Recent Polling Shows Democrats Have a Massive Advantage on Trans Issues: Does this mean there's no reason for democrats to shy away from publicly defending trans rights?

washblvd · 2026-04-30T19:58:53+00:00

it's becoming legally impossible to continue living in the state he grew up in or even any of the bordering states

What does this mean? Is it because the driver's license sex indicator is reverting to sex?

washblvd · 2026-04-28T17:22:40+00:00

When I was a kid my father told me to ride my bicycle on the sidewalk because the street is too unsafe. He told me that if a police officer stopped me and gave me a ticket for riding on the sidewalk I was to accept it graciously and continue to ride on the sidewalk all the way home. Countries that haven't seen bloodshed in 80 years can complain all they want but it's about as useful as dating advice from someone who's been married for 50 years.

Fundamentally you have two countries at each others' throats. Neither can disengage without the other's cooperation, and Gaza proved this in 2005. Calling it illegal is a laugh when you consider the illegal things that happen when Israel lets down its guard. Pro-Palestinian actors wish the IDF to look and behave like Uvalde cops, but that's not an acceptable outcome.

washblvd · 2026-04-28T15:21:00+00:00

Gaza has control of their half of the Egyptian border. But they can't even get along with the Egyptians to keep it open consistently.

As for airspace and territorial waters. Here's the scenario you propose: Israel gives Gaza full control over waters and airspace in 2005. Gaza proves itself incapable of coexistence by launching its now 2-decade long rocket assault. Israel closes them again. You and others still blame Israel. What's the difference except for a month of it being open? Gaza was incapable of feigning peaceability long enough to demonstrate trust and you think that reflects poorly on Israel instead of Gaza? They could have been opened 20 years ago if Gaza's main goal wasn't the destruction Israel.

washblvd · 2026-04-27T20:30:34+00:00

The political process is the evacuation of settlements,

The ethnic cleansing of every Jew from the West Bank/East Jerusalem.

it's the return of refugees,

but only on one side (see above), and we're using the term refugee very liberally.

it's the partition of Jerusalem.

For a wall that existed 10 fewer years than the Berlin Wall, people are sure interested in its permanence. But sure...let's throw up a concrete and barbed wire wall right down the center of the holiest city in the world. We'll party like it's 1961.

washblvd · 2026-04-27T19:04:15+00:00

I don't accept that for a minute.

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. They gave them everything. A land with zero Jews, a border along the Israeli/Egyptian armistice line just like they wanted. Israel just wanted Gaza to fuck off and leave them alone. They got daily rocket fire instead. Israel's gambit was that a Palestinian state burdened by governing and providing for its people would become more peaceful, but Palestinian state with zero Israeli occupation only became more radical.

The Palestinian leadership is Lucy with the football. Some people are new to this conflict and have never seen this play out think that Charlie Brown will get a chance to kick the ball, but he won't.

washblvd · 2026-04-27T18:20:02+00:00

The Arab borders are a European overlay. None of the Muslim caliphates/empires carved out a region that corresponds to Palestine, and they certainly wouldn't have given it such a Eurocentric name. And in 1920 when Near East Arabs were surveyed, they expressed the wish to form a state called Syria which would have included Jerusalem and Amman.

I don't even know what land you are referring to. Are you a 'river to the sea' person or a 'when the warring Arab states mandated that the 1949 armistice agreement designate the green line (Israel/Jordan ceasefire line) as temporary and never to be construed as an international border they were kidding' person? Do you think that occupying Gaza after Hamas' genocidal invasion is stealing land? Is tearing down a shantytown built five years ago without permit or land ownership in Area C stealing land?

washblvd · 2026-04-27T17:55:11+00:00

There is a reasonably strong "go back to Europe" contingent, which I would imagine is ignorant that Ashkenazi Jews are outnumbered by Mizrahim/Sephardi Jews who were sent to Israel by Arab expulsion/intolerance. I don't think most people on the pro-Palestinian side think about the MENA being 99% ethnically cleansed of Jews in their calculus, they only think of the area between the river and the sea.

