Guardian article - interesting use of pronouns

I meant fallen into the wrong side of history.

Fallen? Risen out of the slough, surely?

The byline says 'Agencies' which I think (tell me if I'm wrong) means it's come from a news agency not their own sports desk? Still interesting that they actually printed it I suppose but I'm not sure it means the Guardian has fallen just yet

Sorry, misread your tone jay!

The same sort of pronoun avoidance can be seen in Jenner's wiki page, in the sections about the olympics etc. Wiki is of course notorious for globally editing pronouns as soon as a sleb declares being NB, so I found it quite noticeable. Of course that's a different case - Jenner was competing entirely fairly in the correct sex events. Maybe using 'she' in the context of the decathlon would be too much for some people's cognitive dissonance...

That pronoun dodging gives me hope that all is not lost at the Graun

I’m pleased that Telfer has been brought up short by physical reality, and I hope it continues to happen.

That Canadian policy is barking

@ErrolTheDragon I was being sarcastic, as they felt unsafe from a few written words before.

What the sports articles need is a sentence that says ‘x is eligible for the men’s events but needs a qualifying time of y. Her fastest time this year is z’

So many girls turn away from sports at higher levels and who can blame them. Then there are schemes trying to encourage girls to continue with sports & yet nobody has joined the dots as to why they don't......

On the guardian tangent, rather than Cece, there is an interesting opinion piece by Martin Kettle about how institutional groupthink and defensiveness gets in the way of doing the right thing. He uses the BBC and the Met police to illustrate is point, but the pint he makes also applies in so many situations around the gender mess we're in.
This does get pointed out in the comments very carefully but clearly
It would be good for the editorial team for f the guardian itself to have a look at themselves with this in mind-

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/24/bbc-met-police-perils-groupthink?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

And I reckon they want to keep advertisers happy, like somewhere else I know .

A picture paints a thousand words. No one can look at that without seeing the unfairness that is right there.

It’s the editorial teams, not the overall readership. They want to keep the woke US readers happy and don’t want negativity on Twitter, because like the Labour Party and its supporters like Owen Jones, they think Twitter represents the real world. Whenever they open comments on such articles they get an insight into the real world and they don’t like it, and quickly close the comments again. They seem shocked people aren’t thinking how they’re supposed to, like the Hartlepool by-election.

In 2018, in the NCAA Division II Championship 400m women’s hurdles final, a runner called Minna Sveard raced her best and came 8th. No doubt she trained like crazy for 12 months. She raced again in 2019 and came 2nd. She should be able to call herself a college champion, but she can’t. She was beaten by Telfer.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4175263--No-Trans-Olympian-List-of-women-and-girls-disadvantaged-in-sport-resource-thread

Very interesting indeed. And a carefully chosen picture IMO.

Is there a little rebellion happening at the Guardian?

I really feel for those who signed that nasty letter about Suzanne Moore, they must be feeling terrified in the office now.

AFAIK the testosterone level requirement only applies to a certain standard of competitions, ie at international level.

Indeed, rather my point. So Telfer isn't trans enough to undergo any treatment or present as female but is trans enough to win US national (albeit amateur) title.

How many girls will give up, because they can't stand or afford to hang on in there

This.

my suspicion is that the people who read the sports pages of the Guardian aren’t the same demographic that read the rest of the paper and wouldn’t stand for it.

There's an interesting piece in the current issue of Private Eye about how Kath Viner made cuts to the sports pages because the readers who were clicking through to sports stories on the website weren't then paying to subscribe. So perhaps there's a bit of resentment between the sports writers and the rest of the paper.

I noticed the byline was "Agencies", so either the agency copy came written like that, or they've rewritten it to take out the pronouns.

The sports department have allowed reality to bleed though for a while - Sean Ingles has been writing & tweeting reality wrt women's sport in particular.

It’s certainly a very clunky way to write, my suspicion is that the people who read the sports pages of the Guardian aren’t the same demographic that read the rest of the paper and wouldn’t stand for it.

That article reads like posts on here. We're not allowed to say the truth, refuse to lie, so end up with a slightly clunky looking compromise.

Those lax domestic standards, however, serve to stymie the career of any natal woman before she even gets anywhere near to an Olympic qualifier. How many girls will give up, because they can't stand or afford to hang on in there, just on the off chance that the CC Telfers of this world fail a testosterone test.