If athletes are allowed to compete, they should also be allowed to win.
Every single time I see a story where a trans athlete "blows out" the competition, their performance usually ends up not being quite as dominent as claimed.
When you look at the fastest 400m times in high school competition, it greatly adjusts the context.
In running, a second can be an eternity. Most world records are only a few tenths of a second apart. And this trans athlete is a full 7 seconds away from a record set by a cisgender high school runner.
According to the New York Post, 7 seconds is a blowout.
College runners are getting times under 50 seconds. And the world record is 47.60âa full 10 seconds faster.
This trans athlete can't help it if she is in a league with a bunch of slowpokes. She won a race. She is pretty fast in relation to her direct competition. But she is not some spectacular speed demon who will dominate women's running.
Her time wasn't even at scholarship level.
And the second place finisher wasn't even close to a "decent" time.
Also...
The vast majority of the world's top sprinters are of West African descent. Just to give you an idea of the statistics, every world record holder in the men's 100m dash since 1968 has been Black.
So they are basically cherry picking ideal circumstances to make a trans athlete look overpoweredâas Portland only has a 5% Black population.
If this race happened in Atlanta instead of Portland, the trans runner probably would have won 10th place and this wouldn't be a news story.
How to create a moral panic 101.
We've got another "dominant" trans athlete going viral.
While it is true that Redmond Sullivan has had two first place finishes in tournaments since transitioning, if you look at her record, you might notice this isn't as dominant as claimed.
First I have to explain fencing ratings.
You have individual ratings A through E. The As are top fencers and Es (or unrated) fencers are the worst. The number after the rating is the year.
So a rating of A25 means you are a top level fencer in 2025.
Then you have event classes. They are also A through E but have an additional 1 through 4 difficulty variant.
The easiest tournament is E1.
It has 6 competitors and none of them have to be rated. So you are competing against poorly ranked people and have a much higher statistical chance of winning.
This is like playing basketball with all of your nerdiest friends and "accidentally" forgetting to invite Steve who is 6'4".
The hardest tournaments are A4.
This requires at least 64 competitors and must have at least 12 A-rated, 12 B-rated, and 12 C-rated fencers.
This is like being a 40 year old playing Halo against a hundred 12-year-olds all saying rude things about your mom while repeatedly headshotting you with ease.
You can view all of the event classes here.
If you look at Redmond's two first place finishes, they were in E1 and D1 competitions. (A D1 requires 15 people with four of them E-rated.)
She had a decent statistical chance of winning because the competitors were few and poorly rated.
If you look at her only A4 tournament, she placed 172nd.
I'm not sure I would call someone who placed 172nd particularly dominant.
She currently has a "D" rating overall.
When fencing in men's competitions, she was rated E. And she slightly improved to a D in women's competitionsâthough this is only with 3 months of data. She ended 2024 with an E rating in women's events. So maybe she improved to a D and a half.
No offense to Redmond, but she is not anywhere close to a top level fencer no matter which league she competes in.
Stephanie Turner, the kneeling transphobe, currently has an E rating and has never finished a year better than a D. By all accounts, she is evenly matched against Redmond and had a legit chance at winning the match. But it was an A2 tournament and she really had no chance of placing highly so I guess she figured this was a good opportunity to be a dipshit.
She is a coward who only took a stand when the stakes were lowest.
I'd also like to point out that Colin Rugg was quick to mention Redmond's first place finishes, but failed to mention that in the very tournament with this kneeling protest, she got 24th place.
It really seems like these trans athletes aren't trying to become dominant athletes by transitioning and they are just competing because they love it.
I mean, if I ever got 172nd place I'd probably hang up my rapier and just watch Zorro movies instead.
Payton McNabb had a genuinely tragic injury from a volleyball spike to the face. There is no denying that. When you watch the video of it, it's clear this was a brutal shot to the face.
But this tragedy was quickly capitalized on by the anti-trans propaganda machine. The context was significantly altered and an insidious narrative was constructed. Payton and her parents then jumped at the chance to monetize the incident.
You can hire Payton to dramatize her incident and repeat all of the common anti-trans talking points.
