with Iran, but neither I nor the editors think that, even on top of an oil restriction, will topple the government. So here’s their “solution”:
Repressive regimes only collapse when fissures emerge within their ranks. Protests can be catalysts for a crack-up, but they are themselves often insufficient. The brave Iranian people are providing meaningful pressure from inside the country. By repeatedly taking to the streets to be beaten and killed, they raise the human cost and increase the odds that some elements among the fragmented security services start to refuse the orders they’re being given to massacre civilians.
Adding pressure from the outside can tighten that vise. The key is to ensure that it’s seen as being in support of the people on the street, not as part of a larger agenda. If a militia commander feels the walls closing in, he may defect. If he perceives that he is defending his country against nefarious foreigners, he may fight harder.
The biggest unknown is what Trump ultimately wants to achieve. This can end in one of two ways: the regime collapses or it holds on. Trump may think, with enough pressure, he could hammer out a durable nuclear deal and avoid fresh chaos that an imploding regime might create. But the prospect of truly resetting the geopolitics of the Middle East and beyond — Russia and China would be hardest hit — is more tantalizing. Whichever goal Trump decides on, easing pressure on the regime at its point of maximum vulnerability would be a mistake.
But we’re already adding pressure, and pressure that is seen as supportive of the protestors and NOT part of a larger agenda. This is a phoned-in “solution” that offers nothing new. Nobody in the administration (save Vance, who has no influence here) has talked about easing pressure on Iran. A nuclear deal is, in my view, not even being considered now—not when people are dying en masse in the streets. The question for the Post editors is this: “Are you being cagey about the U.S. using military action? Otherwise, the U.S. is already doing exactly what you’re suggesting.”
*At the Free Press, Yascha Mounk decries “The West’s deafening silence on Iran.” The subtitle is “I searched five major progressive publications for coverage of Iran’s uprising. Combined results: zero.” We’ve already seen that the NYT and WaPo, which can be considered “progressive” are covering Iran big time. It’s a big story. So whaat did Mounk look at? (He’s founder and editor of Persuasion, a liberal magazine.)
. . . the sympathies of every single person who believes in freedom and equality and the basic rights of women should be with those courageous millions in Iran. And yet, across the West, there has been a deafening silence in the face of these historic protests.
This silence has been evident in mainstream media outlets, from the British Broadcasting Corporation to National Public Radio, that have been oddly slow to grasp the importance of this moment. Worse, when those outlets did deign to cover the events, they often downplayed the significance of the protests; in a few especially egregious cases, reporters even seemed to harbor sympathies for the country’s brutal regime. (At the outset of the protests, The Guardian even published an op-ed by Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister.)
The silence has been even more deafening in the left-wing newspapers and magazines of the anglophone world. On Saturday morning, I searched the principal publications of the American left for any mention of Iran. There was nothing on the websites of The Nation or The New Republic or Jacobin or Slate or even Dissent.
. . .There are some straightforward explanations for why a lot of attention is currently elsewhere. There is good reason for American media outlets to focus on what is happening in Venezuela, and in Minnesota, and more broadly on the various outrages perpetrated daily by the White House. And it is genuinely hard to report on a country that tightly controls foreign journalists and currently has a nationwide internet blackout. At Persuasion, we have been lucky to publish a moving essay by an anonymous Iranian who has written for us before. On the podcast, I have been fortunate to have a deep conversation with Scott Anderson about the country’s revolutions, past and present. But is it really so difficult to have some staff writer type up a report about what is happening in the country, or to source an op-ed by some Iranian in exile about their hopes for their country?
So Mounk is considering not just progressive outlets, but mainstream media, and he’s wrong about the MSM in the U.S. But if the silence in the “principal publications of the American Left” is real, and persists, Mounk has an explanation, which I’ve put in bold below:
The silence is far from random; it is a choice. And while I suspect that this choice is not fully conscious, and that the people making that choice haven’t fully spelled out the logic which motivates it, even to themselves, it ultimately goes back to a very simple calculation that (as he pointed out more eloquently than anybody else) has plagued leftist intellectuals ever since the days of George Orwell.
The sympathies of every single person who believes in freedom and equality and the basic rights of women should be with those courageous millions in Iran.
For far too many progressives and leftists, their founding commitment is not to some principle or aspiration for the world. It is to believing that their own countries and societies are at the root of profound evil. This creates in their minds a simple demonology: Anybody who is on “our side” must be bad, and anybody who is on the “other side” is presumptively good. As Orwell said about some of the intellectuals of his day, their “real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of Western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism.”