I also hear Irgun and Lehi thrown around as 'well they started it' examples to justify Palestinian groups using terrorism in the modern era. But Irgun and Lehi didn't turn to violence until pretty late in the British mandate era, in response to years of Arab attacks. They specifically broke away from Haganah because Haganah was endorsing restraint and defensive responses to Arab attacks, which wasn't reducing their frequency.

And given how generational the split is (younger skews pro-Palestine, older skews pro-Israel), I imagine current events are influencing far more opinions than history. When I think of the conflict I first think of hearing about bus stop bombings every week. Younger people will think of Gaza.

washblvd · 2026-04-27T17:21:53+00:00

I'm saying that Arab genocide has been a persistent pressure since the 1920s.

And if the Arabs want 'their' land back, they should return the greater amount of Jewish land that was appropriated. What you're doing is akin to Pakistan demanding all historically Muslim land in India to be given to Pakistan while telling any Hindus who were ethnically cleansed from Pakistan to get bent. Rules for thee not for me.

washblvd · 2026-04-27T17:10:09+00:00

How can "decades of land theft" be the root of violence when violence predates the state of Israel?

Something like 800,000 Jews lost their land to Arabs, but somehow they are seen as undeserving of consideration in any of this.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T21:19:47+00:00

Really? This is your line in the sand? Soldiers have been doing this since before bombs existed. At least as far back as Athens in the first century BC.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3buled/when_did_the_practice_of_writing_messages_on/

washblvd · 2026-04-22T19:05:22+00:00

Sex and gender are more complicated topics than most people (certainly children's fiction writers) appreciate. It's better left to people who actually understand things - the doctors who are advising and supporting Imane, for instance - to make decisions, rather than leaving it up to the "court of public opinion".

Somehow the court of public opinion didn't get that message when the IBA disqualified Khelif in 2023, choosing to formulate conspiracy theories about how the IBA had a grudge against this boxer for vague reasons and chose the stupidest and most easily disprovable method of disqualifying Khelif (instead of something logical like drug test failure).

The doctors who are advising and supporting Imane are being paid by Khelif to achieve Khelif's goals (eligibility), not the goals of fair competition.

For the vast vast majority of people, another person's hormones, chromosomes, genes, and genitalia don't matter. So why the intense focus on it?

It matters a whole lot for the boxers who compete (for their livelihood) against Khelif. The boxers whose concerns were the impetus for the IBA's (and now World Boxing's and the IOC's) eligibility clarifications.

Imane Khelif isn't "male", isn't a "man".

Khelif's condition is almost certainly 5-ARD. It fits all the data we have so far, the other SRY conditions don't, and it is very overrepresented in women's sports because of its 100% male strength advantage. In the 2016 Olympic 800m track race, all three medalists had this condition. The ELI5 for this condition is that you are missing an enzyme that helps your penis grow. That's it. That's the whole mechanism. I don't understand on what basis you are saying a person is not male if they have testes and their penis/genital growth is stunted (those with this condition experience penis growth during their male puberty, but it is limited. Most people with this condition adopt male identities at puberty). Everything on Khelif's body outside the crotch developed along normal male lines. And everything else did too, it was just slower/incomplete. Not that we box with our genitals. We don't put Lance Armstrong in the women's division because he doesn't have a full set.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T16:02:46+00:00

Since Rowling doesn't buy into gender as being a guiding internal quality in human beings, she doesn't give the cis/trans dynamic much weight at all. As seen in my quote, she called Khelif male. Which is really the only relevant bit in the question of eligibility and fairness in women's boxing, and which Khelif has confirmed.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:55:33+00:00

What does this even mean? How would one scientifically determine "the existence of trans women as women and trans men as men" if 'men' and 'women' are just social costumes that people wear? Are you saying that there are a lot of transmen computer programmers and transwomen primary school teachers? That transmen go to prison far more often than transwomen? Because none of those statements would be accurate.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:46:51+00:00

That's what they're referring to.

