Disgraceful lies and hyperbole from the guardian

[mardirousse]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/21/washington-anti-trans-sports-genital-exams. I'm appalled at the Guardian. To claim that protecting the female category for school sports will require girls to undergo genital checks is disgraceful. What pediatrician doesn't know the sex of their patients?

Not that I believe this to be true but what is your proposal to keep boys out of girls' sports?

And they say TERFs are obsessed with what's in people's pants, lol.
Yeah, I remember my sister coming home crying from school because the nurse wanted to inspect her before athletics. Like, that never actually happened.
Today she's more likely to come home crying because of a boy in her event.
Forget about looking in people's pants, we need fire extinguishers
"TRA liar liar, pants on fire!"

In the post modern <up is down, night is day, Foucaultian "language is violence", your lived experience trumps objective reality> world, then there's nothing inconsistent with TransParentlyNonsense's views, because they're not lies. They're one of 101 "truths". The fact that they are lies is immaterial, lies are truth, one set of lies is all that matters to one TRA, another set of lies is all that matters to another TRA.
That's what gives unlimited rocket fuel to their fantastical takes posted on here and elsewhere.
In the meantime, a biological male Imane Khelif batters women on his way to Olympic Gold, and even hard bitten male boxing commentators indulge the lie.
And again we're being gaslit with the spook story of the need for genital testing en masse if TERFs win.

@TransParentlyAnnoyed is fantasising about clitorises being measured, however there will be exactly zero invasive tests on females if this is passed.

But I thought many trans people were not identifying with either gender?

By saying someone 'checks gender' you must think sex and gender are the same? What is checking gender and how?

But isn't that supposedly transphobic to think that?

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/diagnosis/
It is a difficult condition for those affected, and I feel for the people who discover it at puberty.
However, there is no clitoris measurement involved, just ultrasounds and genetic screening.

TPA spouts arrant guff. How can you 'sex test' for 'gender'? It's gibberish.

A simple and cheap cheek swab test can resolve the issue easily. TPA's bizarre imaginings about measuring notwithstanding.

'Sex testing is part of checking gender. They literally measure clitoral length'

What cess pit echo chamber spawned this garbage?
And if it's not garbage please provide proof that this ever happened. And how? Is there a special SI unit for this???

They are beyond parody as a newspaper.

Operation Let Them Talk, on Trans R/eddit, on Mumsnet etc, eventually let's the light in.
I recall a thread here where we were informed that just three decades ago, women tennis players voted overwhelmingly to keep sex testing...and the WTA ignored them.
The Olympic authorities similarly ignored female athletes to roll over sex testing.
One end result is a whole parallel ecosystem of misinformation, vague generalities and deliberate lies, like the intrusive sex testing one.
Do any senior sports journalists and doctors push back against these lies?
Other than a few proud individuals like the Telegraph's Oliver Brown and The Guardian's Sean Ingle, no.

Why should the state get involved in enforcing sex categories in sport? Surely that is up to each sport’s governing body?

This looks like government overreach to me. Glad it couldn’t happen here and it is up to the governing bodies to apply the EA as clarified by the Supreme Court.

I haven’t bought the Guardian for years now, though when I was younger I couldn’t imagine life without it. I can’t bear to see a newspaper I used to trust and admire, now pouring out hostile propaganda against women.
Is it the US influence, does anyone know? I remember being astonished at the size (as well as the misogyny) of the Guardian’s US workforce when they produced a petition against Suzanne Moore.

It's such a badly written article that it's hard to tell, but I imagine it's because the state has control over what happens in schools, and that this is to do with school athletes.

I notice the article is 11 months old, and wonder why it surfaced now.

Are you American? That why we have a State, to ensure that citizens are fairly dealt with under the law of the land, rather than let self-appointed bodies make the rules up.

I'm not sure your right regarding the UK(?).

My - possibly mistaken - understanding is that if a sports governing body does not consider it to be necessary for fair competition or for the safety of competitors, then they can permit transwomen (ie men) to compete in women only sports.

Up to about 5 years ago it was quite common to see stories of mediocre sportsmen excelling in women's sport.

In the last few years or so sports governing bodies like World Athletics, World Swimming, the UCI, and the RFU have seen the light and declared that males who have gone through puberty are not eligible to compete in women's events.

My understanding is that they've done that because of mounting scientific evidence and mounting public opininon that allowing men to compete in women's events is both unfair and dangerous. [But see Note below]

They haven't done it because of anything the UK government or UK courts have done. If anything the UK government has been complicit in allowing men to compete against women.

It's just like shops selling clothes are not obliged to have single sex changing rooms if they don't want to offer them - although that might be indirect sex discrimination against women

[Note - even then this seems only to appliy to "elite" sport and not necessarily recreational sport]

TPA Used to happen all the time, and since transphobes kicked up a stink about women like Lin Yu-ting (who has passed these humiliating tests to the sound of no apologies whatsoever from the idiots who called her a man who likes punching women) it's very much back.

TPA claimed on a different thread that Lin Yu-Ting had been found to be a women - maybe even a cis-woman, I can't recall - and that we should all be apologising for claiming LYT was male.

