A more recent example of this phenomenon is the way Imane Khelif was presumed to be transgender and people immediately using he/him pronouns for her without actually reading any facts of the story. It is extremely disappointing how fast “rage” news spreads and how long it takes to get the factual information back into the story. I had a coworker angrily say, “well, he shouldn’t be allowed to fight women!” And when I countered that Imane was born female and has always been female, my coworker immediately responded, “oh… that’s fine, then.” It was fascinating to watch, and not many people would so quickly change their tune.
My cousin posted it on Facebook and first her argument was “This is why we have had separate men’s and women’s sports. Biology matters more than feelings. Period.” When one of her friends pointed out that she is biologically female, always identified and presented as female, etc. her next argument was “the physique is male. ‘She’ should box men.” Like WHAT?! So I asked what made her physique male… is it her height, her muscle mass, her testosterone level? If it’s her testosterone level… does that mean women with PCOS shouldn’t compete?
The frustrating thing is that this kind of body policing only happens to women. If a man has a natural body that helps him to win, he's lauded and applauded. If a women has a natural body that helps her to win, it's "unfair."
ABSOLUTELY ‼️ One of the many things that is unfair about gender segregated sports is how we treat stand-out athletes across genders. Michael Phelps is elevated as an elite athlete for his innate advantages in his sport, whereas in the case of Dutee Chand and Caster Semenya their innate advantages in their sports hindered their athletic careers. I would argue that if we removed gender as the classification, we might elevate all athletes for their innate abilities in sport and we might find more fair ways of classifying sport leagues based on the skills or advantages relevant to the sport. As an example, we have already seen the success of this policy in wrestling, where removing gender and organizing athletes into weight classes has created a more fair and inclusive sport. As a result, in 2006, Michaela Hutchison from Alaska became the first girl to win a state high school mixed-gender wrestling championship. She wasn’t the last. Today, there are thousands of girl wrestlers on teams.
“Tarah I can appreciate you have a different opinion. I believe in facts. Biology and DNA are scientific facts. Men are biologically stronger than women. Feeling change. If he wants to pretend he is a woman, he can.
However, sports were separated so women had an even playing field so they could excel. If he wants to compete in boxing he can compete with biology, not feelings. No one is saying he can't compete, he just needs to compete with other men.
This idea that a man should be able to compete against women is destroying women's rights. It is a woman's right to compete against women, not men pretending to be women.”
I just can’t. I may have to just delete my FB app for my sanity.
But “he” isn’t a “he”. She is a she. Her biology and DNA are female as far as anyone knows. She was born female, she identifies as female, she lives as a female in a country where it is ILLEGAL to be trans. She has been beaten by other female boxers. She isn’t “pretending” to be anything. She is a woman! She is not a trans woman which seems to be the confusion. Every single human has some level of testosterone and estrogen. She may not fit your preconceived notions of what a woman should look like but that doesn’t make her a man.
I would lose my whole mind with this person. Bless you for trying to get through to her. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Right?! Transgender individuals shouldn’t even be part of the discussion because it doesn’t have anything to do with anything lol!
Unfortunately, this is my mom’s extended family (including other family on her side). My mom passed when my sister and I were 17, but I don’t remember her being like this at all. My dad on the other hand… 😒
I would actually be really curious to know where they got the idea that sports BECAME gender segregated so that women could have a level playing field. Sports have largely been gender segregated because we *barred* women from participating in them at all, because men didn't believe that women's bodies could handle the stress of athletics. Then, as women were allowed to participate in sports, they were relegated to playing a different version of the Men's games, because again men didn't believe their bodies could handle the Men's athletis. Notice that women's versions of sports often have different equipment, different sized pitches/courts/ distances, and different rules. Because we started with the initial belief that women cannot handle athletics, that women cannot dominant male athletes, we designed sports for Women that don't allow them to train or compete with Men. It's not that Women wouldn't be competitive with Men, it's that we won't let them. We'd be amazed what all bodies could do if only we trained them.
"Consider marathons. Women in Western societies were discouraged from running for centuries and formally excluded from competing in marathons until the 1970s. In that time, men got much faster. When women were first allowed to compete, they were much slower than men, but since then, they’ve gotten faster too. In fact, they’ve gotten faster much more quickly than men ever did. It took approximately thirty years for men to shave thirty minutes off their best time; it took women only five.66 Today, the men’s record is still faster than the women’s record but by less than ten minutes. What we are allowed and encouraged to do shapes what our bodies are capable of doing." - Gender: Ideas Interactions, Institutions by Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree
Gender segregation of sports is believed to create a level playing field. However, "researchers [have] identified more than 200 biological abnormalities that offer specific competitive advantages, among them increased aerobic capacity, resistance to fatigue, exceptionally long limbs, flexible joints, large hands and feet and increased numbers of fast-twitch muscle fibers—all of which make the idea of a level playing field illusory, and not one of the which is regulated if it is innate." When we classify sports by gender, we force many boys/men to compete in leagues where they may be disadvantaged, the same for girls and women. When we classify sports by gender, we also hinder the performance of elite athletes by not allowing them to compete against other athletes of similar advantage outside their gender. Classifying sports by gender creates unfair competition among athletes by forcing disadvantaged athletes to compete against more advantaged athletes and by blocking advantaged athletes from competing against comparably advantaged athletes.
