Engarde! The New York Times misleads again

Be still my blood pressure, my very favorite in the New York Times’ stable of Andrew Tate wannabes, Jere never-met-a-man-who-didn’t-belong-in-women’s-sports Longman, has entered the fencing fray. Words cannot express the joy it gives me when this artifact bends to the keyboard, intent on letting idiocy have its deserved space in the paper of record. Mindful of his health, the Times disabled comments, which, believe you me, was a godsend, as Longman would not have survived even the friendly fire from liberal Times’ readers on this one.

As you may know, I did a deep dive into USA Fencing,and the insupportable woman-standing-up-for-women’s-sports incident that galvanized Longman to action, so I have a number of advantages over our man at the Times, ethics and accuracy among them. There’s still so much to ponder and enjoy in Longman’s effluent, we’ll go slow and savor the absence of journalistic standards and steep degree of slant you’d normally have to go pretty deep into Rumble to find. I admit, I do like to make fun of that fossil, but the thing is, he’s doing real harm. With his platform at the New York Times, he’s misleading thousands of readers. This is deeply, seriously wrong. So, I mean it when I say Engarde!

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A forfeited match and a viral video. An angry knock on the door. Death threats. An avalanche of political pressure, leading to a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in Washington.

The niche sport of fencing is usually not one that elicits fevered emotion beyond the thrust and parry of its matches. But it has become the latest sporting flashpoint following President Trump’s executive order in February to block transgender athletes from competing in girl’s and women’s sports events.

Athletes have been affected at the youth, high school and college level, but the cultural firestorm has extended to all levels and types of competition, including Olympic sports.

Oh ha ha! Phew! Between “death threats” and “political pressure” and athletes being affected at all levels, I thought for one ignorant moment Longman was talking about women. But no. Good old Jere, he just forgot to check in with women, so he doesn’t know that women by the hundreds, for over a decade, have been suffering those fates just for standing up for their rights to their own sports. Dear Jere thought that it was relevant to show how two (2) men who made a career of violating women’s rights have been inconvenienced by this whole silly episode. To turn the rock solid arguments I hear so often around—there are so few; why do you care, Jere?

I’m going to be a stickler about accuracy—the executive order did not block transgender athletes, as Longman wrote, it barred men from girls’ and women’s sports. Longman engaged in willful inaccuracy meant to make “transgender” athletes look like victims. There is significantly less support for men, regardless of their identity, in women’s sports. And Longman knows this. He’s a stooge of gender ideology. Throughout this article, he uses female pronouns and refers to Sullivan as transgender, a “marginalized, oppressed” group, rather than “privileged male” that accurately describes Sullivan.

Transgender athletes come in two sexes, just like sports categories. Women who identify as male or nonbinary are and always have been welcome to compete in the female category. And many do. By constantly referring to a male as “transgender,” Longman misleads readers by inferring that ALL transgender athletes are barred from women’s sports—which is not true—and that the issue with Sullivan was that he was transgender—also not true. The problem was that Sullivan is male fencing in a women’s-only tournament.

“Cultural firestorm.” I’m wondering whose culture it is to deny women their existence as a distinct group of humans who are not male. Is that Democrats’ culture? Describing men in women’s sports as a culture war minimizes what is a full-on assault on women’s rights and the fundamental nature of reality.

The Trump administration is seeking to restrict who will be eligible to compete in women’s events at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which will include fencing competition. It has ordered American consulates to deny visas to transgender athletes who seek to enter the United States for sports events.

Although the Trump administration did not invent binary sex a few weeks ago, as Longman seems to think, they are trying to keep men out of women’s sports at all times, including the 2028 Olympics. Is that bad? Their very own New York Times poll, which has now been expunged from the website because it embarrassingly did not support their narrative, showed 79% of Americans think “transgender women” should not compete in women’s sports. That rate would be higher if the pollsters had used accurate language, i.e. men, not transgender women.

Fencing has been under a rare and uncomfortable spotlight since a usually low-key regional tournament called the Cherry Blossom Open was held in College Park, Md., on March 30. In a match featuring midlevel fencers who are not Olympic caliber, Stephanie Turner, 31, removed her mask, took a knee in protest, and declined to participate against her transgender opponent, Red Sullivan, 19. A video of the moment went viral.

According to Ms. Sullivan, Ms. Turner said at the time: “I respect you a lot, but this is a women’s event. I am a woman and you’re a man. I will not fence you.”

Ms. Sullivan? This is not AP style or New York Times style. No one demanded Longman write like an idiot. And if they did, why is Longman not questioning this? This Ms is a mister, and he knows it, Longman knows it, Stephanie Turner knows it, and so does every stinking New York Times reader. It’s not hard. Longman had two choices. He chose to look ridiculous.

Ms. Turner, who lives in suburban Philadelphia, was disqualified from the tournament for refusing to compete against an eligible opponent. Ms. Sullivan had competed for Wagner College on Staten Island until February, when the N.C.A.A. complied immediately with Mr. Trump’s executive order. Competing independently at the Cherry Blossom event, she placed 24th among 39 participants.

