Guardian: weaponised emotional blackmail from 14yo 'trans' athlete

[teawamutu]

The Guardian's rearguard action on reality continues. Apparently the problem is not the parents and authorities who conspired to lie to this boy, coddle his delusions, disadvantage all girls around him in the service of his own wishful thinking etc etc etc: it's definitely the people who pointed it out:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/17/trans-athlete-no-one-should-face-vicious-attacks

I am prepared to feel a little sorry for the kid, who couldn't have been exposed like this if the useful idiots around him had done their fucking jobs. But the Grauniad can fuck off with the tired 'beee kiiiind' shit as a solution. Been there, binned the t-shirt. We want our shit back.

What exists?

People who believe they are/should be the opposite sex? Sure, they exist.

People who actually are, in an ineffable mystical mental way, a different sex to their body? Who have something real in common with the opposite sex that others outside their own head would recognise as well? Something that makes the female half of humanity recognise themselves in a trans woman in a way we do with no other men, or the male half recognise themselves in a trans man?

Honesty, that's a reach. The whole trans thing only works if you just think about what it means from the perspective of the trans person. As soon as you try to fit that world view into the experiences and the variety and the diversity of people who actually are that sex and try to make it make sense as the same thing, the whole thing falls apart.

*educated

I have a material female body. I also have an extremely rare genetic disorder that means I only have one kidney. I wasn’t aware I only had one kidney until 2025 when it was not spotted in an ultrasound. It also causes more obvious problems completely unconnected to my kidney function, so I was completely blindsided when I found out.

Therefore I grew up assuming I had two kidneys - fortunately, my single kidney is amazing - just like a woman, doing the job of two organs. Arguably I identified as someone with two kidneys. That didn’t make me a two kidney person and there’s nothing I can do to change it. And people with one kidney have existed for thousands of years.

But nothing I can do will make me a two kidney person. I can’t put in a kidney shaped bit of fat from elsewhere on my body, just to feel like I have two kidneys. It would be an unnecessary surgery and I’d have to take drugs to stop it dying inside me. I could only have an actual kidney transplanted if my one kidney failed. And now I have to make sure I’m hydrated and not do martial arts (not a great loss).

i definitely felt like someone with two kidneys, but then I don’t know what it feels like for someone who does have two kidneys. And I feel the same now, so maybe I’m a two kidney-identifying person in the wrong body because I only have one kidney.

My experience has taught me that being unhappy with reality does not change reality. The challenge is not to remake the world around us until it matches our self-image, but to find a way to live within the limits of what is true.

No absolutely fucking not.

Because the parallel between being trans and gay is homophobic.

So I do believe it's real but I don't think it's something that can not should be just gone along with because this causes harms.

Absolutely agree Red.

We don't help anyone by pretending to the contrary. Indeed it's harmful to do this. We are trying to HELP and to SAVE young people from this inevitably. We ARE kind. It's just that what we are saying is difficult and not necessarily what they want to hear.

And this ^ the craziness of being accused of being horrible people when it is the women on this thread who are trying to protect our children. Madness.

Or being called homophobic.

I expect an apology for that gem. I wont get one.

Trans ideology is homophobic because if you can't see sex, homosexuality become invisible and loses all it's protections.

Thought experiment. Supposing there was a test you could do, cheek swab say, that diagnosed brains into clear categories of 'mind-sex'. Let's say we did this for babies at birth and recorded their mind-sex on their birth certificates alongside their physical sex.

Would that change who should be in women's sports? No, the reasons for women's sports are bodies not minds.

Would it change who should be categorised as women in medical studies? No, that is about knowing what medicine to give to male or female bodies.

Would it be the appropriate categorisation in the teaching of biology? No, female people would still be the ones with ovaries and uteruses.

Would it be the appropriate category for prisons? No, people with penises can rape, can get people with uteruses pregnant, there is a strong safeguarding reason to keep female bodies and male bodies separate in prisons.

Would it be the appropriate category for changing rooms? No, people are less embarrassed getting undressed in front of others with the same body type to them, plus above note about the risks of penises.

So if there is mind-sex, so what? There is also physical sex and it matters.

[ohgod i actually ended up typing that dreadful phrase 'people with uteruses'. It was a thought experiment okay? I'm not proposing we use the phrase in the real world]

[why would we even call this new biological marker something to do with sex, rather than an interesting brain feature that influences people's personalities and interests, or a physical indicator associated with body dysmorphia disorders?]

Mind-sex people would need their own services and provisions.

Oh wait. Isn't that we've avocated for here for years but has been deemed as insufficient by men who want validation and to use women not the facilities on offer.

Exactly, @thirdfiddle It all doesn't matter. Because mind-sex is irrelevant to all important topics. Only body-sex is relevant. It's so simple.