"Bruce Kidd, a former long-distance Olympic runner, told me in May that Olympians themselves sometimes joke that they’re all freaks of nature, with one or another genetic abnormality that makes them great at what they do. Kidd, a Canadian who has long pushed for gender equity in sports, noted that there are also many external variables that influence performance: access to excellent coaching, training facilities, healthy nutrition and so on. 'If athletic officials really want to address the significant factors affecting advantage, they should require all athletes to live in the same place, in the same level of wealth, with access to the same resources,' he says. 'Boy, oh, boy, there are so many unfair advantages many Olympians have, starting with who their parents are.'”
So I wonder what would this person say to a basketball team who is playing against a player that is 2 ft taller than any of them. It’s happened before and nobody says that’s “unfair” and that particular player should not be able to play basketball. It’s maddening that because it’s a hormone issue (maybe) with a woman that we all lose our minds.
Someone just came up to me on Monday and said can you believe that they are letting men box against women in the Olympics? I told him she was born female and to check his facts. I then asked him why he was spending his energy being so angry over something that does not affect him in any way and said wouldn't it be great if we could all be kind to one another.
It's so upsetting that this took place. The thing I have come to understand about our identities in life is that each of us has two sets of identities: the ones we claim for ourselves, and the ones that people put on us. For many women, especially those that are elite athletes their gender and womanhood is often stripped from them by the public because our culture struggles to see women as dominant and expects them to perform white femininity. When they don't we come up with sex testing to "protect women," but in fact sex testing has a long history of harming women athletes: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/31/sex-testing-rules-harm-women-athletes
I’ve recently started listening to a podcast series called Tested on the Embedded podcast. It’s focused on female athletes (I believe runners) who also produce too much testosterone. They are given a choice of going on hormone blockers I believe or not competing. These athletes spend their whole life preparing for an opportunity like the Olympics, but at the same time they are forced to put their body through unnecessary medical treatments to pursue this dream.
I stood at my neighborhood primary poll for 6-1/2 hours yesterday handing out lit and sharing information about the secretary of state and attorney general candidates I support. A sweet little old lady told me we have pornography in our school district libraries. When I asked her what books, she said that kindergartners in our school district are given books that teach them how to perform oral sex. I asked who told her. It was her church. Abundant Life in Lee’s Summit, MO. They actively tell their parishioners lies. And they believe them. Then they run for our school board and win. They have a majority on our school board. And they are not the only church in our community purposely undermining our public institutions. Thank you for pointing out the danger of the media. Please do not overlook the danger of our neighborhood churches.
I have seen this unfortunately as well. A clergy member who I loved and respected started talking about how we need to read more than just the "mainstream media" which, okay, great! Diversify your information sources! There are plenty of smaller or niche publications that are doing excellent work on deep dives and investigative reporting.
Unfortunately, how that started to manifest was throwaway lines about issues that didn't quite pass the sniff test, and I learned to start fact-checking those claims every week. Pretty soon I would see a bit of misinformation floating around from specific sources and I *knew* I'd be hearing about it that next week in church. This clergy member, like so many people, took the idea that "there are two sides to every story" to mean "the side of the story that resonates most with my feelings must be true." It was really sad and, while not the sole reason, it was part of my consideration for ultimately moving to another church.
I had the same experience. Awful stuff. Still looking for a spiritual home, and I just hope my dad (who passed 4 years ago) forgives me (yes, I believe in an afterlife.)
Gina -- I am a recent retiree from LSR7 (LSHS). Several years back, I attended the school board meeting where parents confronted the District regarding CRT. Their "representative" who spoke claimed that it had infiltrated and dominated our social studies curriculum (K-12). I found this quite interesting, given that I had been on the social studies curriculum writing team that year (and the previous four years). When I went to school the following morning--the prevailing conversation around the table with my colleagues was, "what the hell is CRT?"
Thank you for your service in LSR-7. All 3 of mine attended K-12, and I was on Hazel Grove PTA board for 16 consecutive years. I can’t imagine being in education right now with the current political climate that has taken over churches, etc.
I was hired under Dr. Stansberry in 2001. While the country has certainly 'evolved' with regard to public education over the past 20+ years, I believe that LSR7's troubles began in earnest when Dr. Stansberry retired. And, thank you for your involvement on the PTA.
Like many things in this country, we took good public schools for granted because they worked, until they didn’t. Now everything is a struggle. But that is purposeful.
At the risk of sounding like an “conspiracist,” Every time something causes division in our country, democracy erodes, and Putin smiles.
The deregulation of the news industry by the Reagan administration has been really bad for the American people. Really, really bad. The technology we have today to spread information combined with the idea that news is entertainment has a lot to do with why we are in this situation today. News has become the car wreck we can’t stop looking at (and I know who I like to blame.) That’s not real news and part of being an informed citizen. Stopping will take effort for me.
It’s interesting that when problematic issues arise, deregulation preceded the issues. In every market segment this is proving to be correlational. Media, substance advertising, energy, insurance, transportation, health care profiteering. It amazes me that we can see these literal train wrecks and still allow industry & politicians to convince us that less regulation on each category will produce beneficial results. Fool me once & all that.
Agree so much. Yes, deregulation has caused inflation, rising prices and depressed wages and rich CEOs. Why don’t people see the connection? Regulation is good for consumers.
