Nerd Pride Radio

I couldn't find another Olympics thread but I am loving watching the Olympics and they haven't even really gotten to my favorites yet like wrestling and weightlifting! The pommel horse guy we all love, championing kids with eye conditions (I was moved), the Simone Biles superpowers, the upsets in track, the US women getting a first team fencing win, my beloved favorite Polish boxer, the soccer antics, the volleyball upsets... It's been super exciting and comes at a moment of bad weather when watching sports indoors is ideal.

Based off her abilities demonstrated at this year's Olympics, and the 5E D&D rules for jumping, Simone Biles has a Strength score of 20.

We usually watch swimming and gymnastics and then tune out for the rest. Although the whole "trans" (she's not trans) Algerian boxer BS has been disheartening to watch her get attacked like that.

So grotesque, and imo so transparently another orchestrated social media bs campaign from Russia to discredit France, the US, the West generally, and this Olympics in particular that prohibited Russian participation.

It should not have surprised me but it did surprise how much of the usual haters' chorus (Rowling, Gaines, etc) kept doubling down on this story even after it became clear they were completely wrong. They've boxed themselves into a corner where on the one hand, genitals are the only thing that matter, so a trans man with a vagina who has high testosterone is definitively considered a woman, but if she's a cis woman with a vagina who has naturally high levels of testosterone, then suddenly she's a man who shouldn't be able to participate in sport.

I feel so bad for the women athletes who have to go through this. Imagine how much judgment they've already had to endure for defying gender norms to excel in their sport, and for being different, and now these monstrous people are calling in a global attack on them personally. I hope Khelif takes the gold and I would say the same for the other woman except that she's going to have to lose to my favorite, the Polish boxer Szeremeta. And by the way if you can watch her box, she is unconventional and amazing. It's also so disgusting to see all these attacks on the boxers from people who don't know the first thing about boxing, and women's boxing in particular. Brave defenders of women's sport who couldn't even tell you the name of a single woman who is boxing or what goes on in the boxing match, or why we won't in fact ever have a final with the two boxers they are attacking. Just proud ignorance on display because the only thing that matters is hurting other people for your own gain.