If you can't afford to hire her as a speaker, you can request to feature her documentary, "Kill Shot: How Payton McNabb Turned Tragedy into Triumph."
Possibly one of the most emotionally manipulative things I've seen in a while. After they discuss the injury you can just sense the coaching involved as they parrot every talking point.
Let's deconstruct exactly how Payton's injury was turned into propaganda.
First, all of the conservative news outlets reported on the incident. And they were sure to include details to give the impression this injury was severe, uncommon, and something only a trans girl could inflict.
The ball was going a blistering 70mph.
The trans girl was a towering 5'11".
Payton suffered a concussion.
The evil trans girl cackled in delight.
Of course, none of these details can be verified. The trans girl cannot tell her side of the story because if she identifies herself, it will put her in grave danger.
Let's investigate the claims a little deeper, shall we?
First, the ball going 70mph.
Not even remotely possible.
Elite level high school girl volleyball players can spike a ball between 40 and 50mph. Boys can manage between 50 and 60mph. So that is already debunked with a simple google search.
But I went a step further and analyzed the footage using a technique I learned from Adam Savage on Mythbusters. You take a known measurement (the width of the volleyball) and count how long it takes to travel a certain distance using the framerate. The ball went roughly 426 cm in 200 milliseconds.
I did a high and low estimate and the ball was going between 43 and 47mph, as best as I can tell.
Which is in the range of what a typical elite high school girl can achieve.
In fact, the world record for any woman volleyball player is around 70 mph. This was accomplished by professional player, Paola Egonu. She is 26 years old and 6'4".
The men's record is around 80 mph.
So they are saying this trans girl hit a volleyball as fast as the world record set by an adult professional athlete. And it was only 10mph slower than the fastest spike ever hit by anyone.
Okay, what about the trans girl being 5'11". That's pretty tall for a girl, right?
Not for volleyball players. In fact, it is not uncommon for high school volleyball teams to have players 6 feet and above. Many college and professional teams regularly have cis women that are 6'5".
Well, there is still the fact that the girl got a concussion.
You might be thinking... "That never happens. I mean, they are just high school kids playing a game. And a kid's game isn't dangerous. The *only* reason Payton was injured (as her parents imply) was because a trans girl was playing."
Did you know that women's volleyball has become so notorious for injuries that the NIH did an entire study documenting them?
Here are some highlights...
"In total, an estimated 214,302 female athletes aged 14 to 23 years were evaluated in EDs across the United States with volleyball-related injuries between 2012 and 2021. The ankle, head, and knee were most frequently injured, often involving strains/sprains, contusions, fractures, and concussions.
While sprains and strains were the most frequent injuries, head injuries accounted for the second most common diagnosis in both groups, suggesting that clinicians should maintain a high index of suspicion for concussion when evaluating players."
It would seem that head injuries are extremely common and there are literally thousands of cases of concussions.
Volleyball is fucking dangerous, yo.
This has to be a known danger that parents and players are aware of. They choose to take this risk despite the danger. They don't advocate for any kind of head protection or protective gear.
The reason Payton was so seriously injured was not because of a trans girl. It's because she was hit point blank in the face with a volleyballâjust like thousands of others.
An event so common that when I was researching spike speeds and looking at highlight reels of Paola Egonu's world record spiking, one of the clips was of her bonking another player in the head.
The only reason this woman wasn't injured was because the ball had a chance to decelerate. In the first 400 cm of this spike, the ball is going so fast that the camera could not even see it. It just evaporated into a blur until it slowed down from air resistance. Just imagine if that woman was as close as Payton was.
Cis women are fully capable of causing these types of injuries.
To review...
They villainized a high school trans girl for hitting a ball only as fast as her cis counterparts.
They said she was a giant even though she is kinda short compared to other players.
They inferred only a trans girl could cause this type of injury even though it happens all the time.
They said she cackled like the Wicked Witch with no way to dispute the claim.
And then they gave her a bunch of money to repeat the narrative that they manufactured.
She even got to meet the president for selling her soul.
This is where anti-trans talking points come from. It is bad faith all the way down. Every claim is a lie or so twisted and out of context it might as well be a lie.
Is this really the side you want to be on?
Are these the bedfellows you want to align with?