On a visit to my hometown in TX, my middle son- who is our most sensitive but also emotionally aware- told me that the “angry news” my father was listening to in the car with him was scaring him. First of all, what a heartbreaking thing to hear your kid say! But it was also a good opportunity to talk about why someone would want to rile someone up and guess what: it’s rarely because of their strong belief in justice and truth and almost always because it drives traffic and clicks and listens and bags of money their way. It was a good lesson for him and a good reminder for me (even if heartbreaking in nature)
I remember when CNN and then FOX news came on line. Being forced to watch it what felt like 24/7 in my teen years shaped how I consume media. I’ve watched older family members get anxious because of the news they consume. Believe either lies *or* believe the bias to the point that it impacts them negatively. I reminded one they would still be informed if it wasn’t always on. Watching the morning news and the evening news might be a good start. I’ve started to pick up the local (weekly) paper and it’s nice. Local news reminds you of what is important to your community 💜
The need to keep faces glued to a 24-hour news cycle caused a huge change tone. People were content to watch 30 minutes of local and then 30 minutes of national news on the daily of mostly factual content. But the need to keep them tuned in to support the advertising revenue coming in, made for a sea change.
They for sure can be! It depends on what news source you're watching. Is it local news? World news? For some people just not having the tv on and set to a cable news station 24/7 is a start!
The fear mongering is real. I have an elderly Aunt who fears going to the grocery store because the only thing that her local station does is report on shootings (not that they don’t happen, but it’s not random shooting. It’s DV, or its local gang crime in almost every case.) She lives in a much smaller (and significantly less crime-ridden!) metro area in our state than I do, and she constantly expresses how fearful she is. She can’t understand how I’m so blasé about the higher level of crime in my area. I’m not blasé at all, but I’m also fully aware that her news media (Sinclair owned, largely) thrives on keeping people scared. There’s no real representation of actual crime statistics, and that they are much less than they used to be. It’s just that the obsessive coverage keeps people tuned in and anxious.
I remember both my mom and mother-in-law were freaked out that I let my kids ride their bikes around the block in our small town. They both regularly consumed local TV news and were convinced there was a murder van on every corner, ready to snatch kids. I really feel for your aunt and wish she could find media that made her less anxious.
Me, too. And I’ve spoken with her about the fact that watching it just fuels her anxiety, but she fears not knowing about something reported on the news in her social group. Drives her a little nuts that I don’t watch any televised news.
(For well-intended individuals) I see curiosity as a spectrum: on one side is never questioning anything and accepting everything we're told at face value; on the other side is questioning everything we come across. And similar to the political spectrum, it horseshoes -- where questioning everything and questioning nothing wind up being similarly dangerous.
-> With no curiosity, we're quick to repeat what we hear and likely to spread disinformation.
-> With unbridled curiosity, we can inadvertently create disinformation/unnecessary doubt when we're overly curious out-loud.
Then when you add in malevolent actors who prey on both extremes -- using the less curious for message propagation and the highly curious to foster doubt -- our well-intentioned yet dangerous impulses are amplified.
When it comes to topics we're not experts on, how would you recommend staying curious without overreacting? For example: I'm not an immunologist, so when I hear someone with an authoritative voice/position "just ask" questions about vaccinations, how do I identify if it comes from a place of healthy curiosity vs. manipulation?
As a clinical pharmacist, I am super curious and always questioning. I fall down a lot of rabbit holes. However, if I read something, I generally start with "how does this make me feel?" And "does this seem plausible? Or something that might have been taken out of context?" From there I generally look for the source video/material. If I told my 10 year old self that I'd be watching CSpan on a regular basis, I would've thought crap... I'm turning into my father. Also looking for quality source material is super important. Just like scientific writing, I look for things that don't brandish a lot of emotionally driven adjectives and have less filler. Questioning is how you learn and improve but the type of questing Sharon is speaking about is the type that is asking in bad faith, to bring doubt to the argument. Where you're not asking to further the discussion but to cut the other person down. As far as health information, go to your trusted professionals. Utilize your community. As an individual, you shouldn't have to understand complex medical information. For the most part, talk to your local retail pharmacist. A lot of us in the medical field are truly in this field because we want to improve people's lives and part of that is helping people to understand their options and the benefits/risks of meds and/or procedures so you can make an informed decision.
As a hospital worker during COVID, I felt so defeated with providing information to patients who would refuse standards of care but question why they weren't receiving therapy x or y. I can't recommend something if there are no properly powered studies out there because the flip side is those therapies also have risks as well as other patient populations who rely heavily on those therapies to live with other disease states. I would go in with good faith to discuss options with patients but would be met with many of the same bad faith questions that I was hearing on certain news stations. Or they wouldn't even entertain the discussion, saying that I was in big pharmas' pocket. Sir or ma'am, if I was in big pharmas' pocket, there would be signs and working in a community hospital during COVID is not the vibe.
Geeze. That sounds tough, especially during the height of COVID. Thank you for your work in the medical field.
I agree that curiosity is a good thing. It seems to me that when people are "just asking questions," they aren't driven by curiosity. We need people of good faith who ask questions that others aren't willing to ask, but bad faith questions that are meant to stir doubt, fear, and outrage are not healthy to our public discourse.
Curiosity killed the cat, or so the saying goes LOL But seriously, we can encourage curiosity and also foster good habits of fact checking and identifying reliable sources/experts. The erosion or trust in experts/institutions has really been damaged by bad actors for their own selfish gain.