Which Ms did what? Longman cannot manage to convey the basic facts of this incident, so befuddled is he by ideological language. It sounds like two women were competing at this tournament, but there would be no story if two women were competing in this tournament.

Amid the fallout from the episode, U.S.A. Fencing, the sport’s national governing body, finds itself at the center of an increasingly combustible debate about inclusivity and fair play. The March incident has become politicized in conservative circles and has been argued about more with reflexive intensity than with evidence supported by science. There has been relatively little research regarding transgender athletes, and almost none about transgender athletes in fencing.

If Longman had two brain cells to rub together, he would know that there is no “debate about inclusivity,” because everyone now knows that “inclusivity” means inclusion of men in women’s sports, and there simply is no debate among rational people about that. Men are not women, and this is, again, an idea that is not just held in conservative circles, but virtually all circles that have embraced gravity and a spherical earth theory.

In fact, there has been loads of research done on transgender athletes, absolutely every shred of legitimate peer-reviewed work showing that men have advantage over women, regardless of hormonal suppression. There has even been a fencing-specific study that came to the same conclusion. I found this information with a simple Google search. I could call this disingenuous on Longman’s part, or if I was more accurate, I could call it a lie.

Phil Andrews, the chief executive of U.S.A. Fencing, said that shortly after the incident, he opened his front door in Denver to encounter a man who complained to him vociferously about transgender female athletes participating in women’s sports.

“He wanted to make it known that I was the scum of the earth and a disgrace to humanity,” Mr. Andrews said in a phone interview. Matters got worse, he said, when he started to receive death threats by email and phone calls.

Ah, Phil Andrews. That would be the Phil Andrews who recently left USA Weightlifting where he made sure that male weightlifters were free to compete according to their gender identity. Weightlifters! To be clear, in static strength sports like weightlifting, males have 24% to 30% advantage over females, very little of which is ameliorated by hormone suppression as required by USAW policy. Andrews and his mates know that this is unfair to women, and he’s proud of his legacy of misogyny.

The Trump administration and the attorney general of Texas said they would investigate the fencing incident. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, also chimed in. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia and the chairwoman of a House subcommittee on government efficiency, has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill. In announcing the hearing, Ms. Greene claimed without substantiation that “radical leftists pushing to let biological men compete against women are destroying fair competition and putting female athletes in physical danger.”

Longman used she and Ms for the male fencer, Sullivan, without substantiation. Farther on here, he studiously wrote down Yannis Pitsiladis’ outrageous statement that a trans woman is not a biological man without a shred of substantiation, but here Longman wants substantiation that men in women’s sports are destroying fair sport and putting females in danger. Okay. It’s almost as if Longman doesn’t want to substantiate that information because he’s not doing journalism, he’s presenting a poorly researched one-sided advertorial for gender ideology.

The board of directors of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee discussed the issue last month, but responded vaguely during a teleconference with reporters. Gene Sykes, the board chairman, said that it would work to make sure that “women have a fair and safe competitive environment.”

The U.S.O.P.C. is facing immense scrutiny itself regarding the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The Trump administration has called on the International Olympic Committee to ensure that eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined “according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”

Ms. Turner has been called the Rosa Parks of fencing by her lawyer. She was also awarded $5,000 as a “courage award” by a sports apparel company that opposes transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. But Ms. Turner has also faced blowback from critics. She has announced that she is stepping away from the sport for the moment.

Longman fails to “substantiate” that some of Turner’s critics issued death threats. To the woman who stood up for women’s sports. The male person fencing in the female category suffered deadnaming and the publishing of unflattering photos.

She had previously said in interviews with conservative news organizations that she felt she was at a physical disadvantage competing against a transgender woman.

Oops, Longman can’t keep up the absurd lie, and conflates a transgender woman, above, with plain old straight up males, below.

Yet a week before the Maryland competition, Ms. Turner participated in a mixed-gender fencing tournament in Swarthmore, Pa. According to results posted by fencingtracker.com, Ms. Turner defeated four male fencers in the foil category and finished eighth among 32 competitors. A person familiar with her fencing history said that Ms. Turner has a career record of 7-7 against male fencers.

Here, Longman proves without a shadow of a doubt that he knows nothing about competition. That Turner had a 7-7 record at local competitions against males does not mean there is no male advantage; it means she was fencing against truly rubbish male fencers. At higher level tournaments, sexes are segregated because there IS male advantage. The best female fencers would have no chance against the best male fencers. USA Fencing has demonstrated both male advantage and their organizational misogyny by sending multiple males with trans identities to international competitions in the female category, where they dominated. They were mediocre male fencers but international gold medalists in women’s competition—that’s male advantage.

“Her argument has incredible holes in it,” Ms. Sullivan said in one of several phone interviews.

You truly can’t make this stuff up. “Ms” Sullivan uses the exact same holey argument way down at the end to prove he has no advantage in women’s fencing. Instead, it proves he is a shite male fencer.

