John Oliver on trans athletes

Damn, Victoria Smith uses words like a scalpel.

To add to the categories of cargo cultists already mentioned, there's those with skin in the game: I saw one man in a recent Times comments section on men in women's sports who claimed to be both gay and the father of a daughter who now identified as a trans son.

He was spamming every critical comment demanding everyone watch John Oliver and imbibe the gospel of truth and righteousness. No amount of citing bias, dishonesty etc was even registered.

i wanted to highlight and quote pretty much that entire article.

depressingly i think she's right. of course john oliver knows that the number of men who are really women is zero and that men as a class are bigger and stronger and more violent than women.

but he is trapped by the 10th law of misogyny poor lamb (The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.). women drawing attention to his fucking stupidity must be punished for making him and his chums look bad.

the 'shutupshutupshutup' approach to telling truth to power. go you john, you useless idiot.

i saw a pretty positive response to Oliver on SM yesterday (?). He may seem a dishonest dissembler to us, but plenty don't see that. The fact that everything in the US has to seen through the lens of Trump is probably the biggest part of the problem.

Victoria Smith on John Oliver on trans athletes

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-toxic-shame-of-progressive-man/

Ffs John just admit you were wrong, pet. You'll feel better for it in the long run. Don't worry, I'm not expecting miracles. You can still be smug, feel superior and, I'm sure, you'll find another reason to hate women. Possibly something more plausible though. Maybe because we hate your constant self-satisfied expression, unfunny jokes, strained and stupid metaphors? Just spitballing here. You'll definitely think of something or your team of bad writers will.

Fair enough. There are lots of posters here for whom it's very important to be left wing. That often means believing that the left activist scene is full of good people with mostly good ideas and instincts, who just happen to have gone off the rails on one or two issues.

If we set them straight on genderwoo, then things will be fine and we can go back to a virtuous left opposing an evil right.

Due to experience, I regard that as a faith-based position which I'm unable to share.

Well @SionnachRuadh I have friends in a mainly liberal suburb of Chicago. They've been on demonstrations against Doge and for Palestine etc. They have no time for gender ideology but say they are wary about broaching the subject with other Dems. I suspect many of their friends are in the same situation. Like the 1950s Communist Party cell in LA which disbanded when the members discovered they were all undercover government agents.

Men in women's sports, though, isn't a 50% issue. It's a 15% issue at best.

The 15% of wokelords in the electorate is big enough and noisy enough to impose its will on the Democrats, especially if the geriatric leadership of the party thinks "we don't really understand this, but it sounds a bit like the black and feminist and gay struggles we remember, so we'll defer to the activists". But that lands them with a policy that the general electorate just won't bear.

Elite theory says that an organised minority will always beat an unorganised majority. That's usually true, but sometimes the bullshit is just too obvious.

Wait until the law suits start rolling. Then the advertisers will start getting nervous about certain causes. And when the advertisers start getting nervous it doesn't matter if the viewing figures because there will be more thoughts given to protecting the brand reputation.

John Oliver's support for this won't die because it goes out of fashion. It will stay fashionable as an 'anti-trump' ideal because so many hate Trump.

However the advertisers still will see it as toxic and run. It's too much of a risk.

They will want to have a market across America not just for half America.

It's a simple numbers game. If a product becomes too closely related to this subject you instantly half your potential market overnight. This is brand suicide.

Bud Light was the wake up call.

https://babylonbee.com/news/john-oliver-says-men-clearly-have-no-physical-advantage-as-women-beat-him-at-everything

Had a look at this on YouTube. The comments are very revealing. About 2 to 1 against Oliver. He is very slippery isn't he ? Disingenuous.

His researcher

Aah, it all makes sense

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/media/article-14580083/john-oliver-trans-transgender-athletes-fact-checker-dm-brent.html

Yes, to repurpose an old joke: "When John Oliver moved from the UK to the US, he raised the average IQ in both countries."

I think lots of Murican liberals assume that a (relatively posh) English accent means the speaker is clever and sophisticated.

John Oliver is just number 453 on my list of why there should be a moratorium on Cambridge Footlights alumni getting into the entertainment business, and I live in dread of Trump deporting him so he ends up back here.

I think for many, they really enjoy feeling self-righteous and smug, and smarter than everyone else.

The comic part of this is the gap between what they imagine people are thinking ("Gosh! Isn't that John Oliver a clever chap, with all those sophisticated arguments? He really showed the opposition what for!") and what people are actually thinking, which is: "How is it possible to be that stupid and still manage to dress yourself in the morning?"

I think for many, they really enjoy feeling self-righteous and smug, and smarter than everyone else.

And for the older ones a lot of their identity is built around things like being an activist for the oppressed, being open-minded, etc. In reality though they are rule followers.

It's interesting in the US, a lot of the same people are still doing things like wearing masks in public. It's very performative and tribal.

This is because there is no American left. If there were they'd be fighting for working class people against big business. Instead you have comfortably off liberals trying to be oppressed. We can't improve your wages or house you but here , take a rainbow 🌈 sticker and a pronoun. They cost nothing...

Decent summary of Oliver here:

https://www.outkick.com/analysis/john-oliver-last-week-tonight-trans-athletes

"particularly found his commentary about Payton MacNab to show exactly what type of man John Oliver is".

He is a self-righteous pos.

I've just watched this and it was very much an appeal to tribalism. There was no mention of the ultimate issue, which is how we define the terms "men" and "women."

Go Men, says male feminist

I read in the Private Eye that the Democratic Party were insisting that their three national chairs had to be “gender balanced” - ie a “man” (presumably self ID’d as such), a “woman” (ditto) and a “non-binary” (very definitely self ID’d!)

They really, really, don’t seem to want to learn the lessons of how the orange buffoon got a second term. It wasn’t only the gender bollocks, obviously, but it was a bigger part of it than they’ll ever be prepared to admit to themselves.

Jon Oliver is such a disappointment. I hope he doesn't have daughters.

Does he think the entire female population of Afghanistan is identifying into their lack of human rights? Because according to his position, all they need to do is identify into the 'gender' that has human rights. Right?

What a total dick he is.

Oh what a surprise another champion of women really isn't at all

the upkeeping of male entitlement is far more important to the vast majority men in positions of influence and power

same old same old ...

Indeed, And this bit, too:

The sad truth is that no media outlet has seriously investigated the scope of the problem, and sporting organizations are more often than not hostile to providing any data about males in female competition.

At one time, people would have said, that's a job for the BBC, to expose this scandal. Or the Sunday Times, or someone.

Thanks so much 🙂🤔