Excellent content! This is one we need pinned at the top of all social media platforms. I have taught my teenagers these concepts when they first got a phone so they could begin to practice discernment and make sure to understand news sources and the way to consume facts and not fall for misinformation. I appreciate your efforts to educate on this very important matter!
All the fury around furries resulted in a new addition to the school board dress code in my county (in Florida) that says something to the effect of, students may not wear anything that emulates the appearance of an animal. So little girls can't wear cat ear headbands because the adults are afraid of a rumor that is blatantly false.
I limit my news intake to trusted sources (Mosh - regular and premium accounts, and Sharon. Once in a while I look at local news apps but have all notifications turned off.
Recently due to being diagnosed with depression I also unplugged from Facebook and cleaned out who I follow on Instagram. My mental health can only take so much.
The litter box chaos drove me bonkers. There are content creators continuing to spread it and friends post it all enraged. Even had a supervisor at work swearing our local high school had them because his teenager saw them. I said “pics or it’s BS”. No pic ever was taken. I remind folks spreading it that teens have their phones 24x7 and if the boxes existed (they would have to be considerably larger than what cats use) social media would be flooded with the images. For kicks I tried finding pics of these boxes online and found zero, not even an AI generated one 🤣.
My son-in-law doesn’t watch or follow any news at all and strangely it has not negatively impacted his life at all. He has zero stress because he isn’t fed a diet of information he doesn’t need.
We would be a happier society if we turned off the TV and put down our devices and went outside or read a book. I’m not saying no news, but limited and only what we really want and need to know.
The rise of conspiracy influencers, “just asking questions”, fans the flames. The problem is that the questions are rarely in good faith. They already know their opinion on the subject, they aren’t asking questions. They are intentionally sowing discord and distrust.
In my opinion a big tell is when they rage bait, then promote a product a few slides later. They are selling something.
Asking questions and curiosity is a beautiful thing in the hands of someone who is genuinely interested in learning. Unfortunately, some people are only interested in creating chaos.
It’s actually a rumor rooted in transphobia. “If we let them identify as whatever gender they want, what’s next, they can identify as animals or trees?”
Similar to “if we allow gay marriage, what’s next, someone can marry an animal or a house?”
As a retired third grade teacher, I can tell you there is a bathroom problem. Teachers dehydrate themselves, have more bladder issues than the general population because we rarely get a break! Could we fix that please?
Thanks to Sharon, we stopped viewing news for the most part, opting to read more from the top-middle of the ad fontes chart. Much better.
I came to understand the impact of consuming only one, highly biased news channel when I stayed with my 93 yr old parents last year for a month to help out after a medical issue. While both are still quite sharp mentally, they have admittedly lost some critical thinking skills.
For most of the day, Fox News was on the TV at 140 dB. I was stunned at the constant barrage of fear and threats. I'd never been exposed to 12 hours a day of constant negativity. It's shocking what it does to you, both physically and mentally. I suddenly understood the source of my elderly parents high level of anxiety and insistence that our country was doomed. They live in total fear that they will be murdered in their beds by "illegals", etc. Yes the furries thing came up. To this day they still believe it's true (and porn in the classrooms) and obsess over their great grandchildrens safety. It's heartbreaking.
The impact of what we're allowing into our consciousness on a consistent basis cannot be underestimated.
We had a candidate for U.S. House who bills herself as "the anti-AOC." She is very charismatic but also very extreme and weird. She would go around to area schools talking about keeping litter boxes out of schools and riling parents up. Thankfully, she has lost big both times she's run, even in my red county. This time, she's not running.
In an attempt to improve my mental health, but still stay informed, I carefully curated the way I consume news. I spend no more evenings spiraling while watching cable news “analysis” and I don’t doom scroll looking at endless memes and armchair experts. I primarily read my news from a handful of reliable sources and follow no more than half a dozen professional independent journalists. I follow Ad Fontes to occasionally monitor where the media I consume ranks. It has done wonders for my sanity and actually made me a more educated citizen. In regards to the litter box lies, at this point it’s almost like people just want something to feel outrage about. It’s extremely easy to identify it’s not true.
Unfortunately, there are people, including some in my family, who consider Google to be a machine of the left, and consider reliable, low bias news sources to be full of lies, and liberal bias. Facts are now biased.
We know, too, that there is a concerted nationwide effort to undermine public schools in order to privatize education. The lies that are being told, especially by churches, are shameful -- yes, the one about talking about oral sex with kindergartners is a true example of the lies. It's all part and parcel with Project 2025.
My hope is if enough of us share articles like this one, we might reach a few people and get them to consider that perhaps they could reconsider their sources.
I cannot tell you how often I have asked someone for a source on a claim and been immediately accused of a specific party affiliation. No side has a monopoly on citations!
A more recent example of this phenomenon is the way Imane Khelif was presumed to be transgender and people immediately using he/him pronouns for her without actually reading any facts of the story. It is extremely disappointing how fast “rage” news spreads and how long it takes to get the factual information back into the story. I had a coworker angrily say, “well, he shouldn’t be allowed to fight women!” And when I countered that Imane was born female and has always been female, my coworker immediately responded, “oh… that’s fine, then.” It was fascinating to watch, and not many people would so quickly change their tune.
