Transgender

The group describes itself as a Facebook page dedicated to exposing “the abuse of gay men and lesbians by proponents of Gender Identity Ideology.” It alleges that its page was “relentlessly targeted and harassed by Gender Dogmatists (both trans and non-trans), who fundamentally disagreed with our basic premise that everyone deserves sexual autonomy.” … [Read more...] about Gay Men’s Group Claims Facebook Shut Down Page After Dispute with Transgender ‘Dogmatists’

And here’s the key: the lines we draw between the competitive edges we accept, even admire, and those we think unfair are the stuff of our culture, not our science. Wrestlers compete in weight classes — we reject a contest between a 125 pounder and a 195 pounder as a mismatch — but we’re OK with a 6’ 4” high-school basketball center’s unequal struggle under the rim against an opposing team’s 7-footer. … [Read more...] about Do transgender athletes have an unfair advantage?

We were on and off for years, but eventually even the glories of architecture couldn’t keep us together. Everybody liked Mark. He was big and handsome and had a good job. I was his opposite. Plus, I was clingy, possessive and jealous. The night I ran away, he had grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard, and there was anger in his voice when he said, “You’re drinking too much and you have to stop.” … [Read more...] about Our love of old buildings brought us together. My drinking drove us apart

Landing in Direct Provision can sound a bit like landing in a school dorm. Delroy Mpofu, the trans man from Zimbabwe, told me that the hardest part of living in the reception center was walking into the food hall and feeling like everyone was looking at him. Leo Snygans, a South African man who is staying in an old hotel in Galway, said that his two roommates bullied him because he asked them not to smoke in the room. Smoking is forbidden, he said, and, if a management representative walks in when the room is full of smoke, “everyone gets punished.” Women’s stories were kinder. One woman described a thoughtful negotiation among three roommates, one of whom needed darkness to sleep, while another was terrified of the dark; they compromised by deciding to keep the bathroom light on and the door ajar. But how do three grown women, often from vastly different cultures, live together indefinitely in a small hotel room? What if one of them has very strict standards of … [Read more...] about Ireland’s Strange, Cruel System for Asylum Seekers

Silver said earlier this year that it was the most important decision of his tenure. He’s right. It led to, two years later, the NBA saying it wouldn’t play the All-Star Game in North Carolina until they overturned their transgender “bathroom” law. (After the law was overturned, Charlotte got the game back: It’ll be there this year.) But Silver’s move wasn’t just a way to assert his own authority and to side, at last, with his players over an owner. It was forward-thinking in a way that every major corporation has now had to be in the age of Trump, whether it’s Nike signing Colin Kaepernick or Delta no longer offering discounts to NRA members. Silver recognized that there was no such thing as a politics-free zone, and that the way to handle controversy was to attack it head-on rather than react to every twist and turn of the news cycle. This is how commissioners, like presidents, were once supposed to act— in the service of a … [Read more...] about The NBA Now Feels Like the Future and the NFL the Past. But It Wasn’t Destined to Work Out That Way.