It has in the past week not been difficult to find especially harebrained leftists who follow this logic to its bitter end: ones who malign Iranian protesters as hapless agents of imperialism, or for that matter are unwilling to acknowledge that Nicolás Maduro was a terrible dictator. But most are a little more subtle than that. They don’t go all the way toward celebrating Khamenei or Maduro, nor can they quite bring themselves to hope for the downfall of the regimes they built.
Well, we’ll see how long Slate (which really is biased in a bad way) or The Nation neglect Iran. At first I rejected Mounk’s explanation, but the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right. It can’t just be American neglect of the rest of the world, which is a reality given we’re a parochial nation, for we sure pay a lot of attention to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza.
*As the WaPo reports, two transgender athletes (one in collega and the other in high school) have brought a case before the Supreme Court suing West Virginia and Idaho for banning trans-identified males competing against women in sports. Here are the questions at issue as posted by the Court (h/t Bat).
The article is mostly about a trans-identified male in West Virginia, and the case that Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, has brought, but the two cases really involve the same issue. Note that both parts above involve decidiging whether self-identified gender trumps biological sex in sports. An excerpt from the WaPo. The Supremes heard the arguments yesterday, but the decision won’t come down until this summer:
Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers argue that the ban discriminates against her for being transgender and violates her constitutional equal-protection rights.
The state counters that the ban is necessary to preserve fairness in women’s sports and that Pepper-Jackson should receive no exceptions. Trans women have an unfair physical advantage, no matter their age, because the athletes were designated male at birth, the state argues, adding in its brief that “biological males are, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than biological females.”
Although the Supreme Court in 2020 found that trans workers were covered by federal antidiscrimination laws, it has recently handed defeats to advocates for transgender rights. Last year, the high court’s conservatives upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender transition care for minors. They also sided with a group of parents who sued to opt their kids out of lessons featuring LGBTQ storybooks.
Polls show that two-thirds of Americans agree with bans on trans women playing on women’s sports teams. The science concerning the biological advantages of trans female athletes remains hotly debated.
The science may be “hotly debated,” but all of it goes to show that those who transition from male to female gender retain the physiological and physical advantages that men have over women in sports. The public knows this (apparently better than the Post!), and the “unfair physical advantage” is real.
Pepper-Jackson was designated male at birth. Heather Jackson, Pepper-Jackson’s mother, has testified that she noticed early that there was a difference between her youngest child and two older sons.
Pepper-Jackson had typically feminine preferences, gravitating toward dresses and asking her mother why their bodies were not alike. Eventually, she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the medical term for the distress a person feels when their gender identity and their assigned sex are misaligned.
. . . Being from a family of runners, Pepper-Jackson wanted to run cross-country, but in 2021 her middle school principal told her mom that Pepper-Jackson couldn’t join the team. Only months earlier, West Virginia had passed a ban on trans women playing on women’s sports teams. Pepper-Jackson and her mother sued, and lower-court rulings have allowed her to compete as her case plays out.
The Supreme Court plans to hear Pepper-Jackson’s case at a time when 29 states ban trans women from playing on women’s sports teams.
Pepper-Jackson says West Virginia’s ban violates her equal-protection rights. She also contends that the ban violates Title IX, a federal civil rights statute that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education.
My position on this issue has been clear: I favor these bans, with the possible exception of sports in very early grades. But for sports what is relevant is not gender but biological sex, and trans-identified males, while they’re trans, remain biological males. If transitioning via surgery and hormones created a level playing field, that would be a different issue, but all the data say it doesn’t. And remember that surgery and hormones may not be required to identify as a women if you’re born a man. In some places, simple self-identification may be all that’s required. It will be interesting to see how the justices rule on this case. I suspect they’ll go along with what the American people want—not because of that but because sports involves biological rather than self-identified sex. And if the court rules as it should, will it be another 6-3 decision? After hearing the arguments, the SCOTUSblog concludes that “Supreme Court likely to uphold trangender athlete bans.” An excerpt:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to uphold laws that prohibit transgender women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ school sports teams. After nearly three-and-a-half hours of arguments in a pair of cases from Idaho and West Virginia, a majority of the justices appeared to agree with the states that the laws can remain in place, even if it was not clear how broadly their ruling might sweep.