My cousin posted it on Facebook and first her argument was “This is why we have had separate men’s and women’s sports. Biology matters more than feelings. Period.” When one of her friends pointed out that she is biologically female, always identified and presented as female, etc. her next argument was “the physique is male. ‘She’ should box men.” Like WHAT?! So I asked what made her physique male… is it her height, her muscle mass, her testosterone level? If it’s her testosterone level… does that mean women with PCOS shouldn’t compete?
🦗🦗🦗
The frustrating thing is that this kind of body policing only happens to women. If a man has a natural body that helps him to win, he's lauded and applauded. If a women has a natural body that helps her to win, it's "unfair."
ABSOLUTELY ‼️ One of the many things that is unfair about gender segregated sports is how we treat stand-out athletes across genders. Michael Phelps is elevated as an elite athlete for his innate advantages in his sport, whereas in the case of Dutee Chand and Caster Semenya their innate advantages in their sports hindered their athletic careers. I would argue that if we removed gender as the classification, we might elevate all athletes for their innate abilities in sport and we might find more fair ways of classifying sport leagues based on the skills or advantages relevant to the sport. As an example, we have already seen the success of this policy in wrestling, where removing gender and organizing athletes into weight classes has created a more fair and inclusive sport. As a result, in 2006, Michaela Hutchison from Alaska became the first girl to win a state high school mixed-gender wrestling championship. She wasn’t the last. Today, there are thousands of girl wrestlers on teams.
Yeah, like Michael Phelps!
We have a reply!
“Tarah I can appreciate you have a different opinion. I believe in facts. Biology and DNA are scientific facts. Men are biologically stronger than women. Feeling change. If he wants to pretend he is a woman, he can.
However, sports were separated so women had an even playing field so they could excel. If he wants to compete in boxing he can compete with biology, not feelings. No one is saying he can't compete, he just needs to compete with other men.
This idea that a man should be able to compete against women is destroying women's rights. It is a woman's right to compete against women, not men pretending to be women.”
I just can’t. I may have to just delete my FB app for my sanity.
But “he” isn’t a “he”. She is a she. Her biology and DNA are female as far as anyone knows. She was born female, she identifies as female, she lives as a female in a country where it is ILLEGAL to be trans. She has been beaten by other female boxers. She isn’t “pretending” to be anything. She is a woman! She is not a trans woman which seems to be the confusion. Every single human has some level of testosterone and estrogen. She may not fit your preconceived notions of what a woman should look like but that doesn’t make her a man.
I would lose my whole mind with this person. Bless you for trying to get through to her. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Right?! Transgender individuals shouldn’t even be part of the discussion because it doesn’t have anything to do with anything lol!
Unfortunately, this is my mom’s extended family (including other family on her side). My mom passed when my sister and I were 17, but I don’t remember her being like this at all. My dad on the other hand… 😒
I would actually be really curious to know where they got the idea that sports BECAME gender segregated so that women could have a level playing field. Sports have largely been gender segregated because we *barred* women from participating in them at all, because men didn't believe that women's bodies could handle the stress of athletics. Then, as women were allowed to participate in sports, they were relegated to playing a different version of the Men's games, because again men didn't believe their bodies could handle the Men's athletis. Notice that women's versions of sports often have different equipment, different sized pitches/courts/ distances, and different rules. Because we started with the initial belief that women cannot handle athletics, that women cannot dominant male athletes, we designed sports for Women that don't allow them to train or compete with Men. It's not that Women wouldn't be competitive with Men, it's that we won't let them. We'd be amazed what all bodies could do if only we trained them.
"Consider marathons. Women in Western societies were discouraged from running for centuries and formally excluded from competing in marathons until the 1970s. In that time, men got much faster. When women were first allowed to compete, they were much slower than men, but since then, they’ve gotten faster too. In fact, they’ve gotten faster much more quickly than men ever did. It took approximately thirty years for men to shave thirty minutes off their best time; it took women only five.66 Today, the men’s record is still faster than the women’s record but by less than ten minutes. What we are allowed and encouraged to do shapes what our bodies are capable of doing." - Gender: Ideas Interactions, Institutions by Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree
Gender segregation of sports is believed to create a level playing field. However, "researchers [have] identified more than 200 biological abnormalities that offer specific competitive advantages, among them increased aerobic capacity, resistance to fatigue, exceptionally long limbs, flexible joints, large hands and feet and increased numbers of fast-twitch muscle fibers—all of which make the idea of a level playing field illusory, and not one of the which is regulated if it is innate." When we classify sports by gender, we force many boys/men to compete in leagues where they may be disadvantaged, the same for girls and women. When we classify sports by gender, we also hinder the performance of elite athletes by not allowing them to compete against other athletes of similar advantage outside their gender. Classifying sports by gender creates unfair competition among athletes by forcing disadvantaged athletes to compete against more advantaged athletes and by blocking advantaged athletes from competing against comparably advantaged athletes.
"Bruce Kidd, a former long-distance Olympic runner, told me in May that Olympians themselves sometimes joke that they’re all freaks of nature, with one or another genetic abnormality that makes them great at what they do. Kidd, a Canadian who has long pushed for gender equity in sports, noted that there are also many external variables that influence performance: access to excellent coaching, training facilities, healthy nutrition and so on. 'If athletic officials really want to address the significant factors affecting advantage, they should require all athletes to live in the same place, in the same level of wealth, with access to the same resources,' he says. 'Boy, oh, boy, there are so many unfair advantages many Olympians have, starting with who their parents are.'”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html
So I wonder what would this person say to a basketball team who is playing against a player that is 2 ft taller than any of them. It’s happened before and nobody says that’s “unfair” and that particular player should not be able to play basketball. It’s maddening that because it’s a hormone issue (maybe) with a woman that we all lose our minds.