Some critics of Ms. Turner’s have called her protest performative and hypocritical. But her Washington-based lawyer, Charles Wang, said in an interview that it if a woman decides to participate in a mixed-gender competition “that’s free will; but you can’t force them to fence a man.”

Huh? Longman forgets to mention the Cherry Blossom Open was a women’s-only tournament (mixed-gender is a term Longman made up).

Since 2021, transgender athletes in Olympic sports have faced differing rules established by each international sports governing body. Swimming and track and field, for instance, effectively prohibit the participation in elite women’s events of competitors who experienced puberty as males.

“…the participation…of competitors who experienced puberty as males.” So, males. If you have any question at all about the utter demise of the state of both journalism and Jere Longman, I offer up this as Example A.

Fencing’s international governing body has no rule governing transgender athletes. In the United States, fencers are generally permitted to participate according to their gender identity, though at the upper levels, transgender athletes seeking to compete in women’s events must first undergo testosterone suppression for at least a year.

On April 18, U.S.A. Fencing said it was willing to change its policy to require that athletes compete according to their biological sex if eligibility rules continue to grow more restrictive. Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, elected in March as the first female president of the I.O.C., has discussed a possible blanket ban of transgender athletes from women’s sports.

A 2023 study conducted at the University of Hertfordshire in England acknowledged that there was no current research regarding elite transgender fencers. But the authors said the literature suggests “an unfair retained physiological advantage” of lean mass, strength, power and stature for transgender athletes who experience male puberty and then participate in women’s fencing competitions. The study said more research was necessary.

A more general 2024 study, funded by the International Olympic Committee, contradicted one of the leading arguments made by anti-trans activists.

One of the study’s authors, Yannis Pitsiladis, a member of the I.O.C.’s health, medicine and science committee, said when the study was published that its results showed that transgender female athletes who have suppressed their testosterone levels are physiologically and hormonally “not the same as biological men.”

Please, I beg of you, click through to this study which Longman references above and assumes you will not read. You don’t even have to put your logic through the assault—I pre-masticated this dead animal for you, from the compromised trans-identified male “scientist” who recruited trans women “who wanted to influence the next policy-making decisions” to the impossibly unmatched cohorts of overweight, unfit trans women who—surprise—could not jump as high as very fit women. And that’s how you get a contradiction that Longman, above, fails to elucidate. What Longman meant to say is that fat unfit men can’t jump as high as elite female athletes. The IOC paid for this study.

This, from my previous article: Perhaps hoping to enliven their findings, one of the investigators, Yannis Pitsiladis, spun their findings into this whopper: That given their physiological differences (at least the four that they measured), “trans women are not biological men.” This startling statement hit the veteran journalist Longman square in the forehead and did not produce a blink. He swallowed it whole, it came out in the same condition, unmasticated, and that’s what tens of…tens of New York Times readers will think of as the latest science.

I actually did read the study and saw nothing that would support such a Nobel-worthy bombshell, so I asked Pitsiladis for clarification. He clarified via email that instead of “trans women are not biological men,” he meant: “transwomen are not hormonally or physiologically the same as men.”

“Not biological men,” “not the same as biological men” —see the difference? What Pitsiladis told Longman and what Longman dutifully scribbled down is that a year of hormone treatment makes a trans woman no longer a man. This is just nuts, to use a fancy scientific term. And highly irresponsible of both Pitsiladis to say and Longman to print.

U.S.A. Fencing says there are fewer than 50 athletes who identify as transgender among the roughly 40,000 members registered with the federation. Especially at local and regional levels, male and female fencers frequently train with and compete against one another.

If I told you there were fifty 35-year-old men playing soccer in the U10s, would you be totally fine with that? What about 50 heavyweights in welterweight boxing? Come on man, just…just fucking no. Also, error on Longman’s part—regional tournaments are sex-segregated because that is a level where fencers can earn points toward national ranking. Have some pride, man.

Fencing is about tactics and strategy more than merely height, reach and strength, officials note. Lee Kiefer of the United States, a two-time Olympic champion in women’s foil fencing, is only 5 foot 4 inches tall. All told, American women designated female at birth defeat transgender women in a majority of bouts, and also win a majority of their contests against men, according to the federation.

Huh?

Ms. Sullivan competed as a man in her freshman season at Wagner College while taking hormone suppressants, and as a woman for the university this school year until the N.C.A.A. ban. Before Ms. Turner’s protest, Ms. Sullivan said, no one had ever expressed concerns to her about fairness or safety.

First off—women do not have to take hormone suppressants to compete. Only men do. Does Longman think no women expressed concerns about fairness or safety because they would be bullied, shunned, disqualified, and receive death threats? Maybe?

“It’s laughable to think trans athletes have an unfair advantage,” Ms. Sullivan said, adding, “I lose to 70-year-olds and to 12-year-olds who haven’t gone through puberty.”

It’s laughable to think Longman imagined this was the zinger on which to end his pathetic-man story. To see Sullivan admitting his execrable sports abilities as a way of belonging in the female category is just…disgusting. On every level. And I can’t imagine Longman would see it in any other light.