USA Today Unilaterally Removes “Hurtful Language” from a Female College Athlete’s Op-Ed

Chelsea Mitchell runs track at the college level. On May 22, USA Today published her Op-Ed in which she complained that runners who had "male bodies" are repeatedly and unfairly winning championships in women's college track meets. Three days after the publication of the Op-Ed, USA Today retroactively edited Chelsea Mitchell's Op-Ed, offering the following reasons as an editor's note:

Editor's note: This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAY’s standards and style guidelines. We regret that hurtful language was used.

I took the liberty of running a "compare" of the edited part of the original article (published in its original form by Alliance Defending Freedom) to the new version of the USA Today article, the one from which the "hurtful language" has been removed. The red corrections were the changes made by USA Today.

I don't understand what is factually inappropriate about saying that the MTF (male to female) transgender runners to some degree, retained "male bodies" if that is what Chelsea Mitchell (an accomplished athlete) observed. These are facts that are also strongly borne out by the stunning success of these runners when they are competing against the runners who are biologically female.  That is, in fact, the entire point of Chelsea Mitchell's Op-Ed. Apparently, she will not be allowed to make her argument in her own words.

Mitchell's article did not even once mention the vague-to-the-point-of-meaningless word, "gender." Her article was about the two sexes, male and female. Perhaps USA Today also finds basic biology principles hurtful, including this finding, which goes back for thousands of years: Mammals, including human animals, come in two and only two sexes, male (small gametes) and female (larger gametes) (and see this peer reviewed article.  There is not a third type of gamete.  Mitchell should be allowed to freely discuss and compare the competitive advantages of those with biologically male bodies versus those with biologically female bodies.  That said, this is 2021, and we are in the deep throes of Wokeness. 

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The Woke Industrial Complex at Lockheed Martin

Christopher Rufo reports, complete with leaked training documents:

Last year, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s largest defense contractor, sent white male executives to a three-day diversity-training program aimed at deconstructing their “white male culture” and encouraging them to atone for their “white male privilege.” The program, hosted on Zoom for a cohort of 13 Lockheed employees, was led by the diversity-consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners, which specializes in helping white males “awaken together.”

This "training" happened last year. It is the easiest thing in the world to predict that based on these revelations, future training will not have written materials (as a school administrator urged here).

Bonus Woke Tip: Being punctual is a "white" thing, so Lockheed should simply tell the customers, "We'll get you that order of fighter jets next year, maybe 3 or 4 year year from now, maybe ten years from now.  Whatever." :

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NYT: To Investigate COVID Origin in Humans is Racist

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter for the NYT specializing in COVID issues. She thinks that her job is to NOT investigate how this pandemic-causing virus was able to infect human beings, allegedly because to ask this question is "racist." Maybe the NYT ought to replace Mandavilli with a new COVID reporter who has at least a mild interest in science.

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Rejecting the Racial Framework. Refusing to Divide People into Colors

I have often taken the position that Christopher Rufo takes during this interview. For me, a person's color tells me next to nothing (and usually nothing at all) about that person's history, experience, intelligence, passions, morality and admirability. It is my hope that, someday, we will all recognize that a person's "race" will be one of the least interesting things about them, except, perhaps when I am taking portrait photos, were a person's skin tone sometimes requires me to make adjustments to the lighting I use (see many of my portrait photos here for examples).

In this interview, Rufo refuses to by into any sort of racial ontology and insists that he wants to be evaluated as an individual. He disagrees that there are "black" versa "white" traits, qualities and aptitudes. I agree. And further, I would agree with Rufo (who writes often about these issues) that categorizing people by appearance divides us socially and breeds mistrust of each other. We are hurting each and disrupting our abilities to work efficiently to promote the general social welfare whenever we pretend that we are internally different based on external immutable characteristics. To do this is to invoke the logic of astrology and phrenology, with far far greater capacity to hurt innocent people.

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Duke Neuroscientist Punished for Arguing that There are Only Two Sexes.

From a May 14, 2021 article in The College Fix:

John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA.

. . .

The topic that appears to have gotten him removed was the suggestion that there are only two sexes. According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”

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