39 Comments

Apologies for the re-post. A friend very rightly pointed out that, in the end, this is a positive story. One brave woman is speaking up for her daughter. I wanted the title and URL to reflect that

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I'll be unpublishing the old one after a bit. Sorry about lost comments! I know it's a pain in the arse, but feel free to copy and paste anything you said in this thread.

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I don't think people will do that.

There are so many good comments on the first version. It is a shame that they will be lost.

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I have to say, for those that don’t like to believe in conspiracies, this is starting to feel like a conspiracy!

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This is the easy smear used these days. As one writer said, "If you don't think that the ruling elite gather together to discuss what they are planning, you are blessedly naive." When one watches one's government pushing an agenda, whatever agenda, of course it's a conspiracy and using that word to smear others is just a new version of red-baiting.

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We've known about the gathering of the elite at Bohemian Grove since... well, a very long time ago. I read an article about it in Mother Jones in the 80s I think. I'm sure there's a lot more venues where they do this, and electronic communications have made it a no-brainer now.

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I was typesetting articles in the 1970s about the Trilateral Commission, including their plan to make it impossible to live a middle-class life unless both partners worked.

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Has this been documented somewhere that I can view on the web?

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Oooh, I have only heard of Bohemia Grove from the Armistead Maupin Tales of The City novels

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The Mother Jones article was fascinating - they sent in an undercover reporter, who was able to see a lot of the goings-on (tho' not the secret meetings between industry and government).

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The most disgusting part of this for me - and there are many to choose from - is that it had clearly been getting planned for months if not years and there was absolutely no attempt to consult, prepare, or take the girls feelings into account.

They didn't even have the decency to pretend to consult.

The whole thing was done in an aggressive, bullying, abusive manner when it didn't need to be.

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Could there be a clearer message that women are subservient and their feelings do not matter?

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This makes me so angry , will Thomas and his family should be ashamed of themselves , as should all the coaching associations

I could change my name to cleopatra , still won’t make me a feckin Egyptian beauty 😡

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I just don’t understand why he’s not embarrassed and ashamed. What he’s doing is embarrassing.

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He should be ashamed of being a manipulative, lying cheat. I'd like to see all women refusing to compete against him. It's not a fair competition where they have as much chance of winning as the other women in the race. There is no other way to deal with the arseholes who are dictating inequitable and discriminatory terms. Their fevered gender ideology addled minds reject reasoned arguments. In fact, there should be no argument whatsoever, Thomas should not be there.

Even if he is a big enough shit to think winning by cheating is fine, the relevant authorities shouldn't be fine with it. He isn't a woman, he is a deceitful man. If he was a vaguely decent human being he would see what damage his inclusion is doing. He would be contented to start losing races against other male swimmers, or train harder to improve his chances.

But he isn't a decent human being, nor are his enablers. If anything is to change it's going to involve a large number of women in the sport saying "no". There is no reasoning with misogyny, it has to be resisted.

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He just always looks so smug

I feel so sorry for the poor girls on the team

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Much as I don't condone physical aggression, if I was one of those unfortunate girls I'd feel like kicking him in the balls to remind him of what he is. He's nothing but a fraud in every respect.

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“I desperately want people to wake up to the world we are creating for women” I think everyone on here shares this frustration. I shared an Instagram post about Lia with a female friend who lives in California. She has two sons who swim competitively. I expected a reaction. I didn’t really get anything. She didn’t call me a TERF but she didn’t really seem that interested. Is apathy one of the biggest problems?

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It's apathy but I think there's also fear involved. Californians generally like to see themselves as tolerant and progressive so to go against this ideology exposes them to being labelled as a bigot. This is a misogynistic movement but wrapped up in a nice, progressive package. And it seems to have been very effective so far at painting anyone who objects to it as being a transphobe, a homophobe, as being ignorant and nasty and probably a consumer of right-wing, Christian evangelical-supported media outlets. Etc, etc, etc.

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I think that’s true. My friend is Irish but has lived in California for nearly 20 years. I think she’d just prefer not to know rather than express an opinion either way.

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This is what Evil looks like. Utterly evil

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Jan

2 hr ago

Thank you Graham. So many seeing this from the substack, will finally have access to these chilling words, from this mother. It’s actually gut wrenching to realise this is being perpetuated, the involvement of so many offices, to keep this looking calm and acceptable is ridiculous.

Such a shame that this huge shouldered man, can’t be hidden nicely away, like a 5’6” male could be, whereas 6’4”? and built like a wardrobe really peaked so many, didn’t it ?

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Wonderful speech and truly heartbreaking . Heard it yesterday on the women's declaration international. YouTube channel and I've been enraged ever since . The way those girls are being treated to massage one man's ego is absolutely appalling and shame to all those sports bodies and in particular the ACLU ,who are enthusiastically participating in this outrage ! They should all be removed from their positions and replaced people of honesty and integrity who vow to uphold the principles of fairness in sport ! Disgraceful

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Trans ideology is bullshit - but it's powerfully financially backed up bullshit. The totalitarian scope of the repression described here to silence anyone with a dissenting view, would have made the East German Stasi green with envy. Slap bang in the centre of the land of the free, and its most prestigious institutions. This amazing and deeply disturbing document needs to be both carefully saved for posterity, as well as spread as far and wide as possible. In spite of one of the US' best ever playwrights, Arthur Miller, exposing exactly the same bullshit at work in the 1950s crusade against communism, here we are in the 2020s, repeating the same attempt at mind control of a whole population, through fear of social ostracism. We are apparently really reluctant to learn from our own history.

The NCAA have now apparently thrown a little symbolic gesture women's rights way, with a promise to make eligibility for trans identified males in women's swimming dependent on three instead of one year's testosterone level testing, which would have effectively put an end to Thomas' narcissistically insulting behaviour, but ultimately it's not what is really needed. What is truly needed is the recognition that sport is physical, that physicality is sex dependent and therefore sport needs to be segregated on a sex axis. There should quite simply be no place for men in women's sport. Something nobody would even have dreamed of questioning until six or seven years ago. In that short space of time the world of sport has been turned upside down. That is some hellishly powerful bullshit which has taken hold of a generation and the institutions of a formerly free society, and ransacked their minds for the capacity for free independent thought.

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Brava!! And as we all know: Testosterone levels do not erase the physical results of having undergone male puberty—increased bone length, muscle development, heart and lung capacity. NCAA's new rules are still complete bullshit.

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Heartbreaking.

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Just heartbreaking. You can hear the utter despair, pain and frustration in her voice. . . but what an eloquent speech. Repeatedly taken down. . . for speaking the truth. WTAF. Thanks for sharing.

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Apologies , I should have emphasised HIS

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💔 This mother’s words could peak the world! Being a sports kid’s parent, I still find it jaw dropping that this is happening. It should be the last time young women ever face a man in competition at any level. Frustrating to have to chase this recording down yesterday. I feel like it is really threatening to the trans side and that is why it was being taken down everywhere.

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I admit to becoming bored with these recitals, but it is good to learn of the individual experiences of parents and other swimmers - the issue of men competing in womens sports pretending to be women is wrong, plainly wrong - there is no room for discussion or compromise, no wriggle room at all. Call it out for what it is, cheating. I couldn’t care less if Will finished last in each race, he is stealing a place from a young woman who has worked hard to participate.

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It would be good if you could get this mother on the Mess, if not now, one day ....

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Thomas claims to be a woman, yet displays all the characteristics of an entitled, privileged male. (For male: read brat!)

Slava Ukraini!

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