You’re doing great. I have crazy family on my dad’s side. I just finally unfriended them and called it a day.
That is a fantastic point! I’m interested in learning more about it!
Someone just came up to me on Monday and said can you believe that they are letting men box against women in the Olympics? I told him she was born female and to check his facts. I then asked him why he was spending his energy being so angry over something that does not affect him in any way and said wouldn't it be great if we could all be kind to one another.
It's so upsetting that this took place. The thing I have come to understand about our identities in life is that each of us has two sets of identities: the ones we claim for ourselves, and the ones that people put on us. For many women, especially those that are elite athletes their gender and womanhood is often stripped from them by the public because our culture struggles to see women as dominant and expects them to perform white femininity. When they don't we come up with sex testing to "protect women," but in fact sex testing has a long history of harming women athletes: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/31/sex-testing-rules-harm-women-athletes
I am happy the IOC came out so strongly against sex-testing, as this was not always their stance. Hopefully more women's careers and mental health can be preserved now that they have dropped sex-testing. Here's an in depth article about the humiliating practice of sex testing women athletes: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html
I’ve recently started listening to a podcast series called Tested on the Embedded podcast. It’s focused on female athletes (I believe runners) who also produce too much testosterone. They are given a choice of going on hormone blockers I believe or not competing. These athletes spend their whole life preparing for an opportunity like the Olympics, but at the same time they are forced to put their body through unnecessary medical treatments to pursue this dream.
I stood at my neighborhood primary poll for 6-1/2 hours yesterday handing out lit and sharing information about the secretary of state and attorney general candidates I support. A sweet little old lady told me we have pornography in our school district libraries. When I asked her what books, she said that kindergartners in our school district are given books that teach them how to perform oral sex. I asked who told her. It was her church. Abundant Life in Lee’s Summit, MO. They actively tell their parishioners lies. And they believe them. Then they run for our school board and win. They have a majority on our school board. And they are not the only church in our community purposely undermining our public institutions. Thank you for pointing out the danger of the media. Please do not overlook the danger of our neighborhood churches.
I have seen this unfortunately as well. A clergy member who I loved and respected started talking about how we need to read more than just the "mainstream media" which, okay, great! Diversify your information sources! There are plenty of smaller or niche publications that are doing excellent work on deep dives and investigative reporting.
Unfortunately, how that started to manifest was throwaway lines about issues that didn't quite pass the sniff test, and I learned to start fact-checking those claims every week. Pretty soon I would see a bit of misinformation floating around from specific sources and I *knew* I'd be hearing about it that next week in church. This clergy member, like so many people, took the idea that "there are two sides to every story" to mean "the side of the story that resonates most with my feelings must be true." It was really sad and, while not the sole reason, it was part of my consideration for ultimately moving to another church.
I had the same experience. Awful stuff. Still looking for a spiritual home, and I just hope my dad (who passed 4 years ago) forgives me (yes, I believe in an afterlife.)
Good luck!
I am sorry for your loss.
Gina -- I am a recent retiree from LSR7 (LSHS). Several years back, I attended the school board meeting where parents confronted the District regarding CRT. Their "representative" who spoke claimed that it had infiltrated and dominated our social studies curriculum (K-12). I found this quite interesting, given that I had been on the social studies curriculum writing team that year (and the previous four years). When I went to school the following morning--the prevailing conversation around the table with my colleagues was, "what the hell is CRT?"
Thank you for your service in LSR-7. All 3 of mine attended K-12, and I was on Hazel Grove PTA board for 16 consecutive years. I can’t imagine being in education right now with the current political climate that has taken over churches, etc.
I was hired under Dr. Stansberry in 2001. While the country has certainly 'evolved' with regard to public education over the past 20+ years, I believe that LSR7's troubles began in earnest when Dr. Stansberry retired. And, thank you for your involvement on the PTA.
Like many things in this country, we took good public schools for granted because they worked, until they didn’t. Now everything is a struggle. But that is purposeful.
At the risk of sounding like an “conspiracist,” Every time something causes division in our country, democracy erodes, and Putin smiles.
Doesn’t that church have multiple members on the school board too? I have only heard toxic things about that church.
Yes. They are a majority.
The deregulation of the news industry by the Reagan administration has been really bad for the American people. Really, really bad. The technology we have today to spread information combined with the idea that news is entertainment has a lot to do with why we are in this situation today. News has become the car wreck we can’t stop looking at (and I know who I like to blame.) That’s not real news and part of being an informed citizen. Stopping will take effort for me.
I know a little about the media changes made under the Regan administration, but this would be an excellent deep dive!
YES! I would LOVE a deep dive on the media changes too 👏 In the meantime, this article was a great introduction to the topic for me: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/talk-radio-lopsided-on-the-media
I completely agree. This would be a wonderful deep dive.
It’s interesting that when problematic issues arise, deregulation preceded the issues. In every market segment this is proving to be correlational. Media, substance advertising, energy, insurance, transportation, health care profiteering. It amazes me that we can see these literal train wrecks and still allow industry & politicians to convince us that less regulation on each category will produce beneficial results. Fool me once & all that.