This bit shows that you can’t simply redefine sex for the purposes of athletics, and that making sex self-identified has broader implications:
Chief Justice John Roberts was also skeptical of the challengers’ arguments, asking Hartnett to address “whether or not we should view your position as a challenge to the distinction between boys and girls on the basis of sex or whether or not you are perfectly comfortable with the distinction between boys and girls, [and] you just want an exception to the biological definition of girls.” And if the court were to adopt such an exception, Roberts suggested, “that would have to apply across the board and not simply to the area of athletics.”
Unsurprisingly, the liberal justices argued that transgender athletes (apparently only trans-identified males were the subject of discussion) should be able to participate on teams corresponding to their gender identity, not their biological sex. You can read more about the arguments at SCOTUSblog.
This short exchange between Justice Alito and the prosecution’s lawyer shows that the prosecution can’t even define the classes they’re trying to protect. This supports the SCOTUSblog’s conclusion:
The attorney arguing to allow biological males to play girls sports in front of the Supreme Court says she can’t provide a definition of what it means to be a boy or a girl. pic.twitter.com/4lkMpwNgsZ
— Justin Giboney (@JustinEGiboney) January 13, 2026
Use of the plane prompted legal debate after the Sept. 2 operation over whether the concealment of its military status amounted to a ruse that violated international law, said current and former officials familiar with the matter. Eleven people were killed, including two who survived the initial attack by U.S. forces but died in a controversial follow-on strike.
Feigning civilian status and then carrying out an attack with explicit intent to kill or wound the target is known as “perfidy” under the law of armed conflict, a war crime, according to legal experts.“If you arm these aircraft for self-defense purposes, that would not be a violation” of the law of war, said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised U.S. Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the Pentagon’s counterterrorism campaign that followed 9/11. “But using it as an offensive platform and relying on its civilian appearance to gain the confidence of the enemy is.”The Trump administration has claimed that its lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the waters around Latin America are lawful because President Donald Trump has determined the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. That contention is widely disputed by legal experts, who say the U.S. is not at war with drug traffickers and that killing suspected criminals in international waters is tantamount to murder. Several analysts and former national security officials have said the entire campaign is, at its foundation, unlawful.
“This isn’t an armed conflict,” said Huntley, director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. “But what makes this so surprising is that even if you buy their argument, it’s a violation of international law.”
Indeed! My view has always been that you have to give the boat a chance to surrender first before there’s any thought of blowing it away, and if there are any survivors, they are not to be killed. But it’s even worse if the plane was disguised as a civilian aircraft. In that case there should be no attack, for that is PERFIDY. It’s not clear whether that first plane was the only disguised one, or if there have been others involved in these attacks. It’s also not clear to me why they even need to disguise planes given that a small boat has no way of attacking a plane.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again criticizing Andrzej—or maybe she’s just concerned about his health. Either way, Andrzej isn’t having it:
Hili: What’s that?
Me: Gingerbread in chocolate.
Hili: That’s unhealthy for you.
Me: Et tu, Brute?
In Polish:
Hili: Co to jest?
Ja: Pierniki w czekoladzie.
Hili: To dla ciebie niezdrowe.
Ja: I ty Brutusie.
*******************
Via Anna Krylov:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Stacy. Get it?
From Masih; the toll in Iran could be as high as 12,000. The regime apparently has no killing limit:
According to credible reports by @CBSNews , at least 12,000 Iranian citizens were killed in just two days, Thursday and Friday of last week.
Sources inside Iran have told me that the Islamic Republic is using military-grade weapons against unarmed civilians.
These casualty… pic.twitter.com/ZkBpVmWgMo
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 13, 2026
Click to hear some horrific messages that Masih got from Iran (I don’t know how these got out). I can’t embed the tweet, but if you click on it you’ll go to the original (English translations are provided, and there’s also video):
This was reposted by J. K. Rowling. A brave Iranian woman sings a lovely song of freedom on the streets until the cops make her stop:
She sings for freedom, a song shared widely, sung in Iran despite repression. A young woman sang freely on the street until regime forces tried to silence her. For years, both Iranian and Afghan women have raised their voices, for freedom, justice, and hope. #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/LtacrV1vJY
— Jahanzeb Wisa (@jahanzebwesa) January 11, 2026
From Malcolm; a lovely time-lapse of the Milky Way over Maine:
A stunning timelapse of the Milky Way over Acadia National Park, Maine.pic.twitter.com/tqz6WIpOic
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2026
One from my feed. landing gear down!
