If you want to know why AWFLs are so awful, one of the reasons is that they read The New York Times, watch The View, and listen to NPR. They read The Atlantic and Vogue, and consider themselves well-informed.
If your diet of news came from these and few other sources, you too might believe insane things. After all, the only information you get is The Narrative™.
So @NPR, I’ve listened to this segment, and I follow this debate closely. I’m a leftist philosophy professor: your target audience.
This segment is *utter rubbish* from beginning to end. Sosin simply *lies* about the research, notably the paper by @FondOfBeetles in SM (2021).… https://t.co/l1P3YZtH43
— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) January 13, 2026
This segment is *utter rubbish* from beginning to end. Sosin simply *lies* about the research, notably the paper by @FondOfBeetles in SM (2021). But the whole framing is wrong, and the spin that you put on this – on words like ‘ban’ and ‘advantage’ – is deeply dishonest.
On this evidence, you simply have no regard for the truth at all. It’s *astonishingly* poor journalism. Your reputation should be in the ditch for this, including among liberals.
I didn’t listen to the NPR piece because, thankfully, there is a transcript at the link, and the idea of listening to two self-satisfied women pretending to tell you the “facts” of the Supreme Court case on trans athletes is almost too much to bear. We all know the smug NPR voices that grate on the ear.
Everything about this interview is wrong from the start. The case, we are told, is about two “girls” who just want to participate in girls’ sports. That is, of course, deeply deceptive. The athletes in question are not girls at all, but boys who believe or are pretending to believe they are girls.
They are male, in other words. And the case is about Title IX, which says nothing about perceived sex or gender, but about sex, which is a biological category.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from two separate cases weighing the rights of transgender athletes. Little v. Hecox challenges Idaho’s ban on trans athletes playing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. West Virginia v. B.P.J. challenges a similar ban in West Virginia. Kate Sosin covers LGBTQ issues for the nonprofit newsroom The 19th and has been following these cases closely. They’re here to give us a preview. Welcome.
KATE SOSIN: Thanks for having me.
MCCAMMON: So, in essence, what are these two cases about?
SOSIN: So conservatives have increasingly argued that transgender women and girls have an unfair advantage in sports, that their hormone levels make them stronger and faster, and for that reason, they say, trans women should be banned from competition. These two girls, Lindsay Hecox and Becky Pepper-Jackson, were banned from playing sports in their respective states by these state bans, and 27 states have these bans. And now the question is, will the Supreme Court back these bans and find that they are constitutional or not?
Also, it is not just hormone levels that make boys, on average, superior to girls in sports, although they do. There are myriad reasons why boys have a physical advantage, even if their hormone levels are suppressed to mimic girls’.
But things go off the rails when it gets to discussing the facts at issue:
MCCAMMON: Isn’t one of the concerns not just about taking spots on teams, but also a competitive advantage against their opponents, a potential advantage?
SOSIN: Certainly, yes. But what we found is that the research just simply doesn’t back this up. And in part because there is limited research. There’s a 2021 study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine that found no basis in existing research for banning trans women from sports. And a 2021 study funded by the International Olympic Committee, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, concluded that transgender women likely had several physical disadvantages compared with their cisgender peers. And this is after medical transition. So there’s very limited research, but the research that exists just doesn’t support banning transgender women or girls at this point.
That description of the evidence out there is just wrong. There is a lot of evidence that men have physical advantages over women, and it is no coincidence that transgender athletes are suddenly winning all sorts of medals and setting records in women’s sports. The claim that the evidence shows that transgender athletes are at a physical disadvantage is frankly bizarre and contradicted by the overwhelming amount of evidence.
Not only that, the International Olympic Committee is reviewing its policies and is likely to ban transgender athletes in women’s sports sometime this year. One would think that this is a relevant fact, given the citation of the IOC.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee in July effectively barred transgender women from competitions, telling its national federations in Olympic sports they had an “obligation to comply” with the government order.
World governing bodies in top-tier Olympic sports like track and field and swimming had already banned athletes who went through male puberty from their women’s events ahead of the Paris Olympics.
In Paris 16 months ago, a furor erupted around women’s boxing and the eligibility of two gold medalists, Imane Khelif from Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan.
World Boxing, the new body overseeing Olympic tournaments, has introduced the SRY gene test, which identifies the Y chromosome found in males. World Athletics and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation also have introduced the tests.
Coventry said Wednesday that trying to find a consensus is “maybe not going to be the easiest thing to do.”
“But we are going to try our best to ensure that when we are talking about the female category, we are protecting the female category and we are doing that in the most fair way,” she said.
Hmmm. Gee, I wonder why they left that out…
Lawyer representing Hecox refuses to define “man” and “woman,” leading Justice Alito to ask how courts are supposed to determine if there’s been sex-based discrimination without knowing “what sex means.” @FDRLST pic.twitter.com/aIHYnfrqfS
— Shawn Fleetwood (@ShawnFleetwood) January 13, 2026
Wonder know more. Here is the kicker. What is really at issue here is how transgender people feel, not the facts of the matter:
You know, the rest of the country will remain as it is, but I think the bigger implication that we would see is that having your Supreme Court come back and tell you again and again and again that your rights matter less than everybody else’s is a really damaging thing for a lot of transgender individuals. We’re seeing a slow chipping away of transgender dignity, equality and also the law, very, very slowly.
Ah, empathy. Not for the girls, of course. Biological girls are lower on the intersectional totem pole, and just have to learn to love having penises in their locker rooms and getting creamed by boys on the field.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, the Left’s attempted radicalization of American culture has stalled – for now.
Help us continue to report on the administration’s fight against the Academia/Hollywood woke elites. Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership!
