Sophie’s Choice

Editorial note: Due to continuing overseas travel, I couldn’t do the Ricochet podcast this week, and the 3WHH podcast will arrive tomorrow. See yesterday’s hiking spot below.

—Steve

During a game between the Indiana Fever and Toronto Tempo, a Reality Dysphoria (RD, what the “trans” movement really represents) mob jeered Sophie Cunningham. On other hand, Canadian powerlifting champion April Hutchinson staged a rally for Cunningham, complete with signs proclaiming “Canadian Beavers got the Fever.” As they say in Quebec and France, there’s a double entendre in there that recalls the women’s weightlifting at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

“This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria,” a sportscaster told millions of viewers around the world, “I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing!” No word about her clean and jerk, and the amazing snatcher does not appear among the medalists. Some of the competitors recalled Irina and Tamara Press of the Soviet Union, who for all but the willfully blind were men. The Soviets actually got the idea from the German National Socialists, who told high-jumper Heinrich Ratjen he must pretend to be a girl to bring glory to the Nazi regime. Decades later swimmer William Thomas, a bust against his fellow men, competed against girls to bring glory to himself.

Reality Dysphoria, a variant of the Dictatorship of the Subjunctive Mood (DSM), is all the rage in Canada, now transitioning from a nation of builders to a nation of wreckers like Pierre Trudeau as David Frum explained. Those tempted to point a finger might first consider California’s proclamation of August as “Trans History Month.” According to House Resolution 127 by San Francisco Democrat Matt Haney:

The suppression of gender variance among indigenous California cultures by Spanish and later Anglo settlers was a foundational event of the history of the state, as documented in the journal of soldier Pedro Fages, who wrote in 1775 about native peoples he encountered near the present-day City of San Diego, whom he described as “those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, observed in the dress, clothing, and character of women… They are called joyas, and they are held in great esteem.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood has been known as a residential district for two-spirit, transgender, gender-expansive, and intersex (2STGI) people since the second half of the 19th century, when it was home to people such as “Jenny O.,” a trans woman who corresponded with the famous German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld about her life in the Tenderloin.

The 1959 Cooper Do-nuts Riot in Los Angeles and the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco were important acts of collective resistance to police violence targeting trans people, years before the better-known Stonewall Riot in New York.

Read the whole thing here, and as Steve likes to say, a chaser. Muddy Waters and Stevie Winwood made it clear that “I’m a man.” So stop saying “biological man,” and three cheers for the amazing Sophie Cunningham, who believes that men should not compete against women.

Yesterday’s hiking spot. Video to come at some point.