Swans have one of the coolest water landing techniques ever pic.twitter.com/TOGOSrLnk7
— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) January 13, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was eleven years old. https://t.co/KMbXmoaRHm
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 14, 2026
Reposted by Matthew. I’ve put the picture below and put an arrow at the Earth and Moon in case you think, as I did, that they were a speck of dust on the computer screen:
Pale white dot. And an even tinier Moon.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T06:02:52.725Z
Notice that the arrow is pointing at two dots: Earth and our Moon:
And it’s not clear whether the cat story is true. If you want to see the evidence, go here.
Today is the 98th anniversary of Thomas Hardy’s heart being cut out so it could be buried in Dorset, at which point it was, unfortunately, eaten by a catWell, according to legend… 🧵
— Coates is Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T09:38:27.907Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour. -Jane Welsh Carlyle, letter writer (14 Jan 1801-1866)
Very nice video of the swan with excellent sound effects of spooled turbine engine! The swan even appears to flare just before touchdown, and gives a little wag of the tail when fully landed. I really liked that little wag.
Yep. That’s how it’s done. We had two swans in Lake Washington (on the Kirkland side) last weekend. Beautiful site. I’ve seen them many times in Skagit County, to the north, but not in Lake Washington.
Flaps, landing gear, and thrust reversers–wonderful. Designers of aircraft must have learned much from birds. But isn’t that the sound of a take-off?
TOGA!
Many years ago, one of my engineers was investigating hummingbird flight mechanics as part of an early design effort at micro air vehicles (winged flight vehicles with a maximum linear dimension of six inches.). There was an international group that looked at I think what they called biomimetics. Developed lab fixtures, flight experiments, incorporated novel materials and structures. Really fun to have watched these guys and gals work. Of course that preceded by several years what became the ubiquitous multi-rotor drones of today.
I think the reason for the large pockets of silence about Iran from the leftward side of media is that it would mean siding with The Orange One.
There’s no question that the left is anti-Trump (including me), but I think that Jerry had a link to an article a few days ago (I could be wrong, since I can’t remember how I came to read the article) that explained the refusal of the left to side with the protestors is because it would entail siding with America – irrespective of who happens to be the president. If I could find the article, I’d link to it, because it was very good.
I think you’re thinking of the article about why the Left doesn’t side with the protestors IN IRAN. It was Yascha Mounk’s article in the Free Press.
I am unhappy with some of the wokish trends of the BBC, but It has not been silent on the events in Iran.
It was a bit late to the party, Richard, but not as egregiously as our own PBS Nightly News Hour which I angry-watch b/c I am a masochist.
There.. it is only now being covered beyond throwaway headlines, pushed aside by the latest “Famine!” “Genocide!” or Zionist caused volcano disaster in GHAAAZA.
(pardon my anger but the clowns….)
D.A.
NYC
The term, “assigned at birth” is propaganda. A human can not “assign” sex no more than he/she can assign DNA.
“Observed” or “determined” is correct.
I am inclined to mostly agree with EdwardM. In rare cases, sex at birth can not be correctly determined and/or observed. In 5-ARD cases (such as Imane Knelif or Caster Semenya) the sex “observed” at birth is just wrong. Ultrasounds and/or gene tests are needed in these (rare) cases. Swyers and CAIS also rarely occur. These persons look (and think) quite female, but are they? What about human chimeras that are partially XX and partially XY? The good new is that 5-ARD, Swyers, CAIS, and chimeras are quite rare.
For a “typical” Swyers case, see Sarah Fosberg on YouTube.
Frank while these cases exist of course, they are statistically extremely rare.
(I can’t remember the exact numbers but VERY rare indeed).
Which is fine. What Trans Inc. is trying to do is pretend that the entire human race should be adjudicated as if these edge cases are the norm. We should design our buildings and societal norms as if they were, apparently.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
Organized sport is well aware of these differences in sexual development. All regimens of sex testing allow athletes to appeal if they believe they should be eligible to compete in women’s sport despite failing an initial sex screen based on observation of genitalia, no Barr bodies, a Y chromosome, or an SRY gene, (to go from primitive to more advanced technology.)