Hi EvieBB, I hope you take this at face value, it's meant sincerely:
I really appreciate what you say in this post. It's very honest and open. That's not often the case in online discussions, and as we say in Irish: an rud is annamh, is iontach - what is rare is wonderful
I don't know where your opinion will 'settle', that's up to you, but I hope you find some of the posts here useful in your information-gathering.

You suggested their brain gets flooded with the wrong hormone causing a body/mind disconnect. In other words something happens to give them this so called female brain. And I disagree. I am saying we all simply have different likes and dislikes, prefer different stuff. But none of us has a "female" mind. Not women and not the small group of men who say they do.

Exactly

Even if this is true (and there is no evidence that this is the case) all it would ever prove is that what it means to be male/female is broader than we thought from a brain imaging perspective.

Women are still the sex whose bodies develop on a pathway to make large gametes. Men are still the sex whose body's develop on a pathway to bags small gametes. Nothing actually changes.

What’s a demi-girl? Are there also demi-boys?

You bet.
Had a little scout, it seems like the LGBPQRST orgs may be stepping back a little from the wilder creative gender lists. Here's a beautiful one from 2021.

web.archive.org/web/20211104041855/www.teenvogue.com/story/merriam-webster-cisgender-genderqueer-added-to-dictionary

You're going to love this.

Demiboy, demigirl, demigender: Someone who identifies as demigender identifies partially with one (or more) gender(s). For example, a demiguy or demiboy identifies partially as a boy/man/masculine, but not entirely. Demigender can be a subset of bigender or multigender, but does not have to be. A demigender person may identify as demifluid or demiflux. This indicates a part of one’s identity remains stable while the other part or parts are fluid. Often a demiflux person feels that the stable part of their identity is gender neutral or non-binary.

Edit: I can't get the link to format correctly but it would probably copy-paste.

Third Fiddle, well, imagine that. It sounds exhausting. Kind of like multiple personalities. I appreciate the clarification.

Too much self regard in that youth. No thought for others. Either male or a psychopath!

Great post.

(And if objectively discernible "mind sex" really was a thing, would TRAs agree that only those in whom "female mind sex"could be shown to exist should be allowed to change their physical sex characteristics and be accepted as members of the other sex? Of course not.)

I'm very confused about the whole debate re. female and male minds. When you Google it, there are loads on articles saying male and female brains are almost the same, and then there are loads of articles saying the opposite!

This article from Stanford University says they're very different:
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/

But this write-up of the field by a neuroscientist says that any differences are tiny: https://theconversation.com/you-dont-have-a-male-or-female-brain-the-more-brains-scientists-study-the-weaker-the-evidence-for-sex-differences-158005

I really don't get it.

But one thig occurs to me: If men and women's brains are almost the same, why are men and women so very different?

There's an absolute flood of garbage science on the internet, not just on this topic - although this topic really does seem to attract it. Much of it can be found on what one might think were respectable websites.

Anyway, trans rights activists have realized that the "brain sex" idea is a two-edged sword. Even if we could ever prove there were definitive, objective, observable, measureable, and consistent differences between the brains of women and the brains of men, the trans right activists would right back where they'd started. What's the difference between observable differences in brains and observable differences in genitals? Both are physical organs.

Trans-identified people can only claim to have opposite sex brains because right now, we cannot reliably identify consistent differences in the brains of men and women. If we could, I'd bet the house that transwomen would be shown to have male brains. How could a physical body that has otherwise developed as a normal male body have one organ that is female for no reason? The likelihood is vanishingly small.

If men and women's brains are almost the same, why are men and women so very different?

Because they are physically different and society treats them differently, from the moment they are born (or even before). We are bombarded with 'girls are this', 'boys should be that' messages from day one. If the gender crap was actually inate men in the 18th century wouldn't have happily worn lace, heels, make up, wigs and pink because their 'man brains' would have objected.

The word 'theory' doing a lot of work there. I was baking cakes the other day and there was an electrical surge during the time they were in the oven and they came out as sourdough buns, go figure.🤔

No. This is one of the activists' (and parents' - speaking from personal experience) "reaches" used to try to convince others (and, themselves, I imagine) that embryo/fetus/baby can have one physical sex and the other "brain" sex in the womb, especially if the mother is undergoing IVF. Apparently too many hormones in the womb make it happen. Just no. Sex chromosomes are what determine sex.

I am laughing at this one.

You would provide the anaconda gerbils and feel righteous and not once consider the needs of the gerbils.

At least you are honest about it.

Evolution doesn't care about the brain it only cares about viable and fertile offspring. Evolution also doesn't care about if that makes anybody happy or not.

If there were an actual, quick and easy medical test - such as a brain scan - that could identify that someone was 'true trans', then the trans activists would not be happy. How many people who identify as trans would pass such a test? They want self-ID, not an actual test they could fail. They also want to be able to redefine everyone else (hence the 'cis' thing).