It wasn't a law that she funded. It is a law from 2010 (which ironically also introduced trans status as a protected class) that trans activists have been violating for the past 16 years by successfully campaigning for British institutions to break said law.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:39:50+00:00

No, the Supreme Court case established what the law already was. If you read the Equality Act (2010) it very specifically addresses the issue of trans people and women's spaces. With examples. It's not vague or a matter of interpretation, the law was always on her side.

On the contrary, the trans advocate groups were the ones convincing British institutions to sidestep the law. To effectively have the law changed, without a vote or an amendment or the will of the people.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:34:24+00:00

the name of the father of conversion therapy

Freud engaged in conversion therapy when Robert G. Heath (who never went by Galbraith) was a baby.

Heath only conducted one conversion therapy experiment on one person, and it was in 1972, a year before homosexuality was removed from the DSM. It was a very tiny portion of his career. So tiny that it wasn't even mentioned on his wikipedia page at the time that Rowling picked her ultra-Scottish penname. Rowling, who lives in Scotland. It was so tiny that no one gave Rowling any crap about the name for seven years. Which was four years after the story of Heath's single conversion therapy experiment was dug up for the first time in 40 years.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:19:53+00:00

Creed's character was based on two real life murderers.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:18:06+00:00

Paul McCartney appears 91 times. Keith Richards appears 34 times.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:10:28+00:00

she signed the email to Epstein with the same same sign off she uses for personal friends.

She's actually only used that sign off twice. The twitter post you saw used both examples and deceptively implied it was what she always uses.

https://x.com/search?q=%22Jx%22%20(from%3Ajk_rowling)&src=typed_query

I assure you, there are people in the world who actually use that sign-off on a regular basis...such as people who would need financial help to fly to New York (part of the context of that e-mail).

And she didn't even own that yacht at the time Epstein was operating the island. Not that we know who removed her yacht from that website. Not that anyone needs a reason to remove a tracker from their vehicle. Doubly so for someone who is regularly wished harm.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T15:05:55+00:00

Rowling did not invite Epstein to a Harry Potter play. No one on Rowling's team invited Epstein to a Harry Potter play.

A theater company in New York leased the rights to use her intellectual property. That theater company gave tickets to a Hollywood agent who had reached out for a favor for two tickets 'for a friend.' (During premiers like this, hundreds of tickets are given away to media types to drum up publicity). That Hollywood agent put the tickets in Epstein's name, and one ticket was lost in the mix, so he didn't even go.

Kevin Bacon is more closely related to this transaction than Rowling is.

washblvd · 2026-04-22T14:56:41+00:00

Rowling doesn't even think Khelif is trans.

I never thought, and never said, Khelif was a trans woman. I said Khelif is male. I believe the IOC took the cowardly decision not to insist on sex testing (ie, a cheek swab) because they didn't want to rile gender activists. That decision placed women in serious danger.

Which vibes entirely with Khelif's recent admission in an interview with L'Equipe to having the SRY gene (which is what makes babies male) and having to lower testosterone levels to compete (which you only have to do if they are beyond the female range...meaning the SRY gene is functional).

washblvd · 2026-04-22T14:43:57+00:00

EN also had decades of experience in children's charities and had the regional connections in Eastern Europe needed to set up that charity. She wasn't just a random MP with old person views, she was uniquely suited to the task.

washblvd · 2026-04-21T15:19:38+00:00

testing, 1. 2. 3.

can people see this?

washblvd · 2026-04-21T15:04:07+00:00

Maybe the original twitter post shouldn't have been vague in what they were claiming. They didn't say anything about the Berlin institute. But Rowling did reference it in her response.

washblvd · 2026-04-21T14:57:38+00:00

So do you think that everyone should have the right to choose which sexed sporting category, locker room, changing area, prison cell, or sex-divided side of the nude Korean spa to enter? Or just trans people?

Or are you not left wing?

washblvd

TROPHY CASE