Agree so much. Yes, deregulation has caused inflation, rising prices and depressed wages and rich CEOs. Why don’t people see the connection? Regulation is good for consumers.
On a visit to my hometown in TX, my middle son- who is our most sensitive but also emotionally aware- told me that the “angry news” my father was listening to in the car with him was scaring him. First of all, what a heartbreaking thing to hear your kid say! But it was also a good opportunity to talk about why someone would want to rile someone up and guess what: it’s rarely because of their strong belief in justice and truth and almost always because it drives traffic and clicks and listens and bags of money their way. It was a good lesson for him and a good reminder for me (even if heartbreaking in nature)
I remember when CNN and then FOX news came on line. Being forced to watch it what felt like 24/7 in my teen years shaped how I consume media. I’ve watched older family members get anxious because of the news they consume. Believe either lies *or* believe the bias to the point that it impacts them negatively. I reminded one they would still be informed if it wasn’t always on. Watching the morning news and the evening news might be a good start. I’ve started to pick up the local (weekly) paper and it’s nice. Local news reminds you of what is important to your community 💜
The need to keep faces glued to a 24-hour news cycle caused a huge change tone. People were content to watch 30 minutes of local and then 30 minutes of national news on the daily of mostly factual content. But the need to keep them tuned in to support the advertising revenue coming in, made for a sea change.
I feel like evening news may not be as biased as cable news, but they are heavy on fear mongering.
They for sure can be! It depends on what news source you're watching. Is it local news? World news? For some people just not having the tv on and set to a cable news station 24/7 is a start!
Totally agree!
The fear mongering is real. I have an elderly Aunt who fears going to the grocery store because the only thing that her local station does is report on shootings (not that they don’t happen, but it’s not random shooting. It’s DV, or its local gang crime in almost every case.) She lives in a much smaller (and significantly less crime-ridden!) metro area in our state than I do, and she constantly expresses how fearful she is. She can’t understand how I’m so blasé about the higher level of crime in my area. I’m not blasé at all, but I’m also fully aware that her news media (Sinclair owned, largely) thrives on keeping people scared. There’s no real representation of actual crime statistics, and that they are much less than they used to be. It’s just that the obsessive coverage keeps people tuned in and anxious.
I remember both my mom and mother-in-law were freaked out that I let my kids ride their bikes around the block in our small town. They both regularly consumed local TV news and were convinced there was a murder van on every corner, ready to snatch kids. I really feel for your aunt and wish she could find media that made her less anxious.
Me, too. And I’ve spoken with her about the fact that watching it just fuels her anxiety, but she fears not knowing about something reported on the news in her social group. Drives her a little nuts that I don’t watch any televised news.
(For well-intended individuals) I see curiosity as a spectrum: on one side is never questioning anything and accepting everything we're told at face value; on the other side is questioning everything we come across. And similar to the political spectrum, it horseshoes -- where questioning everything and questioning nothing wind up being similarly dangerous.
-> With no curiosity, we're quick to repeat what we hear and likely to spread disinformation.
-> With unbridled curiosity, we can inadvertently create disinformation/unnecessary doubt when we're overly curious out-loud.
Then when you add in malevolent actors who prey on both extremes -- using the less curious for message propagation and the highly curious to foster doubt -- our well-intentioned yet dangerous impulses are amplified.
When it comes to topics we're not experts on, how would you recommend staying curious without overreacting? For example: I'm not an immunologist, so when I hear someone with an authoritative voice/position "just ask" questions about vaccinations, how do I identify if it comes from a place of healthy curiosity vs. manipulation?
As a clinical pharmacist, I am super curious and always questioning. I fall down a lot of rabbit holes. However, if I read something, I generally start with "how does this make me feel?" And "does this seem plausible? Or something that might have been taken out of context?" From there I generally look for the source video/material. If I told my 10 year old self that I'd be watching CSpan on a regular basis, I would've thought crap... I'm turning into my father. Also looking for quality source material is super important. Just like scientific writing, I look for things that don't brandish a lot of emotionally driven adjectives and have less filler. Questioning is how you learn and improve but the type of questing Sharon is speaking about is the type that is asking in bad faith, to bring doubt to the argument. Where you're not asking to further the discussion but to cut the other person down. As far as health information, go to your trusted professionals. Utilize your community. As an individual, you shouldn't have to understand complex medical information. For the most part, talk to your local retail pharmacist. A lot of us in the medical field are truly in this field because we want to improve people's lives and part of that is helping people to understand their options and the benefits/risks of meds and/or procedures so you can make an informed decision.
As a hospital worker during COVID, I felt so defeated with providing information to patients who would refuse standards of care but question why they weren't receiving therapy x or y. I can't recommend something if there are no properly powered studies out there because the flip side is those therapies also have risks as well as other patient populations who rely heavily on those therapies to live with other disease states. I would go in with good faith to discuss options with patients but would be met with many of the same bad faith questions that I was hearing on certain news stations. Or they wouldn't even entertain the discussion, saying that I was in big pharmas' pocket. Sir or ma'am, if I was in big pharmas' pocket, there would be signs and working in a community hospital during COVID is not the vibe.
Geeze. That sounds tough, especially during the height of COVID. Thank you for your work in the medical field.
I agree that curiosity is a good thing. It seems to me that when people are "just asking questions," they aren't driven by curiosity. We need people of good faith who ask questions that others aren't willing to ask, but bad faith questions that are meant to stir doubt, fear, and outrage are not healthy to our public discourse.
