Wash Post Sobs About ‘Kentucky’s Lone Trans Athlete’

Have you, dear reader, ever wondered what it’s like to write for The Washington Post I don’t mean swimming in the power currents of K Street, lunching on the musty glory of Woodward and Bernstein or having intimate access to the rest of the Democrat party. I mean the job’s requirements and compensations day in and day out. 

An August 25 piece from education reporter Moriah Balingit offers some clues. In it, Balingit tells the story of a 13 year-old Fischer Wells who is banned from playing on a Lexington Kentucky school girls field hockey team because he’s really a boy.

Credulity is required when you are writing for The Post. Balingit is onboard with trans ideology, writing with all the proper assumptions, using the preferred “she” pronoun and coloring the kid’s world as a happy dream crushed by some evil Republicans. (Fischers teammates “could not believe she had been ousted for being herself.” Sigh – the wisdom of the children …)

Write for the Post, you get to pretend that the latest thing is entirely reasonable and consulting 5,000 years of human behavior isn’t. So Balingit states that the Kentucky High School Athletic Association “had set extraordinarily high hurdles for transgender athletes to play on teams that matched their gender identity.” Imagine requiring members of a girls team to be girls. The state’s reaction is, an activist tells Balingit, “a really vicious attack on one trans child in Kentucky.”

Write for the Post, you don’t let details trip up the narrative. Balingit tells readers the athletic association “required that transgender athletes undergo ‘sex reassignment’ before puberty — though it was unclear what that meant. For transgender athletes who underwent sex reassignment after puberty, the association required that “surgical anatomical changes have been completed, including external genitalia changes and gonadectomy.” Sounds terribly convoluted. However, readers will never know Fischer’s status in terms of the rules or his actual sex. We only know he’s “a middle-schooler with boundless enthusiasm, a bookworm and a novice field hockey player.” (Also, the state is playing catch-up. If its reactions are too narrow or unclear, well, this is the left’s brave new world. Define “woman.”)

Write for the PostNumbers and statistics are only as meaningful as the people who use them. Balingit asserts that a “Post analysis” (the gold-standard for, well, Posties) of CDC data from select states and urban districts suggests “that about 1 percent of athletes in these jurisdictions are transgender.” Sounds right. However, what happens to the opposite side of this coin? Is it possible for biological men to crash events in track and/or swim meets that affect women? It’s not a one-to-one equation. It’s not a one-to-one equation.

Write for the Post, you – and your readers – know who the bad guys are. “Chris Hartman, executive director of Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign, says the bills were part of a coordinated effort for Republicans to gain traction with conservative voters. Lawmakers are ‘seeking to drive a wedge between voters,’ Hartmann said.” Elsewhere, “In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) directed state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse for seeking gender-affirming health care, such as hormones, for their transgender children. Conservative parents have also targeted clubs for LGBTQ students.” 

Write for the PostIt’s possible to make the victim pretend that she wants to remain peaceful, while reactionary forces force him to act. “Fischer is reticent about the ways this unusual chapter has affected her,” Balingit says, “about what it is like to be singled out by a branch of the state government, about what it’s like watching the classmates she recruited head off to field hockey practice when she has been barred from competing.” But Fischer testified at the Kentucky capital,there are videos and news items all over Google about Fischer, and Fischer is in the Washington Post. Fischer – or the people manipulating him – aren’t really reticent about much. 

Summarising, when you write to the Post, you’re writing to flatter the worldview of good progressives.

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