The principle of adjudication is to ensure fair competition for the female competitors. It doesn’t matter what sex a woman with CAIS “really” is. The only important finding is that she is given a medical waiver to compete in women’s events. No one else in the world ever needs to know her diagnosis. On the other hand, if the sport governing body determines that an athlete appealing her screen has a testosterone-mediated competitive advantage she will be DQ’d. It need give no consideration to an imaginary human right to compete as whatever sex or “gender” one thinks one is entitled to.
the reply option seems to disappear after some level of responses, so i am tacking this on here
Capitalism would be impossible without the limited liability corporation that exists in law as a person. No one would invest in a venture if his entire personal wealth could be attached in a bankruptcy, not limited to what he had invested.
The Names of Lloyds of London, 1689 to ~ 1990s were personally responsible.
There is actually a famous case, to support your point. Maria José Martínez Patiño was allowed to complete as a women in the 1992 Olympics after an appeal.
We’ve been searching for new doctors now that our doctor of many years is retiring. Every new office ask you to fill out a questionnaire which, of course, asks you your name, date of birth, and provides a checkbox for sex. But instead of simply “Sex,” the questionnaire asks for your for “Sex at birth.”
One might be annoyed at this, and I am, but think about what it means. All the doctor really cares about is your actual sex, your “sex at birth.” They understand that, from a medical perspective, it’s your actual sex that counts. How one identifies matters, particularly if the patient is taking hormones or has had some of its parts altered, but male and female are all that the doctor really recognizes as biologically relevant.
There was very little discussion of transmen during the argument. Both cases argued involved transwomen. The parties and court largely focused arguments on questions of equal access and safety. Transmen were not seen as posing a safety issue for other participants in sports. The safety issue largely (but not exclusively) drove the state justification for barring transwomen. Some of the justices talked in ways suggesting that they do not want to address the cases on constitutional grounds and will instead resolve them under title IX.
One argument that proponents of unrestricted inclusion of trans women in female sports often make is that, since trans women are only a very small percentage of the population, their inclusion would have only a very small effect on women’s sports. This claim is completely false. Due to male sports superiority, the inclusion of trans women would completely destroy ‘female’ sports at the higher levels of competition. Here’s why:
For the sake of illustration, assume two things: 1. 1 out of 100 women who enter a sport are trans women, and 2. trans women are twice as likely to win a sports competition as biological women. If the latter is true, it would follow that the percentage of competitors who are trans would double at each higher level of competition. E.g., here’s what would follow from unrestricted inclusion of trans women in female sports:
Entry level – 1 out of 100 entrants are trans
HS Varsity – 2 out of 100 competitors are trans
College – 4 out of 100
State – 8 out of 100
Region – 16 out of 100
National – 32 out of 100
International – 64 out of 100
Olympics – 100 out of 100 competitors are biologically male
The actual results might not quite as dire, since I probably overstated the actual percentage of trans women in the population. On the other hand, I might have understated the likelihood of trans women defeating bio women in competitions.
But whatever the case, I think it is important to highlight the fact that the inclusion of trans women in female sports would have the effect of entirely excluding many or most biological women from the higher levels of competition in what was intended to be their own sports.
The most straightforward solution and tactic to my mind would be as follows:
The biological definition of sex based on gamete type is used. If you produce the male gametes, you are male no matter what you say.
After puberty, sports will be divided into two groups:
– Open
– Female
Only biological females can compete in the Female group. Males or females can compete in the Open group. This will allow exceptional females to “play up” if they wish, analogous to a very talented 14 year old boy playing with 18 year old young men.
In this simple scheme, there is no recognition of a “trans” gender. A trans-woman is treated as a man, because that is what he is. A trans-man is treated as a woman, because that is what she is. This is as it should be, as “trans” is a construct that needs to be de-legitimized.
This will protect women’s sports from this invasion of male participants, and will also accommodate exceptional women.
But what about the unexceptional men?
/s
Some of them may lose their spot to a woman that is playing in the Open division. But this is ok, as it will probably be uncommon. Also, women’s participation in sports will probably still lag men’s overall, as fewer women tend to go out for sports. But measures like this will help that as well.
This solution would also allow the many female trans allies to live what they preach: instead of playing on the women’s teams, loudly and proudly declare that you’re joining the “Open” team in order to keep your trans sisters company and make them feel more like real women.
Of course, you’ll lose to all the males and seldom or never win trophies or set records, but surely sacrificing that to provide support to the Most Marginalized while having fun and camaraderie doing sports in an inclusive environment is more than worth it.
Gosh, that’s good!
Five-yard penalty for not putting “/s” after it, though! (Took me a sec….)