Curiosity killed the cat, or so the saying goes LOL But seriously, we can encourage curiosity and also foster good habits of fact checking and identifying reliable sources/experts. The erosion or trust in experts/institutions has really been damaged by bad actors for their own selfish gain.
Lol, I was taught that the full saying was "Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back!". I say stay curious, but consider the source!
Thanks for the smile today, this saying brought back some fun childhood memories. : )
I’ve never heard that extended saying! Love it!
Excellent content! This is one we need pinned at the top of all social media platforms. I have taught my teenagers these concepts when they first got a phone so they could begin to practice discernment and make sure to understand news sources and the way to consume facts and not fall for misinformation. I appreciate your efforts to educate on this very important matter!
All the fury around furries resulted in a new addition to the school board dress code in my county (in Florida) that says something to the effect of, students may not wear anything that emulates the appearance of an animal. So little girls can't wear cat ear headbands because the adults are afraid of a rumor that is blatantly false.
I limit my news intake to trusted sources (Mosh - regular and premium accounts, and Sharon. Once in a while I look at local news apps but have all notifications turned off.
Recently due to being diagnosed with depression I also unplugged from Facebook and cleaned out who I follow on Instagram. My mental health can only take so much.
The litter box chaos drove me bonkers. There are content creators continuing to spread it and friends post it all enraged. Even had a supervisor at work swearing our local high school had them because his teenager saw them. I said “pics or it’s BS”. No pic ever was taken. I remind folks spreading it that teens have their phones 24x7 and if the boxes existed (they would have to be considerably larger than what cats use) social media would be flooded with the images. For kicks I tried finding pics of these boxes online and found zero, not even an AI generated one 🤣.
My son-in-law doesn’t watch or follow any news at all and strangely it has not negatively impacted his life at all. He has zero stress because he isn’t fed a diet of information he doesn’t need.
We would be a happier society if we turned off the TV and put down our devices and went outside or read a book. I’m not saying no news, but limited and only what we really want and need to know.
The rise of conspiracy influencers, “just asking questions”, fans the flames. The problem is that the questions are rarely in good faith. They already know their opinion on the subject, they aren’t asking questions. They are intentionally sowing discord and distrust.
In my opinion a big tell is when they rage bait, then promote a product a few slides later. They are selling something.
Asking questions and curiosity is a beautiful thing in the hands of someone who is genuinely interested in learning. Unfortunately, some people are only interested in creating chaos.
Yes!
It’s actually a rumor rooted in transphobia. “If we let them identify as whatever gender they want, what’s next, they can identify as animals or trees?”
Similar to “if we allow gay marriage, what’s next, someone can marry an animal or a house?”
It makes me sad.
As a retired third grade teacher, I can tell you there is a bathroom problem. Teachers dehydrate themselves, have more bladder issues than the general population because we rarely get a break! Could we fix that please?
Thanks to Sharon, we stopped viewing news for the most part, opting to read more from the top-middle of the ad fontes chart. Much better.
I came to understand the impact of consuming only one, highly biased news channel when I stayed with my 93 yr old parents last year for a month to help out after a medical issue. While both are still quite sharp mentally, they have admittedly lost some critical thinking skills.
For most of the day, Fox News was on the TV at 140 dB. I was stunned at the constant barrage of fear and threats. I'd never been exposed to 12 hours a day of constant negativity. It's shocking what it does to you, both physically and mentally. I suddenly understood the source of my elderly parents high level of anxiety and insistence that our country was doomed. They live in total fear that they will be murdered in their beds by "illegals", etc. Yes the furries thing came up. To this day they still believe it's true (and porn in the classrooms) and obsess over their great grandchildrens safety. It's heartbreaking.
The impact of what we're allowing into our consciousness on a consistent basis cannot be underestimated.
We had a candidate for U.S. House who bills herself as "the anti-AOC." She is very charismatic but also very extreme and weird. She would go around to area schools talking about keeping litter boxes out of schools and riling parents up. Thankfully, she has lost big both times she's run, even in my red county. This time, she's not running.
In an attempt to improve my mental health, but still stay informed, I carefully curated the way I consume news. I spend no more evenings spiraling while watching cable news “analysis” and I don’t doom scroll looking at endless memes and armchair experts. I primarily read my news from a handful of reliable sources and follow no more than half a dozen professional independent journalists. I follow Ad Fontes to occasionally monitor where the media I consume ranks. It has done wonders for my sanity and actually made me a more educated citizen. In regards to the litter box lies, at this point it’s almost like people just want something to feel outrage about. It’s extremely easy to identify it’s not true.
Unfortunately, there are people, including some in my family, who consider Google to be a machine of the left, and consider reliable, low bias news sources to be full of lies, and liberal bias. Facts are now biased.
We know, too, that there is a concerted nationwide effort to undermine public schools in order to privatize education. The lies that are being told, especially by churches, are shameful -- yes, the one about talking about oral sex with kindergartners is a true example of the lies. It's all part and parcel with Project 2025.
My hope is if enough of us share articles like this one, we might reach a few people and get them to consider that perhaps they could reconsider their sources.
"Facts are now biased."
I cannot tell you how often I have asked someone for a source on a claim and been immediately accused of a specific party affiliation. No side has a monopoly on citations!