It was pointed out to TPA at the time that in fact testing showed that LYT is male with a male DSD, but in keeping with the IOC protocol which takes DSDs into account, it was determine that the DSD in question was one which prevented androgenization from taking place.
LYT was therefore ruled eligible to take part in the women's category.
LYT was not ruled a woman, or a cis-woman.

This shows the flexibility of the IOC protocol - males who fails the first gender test by showing the presence of a Y chromosome + a DSD can go to another level of testing.

Lin Yu-Ting was able to pass that second level. It's highly unlikely Imane Khelif could, as nobody could argue with a straight face that his DSD prevented androgenization!
But IK is free to submit to the same testing as LYT, and see what happens, if he wants to.

So it is still accurate to say that LYT is male, but with a DSD which is considered compatible with competing in women's sports. No apologies needed.

Some governing bodies (my own, British Cycling included) decided to take matters into their own hands prior to the SC ruling. Many were reluctant to do so. The SC clarification of the meaning of sex in the EA gave many more governing bodies the confidence to move ahead with banning males from the female category. International bodies (such as the UCI, which somewhat belatedly adopted BC's stance) have also mostly fallen into line.

Regarding your note, certainly for most (maybe all?) UK sports, the ban on males in the female category applies at all levels of competition, not just elite.

Isn't making the rules up the entire point of sports governing bodies?

So hold on, if “transphobia” harms all women, and by “transphobia” you mean banning males from female sports, how will allowing males into female sports keep women safer and what material benefit will it provide to women?

I think what forced British Cycling's hand on that, was the Emily Bridges situation. On the time trialing forum, I was called a bigot and Nazi for saying that men, irrespective of how they identify should not be allowed to compete in women's sports. That shocked me, but it was mostly left wing/younger riders saying that to me. The older riders and the vast majority of the women agreed with me.
If Bridges had been able to compete against women, there is doubt in my mind, that he would have beaten every women's time trial record from 10 to 100 miles and every track record, as well as the road races.

This is the million dollar question. TRAs have enormous concern for female athletes who they say have to go through "humiliating and invasive" sex testing (which as other posters have said, is generally a cheek swab which is neither humiliating or invasive) but no documented concern for any of the issues women are genuinely raising about men and boys in girls and women's sports.
Feigned concern and plain hypocrisy- somehow given a platform in the Guardian, a once decent newspaper, now completely oblivious to 51% of the population.

@Truinio - "Some governing bodies (my own, British Cycling included) decided to take matters into their own hands prior to the SC ruling. Many were reluctant to do so. The SC clarification of the meaning of sex in the EA gave many more governing bodies the confidence to move ahead with banning males from the female category. International bodies (such as the UCI, which somewhat belatedly adopted BC's stance) have also mostly fallen into line..."

We may be at cross-purposes.

I was responding to @moto748e's reply to you that we have a state "to ensure that citizens are fairly dealt with under the law of the land, rather than let self-appointed bodies make the rules up."

Contrary to moto748e's view we know full well that both labour and tory governments have done absolutely sweet FA to protect women's sport from male intrusion and have been quite happy to let sports governing bodies allow men to participate in women only events.

Nor am I convinced that governing bodies have in recent years changed their policies because of the UK Supreme Court decision in FWS. I think they've basically followed the previous lead of international bodies like World Athletics and World Swimming who changed their policies on inclusion because of mounting scientific evidence and growing public opinion that male inclusion in women's sport was obviously unfair and dangerous. Perhaps British Cycling was ahead of the UCI in this respect but I think they may have been one of only very few British bodies that were ahead of their international counterparts.

Remember that the only reason the UK Supreme Court was called on to make any sort of decision at all about what the word woman meant in specific legislation in the first place was because FWS challenged a particularly stupid idea from the Scottish government. Thank god FWS were allowed to appeal from the decision of the Scottish Appeal court that went against them.

"Why should the state get involved in enforcing sex categories in sport? Surely that is up to each sport’s governing body?..."

Notwithstanding my earlier comments I think it's perfectly OK for the state to get involved in enforcing sex categories in sport if the relevant governing bodies have shown they can't do it properly themselves because of ideological capture. My complaint is that the state should have acted but hasn't

"... This looks like government overreach to me. Glad it couldn’t happen here and it is up to the governing bodies to apply the EA as clarified by the Supreme Court."

I'm not sure the Supreme Court did clarify this area. What if a governing body doesn't recognise a separate category for women but obviously should do?

"... Regarding your note, certainly for most (maybe all?) UK sports, the ban on males in the female category applies at all levels of competition, not just elite."

How do ParkRun get away with allowing men to self identify as women to get times in the women's rankings?

And so far as I'm aware the London Marathon allows men to self identify as women in the mass race. It's only in the elite, championship and "good for age" female categories that men are banned.

Parkrun and the London Marathon are two of the largest participation sporting events in the UK

"The ballot initiative includes a requirement she calls “invasive and extreme”: all students who wish to compete on girls’ teams would have to"

Oh dear!

I think the important thing here may be that this is impacting low level children's sports. And you are a lot less likely to see people resorting to genetic testing for that.

The thing is though, it's actually pretty normal in the US for doctors to check the genitals on a yearly exam. So it's not likely to be massively out of order.