It is only when Jews kill Muslims that the left cares.
Very interesting Econtalk podcast with David Deutsch on what he calls “the pattern”: “a persistent, global impulse not primarily to attack Jews, but to justify attacks on Jews–socially, politically, or physically.”
https://simplecast.econtalk.org/episodes/david-deutsch-on-the-pattern
Thanks for that Mr. Lysander. Prof Deutsch has been talking about the “pattern” for awhile and he makes a good case.
I love econtalk – that guy gets the smartest people out there.
Thx for the tip.
D.A.
NYC
I visited Harold’s a couple of years ago, and remember the sandwiches being even larger than they look in that photograph, possibly due to the angle. And, yes, the pickle-bar was amazing. They kindly provided an entire loaf of bread on the side, free-of-charge so that you could make a half-dozen regular Jersey-sized sandwiches, which are, themselves far larger than you are likely to encounter in the US Mid West, where I reside. As a Jersey boy, I’ve long contended that if they serve you a pastrami sandwich that doesn’t have so much meat (and sour kraut) that the top piece of bread is sharply curved upward, that they are stingy ganefs. Final note: pastrami/corned beef combos are quite common in North Jersey.
Justice Brown invented the new category of transginger. No one is doing that.
“Well, we’ll see how long Slate (which really is biased in a bad way) or The Nation neglect Iran. At first I rejected Mounk’s explanation, but the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right. It can’t just be American neglect of the rest of the world, which is a reality given we’re a parochial nation, for we sure pay a lot of attention to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza.”
I see the Far Left as suffering from severe cognitive dissonance on the issue of women’s rights. It’s undeniable that on this issue, Iran is much worse than the US…or say Israel. Therefore, one would think that a Far Left feminist would be much more interested in criticizing Iran than the US or Israel.
But it is also undeniable that Islam is a major reason for the repression of women in Iran. So that would mean criticizing non-Westerners, the “colonized”, Muslims, and [gasp] “people of color”…which are supposed to be the good guys in all circumstances under Far Left doctrine.
So to deal with the dissonance, Iran and other places like it are just ignored. If Slate magazine dared to explore this issue in depth, they’d have to cope with the fact that women are being oppressed in a Muslim nation and the white western people are not to blame. That doesn’t jive with the Ideology!
A publication like Slate would be more likely to hand-wring over manspreading or some such microaggression in Manhattan than probe the treatment of women in Iran.
So yes, Mounk is on to something.
But how many people are far left? How many people read The Nation? Not that many compared to NYT and WaPo.
More info on Iran: the regime got in trouble by printing money to prop up failing banks run by regime loyalists. Now inflation is through the roof.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/bank-collapse-iran-protests-83f6b681
Recommend if you have a subscription.
My late father in law many years ago subscribed us to The Nation. I didn’t “identify” as either left or right, as I made my determinations based on the issues, as I still do today. He thought that I should be exposed to more left-wing influences.
It was horrible! And worse, even when I ended the subscription the next year, I got propaganda from far, far left sources in the mail for years after that. I suppose that The Nation got paid to sell my data. So much for principle.
The number of people on the far left is small. However, they are very influential.
“Far” is relative to the current Overton window of acceptability, which in effect adjusts so that the far extremes continue to be a small minority outside it. Previous notions of “far left” and “far right” don’t fit well with today’s wider window. Not to mention that even today’s extremes seem to have a lot more in common than they used to.
Per Detroit Free Press (paywalled), fundraising accounts for UAW member and Ford worker TJ Sabula, who shouted Pedophile Protector at the Orangeman yesterday, who replied Fuck You and flipped him off, subsequently laid off, have reportedly reached $500K, up from 300 this morning.
They used snipers a lot in 1978 in the earlier revolution. Comparing the two events, 45 years apart is an interesting study. The main variable being (as always) technology and its outsized impact on the speed and intensity of events.
D.A.
NYC
Checking with Google Translate, “Te Rā o te Puku” (belly) seems less apt than “Te Rā o te Puke” (hill). Typo?
With all the negativity in the news; I was very happy to see the swan landing, especially since I am a retired airline plot. It appeared to use its feet as speed-brakes as well as for directional control until its trailing edge feathers began to flutter, when it seemed to reach optimum landing speed as it “lowered its landing gear” to water-ski into a very smooth landing. Thanks very much, Dr. Coyne, for posting this. It made my day.