Olympic "Trans Boxer" Debate Takes a Strange Turn, "Gentle Parenting" Adults is Abuse, Netflix for Live Sports is CRAZY Expensive, Johnny Cash Statue Replaces Racist Politician (The Five for 08/02/24)
Hamilton creator to release an album...about obscure 1979 movie...based on a novel. The best "political" song of election season. Rings of Power season 2 looks great.
Hey, welcome to The Five.
It’s Friday…so let’s get into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Well, this is strange.
Seemingly the whole world has seen the clips of Italian boxer Angela Carini lost to Algerian fighter Imane Khelif. Social media blew up, claiming Khelif is a biological male (multiple claims Khelif tested positive for XY chromosomes…biological women have XX).
So far…what exactly is happening is unclear.
A boxer whose gender identity has recently been questioned won her first fight at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.
Imane Khelif of Algeria defeated Angela Carini of Italy after Carini quit 46 seconds into the match. Carini stopped the fight after only a few punches were exchanged, avoided shaking Khelif’s hand and then fell to the floor in tears.
Khelif’s participation in Olympic women’s boxing has been scrutinized in recent days after reports resurfaced that she and another boxer, Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan, failed to meet gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi last year. At the time, sporting officials alleged that the boxers failed an unspecified test because they had male chromosomes.
Khelif, 25, has always competed as a woman — including during the Tokyo Olympics — and there’s no indication that she identifies as transgender or intersex, the latter referring to people born with sex characteristics that don’t fit strictly into the male-female gender binary.
Carini said she ended Thursday’s fight because she felt a “severe pain” in her nose. She added that she is not qualified to decide whether Khelif should have been allowed to compete.
“I am not here to judge or pass judgment,” Carini told reporters after the match. “If an athlete is this way, and in that sense it’s not right or it is right, it’s not up to me to decide.”
On the flip side, the Associated Press is reporting Khelif failed a gender test at the 2023 world championships. It’s unclear if that’s because Khelif tested positive for intersex chromosomes (XXY) or male (XY).
From Boxing Scene:
Accusations and assumptions about Khelif’s gender status, as well as recent rulings against her participation in international competition, have led many to question why she was included in the Paris Olympics at all. It’s important to note that, per one report, Khelif has a disorder of sex development (DSD), which means that while she was born a woman, she may nevertheless have XY chromosomes and elevated testosterone levels.
This may be confusing to those who were taught that women have two X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y chromosome. But according to medical experts there are indeed cases of women who have XY chromosomes who are able to give birth.
Khelif is neither trans (as some have misidentified), nor has she seemed to make any efforts to conceal her condition.
She had been cleared to compete for the rest of her career, including in the 2020 Olympics, when she lost to eventual gold medalist Kellie Harrington of Ireland. But last March both Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were barred from the 2023 World Championships – an event overseen by the International Boxing Association (IBA). She appealed the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport but later withdrew, making IBA’s ruling final. It should be noted that the IBA has refused to answer questions about its testing and ruling.
Given how much bad info there is on this story,
Much of the discussion about trans athletes in women’s sports has been around jr. high track (five girls in West Virginia were banned for the season for not throwing against a biological male) and college swimming (the much publicized Lia Thomas story).
Nobody dies from losing in track & field or swimming. But boxing? That can be fatal. If Khelif is a biological man…this is domestic violence. If Khelif is a biological woman, it’s a smear campaign. And XXY (genetically born intersex) or DSD (biologically a woman, but with naturally elevated testosterone levels that make the fight unfair) complicates the matter further still.
There’s a lot of buzz around this story, but the journalismers who are supposed to do the actual journalisming don’t seem to be working very hard to get to the bottom of it, instead just writing lots of hot takes.
This is not the case of Fallon Fox, the biological male fighting in women’s MMA without disclosing his biology, who cracked his opponents skull open (and if you said “wrong pronoun” in that sentence but not “domestic violence,” apparently you don’t care about battered women).
But Imane Khelif is not Fallon Fox…perhaps the best evidence being that Khelif is from Algeria, where transgenderism is illegal.
It could just be bias from knowing Carlini’s story (she lost her father and trainer just after the 2021 games, and vowed to return to win gold in his honor…only to withdraw in 46 seconds vs. Khelif), but it’s hard to call a fight between an XX fighter and an XY fighter (even if she is a woman who can give birth) “fair.”
As someone who’s held pads for an Olympic level boxer, I can attest that Carlini’s form and technique are top notch (see her training video here) and it’s likely that no amount of additional training or conditioning could have pushed her to victory.
Which brings into question why a fight like that ever happened.
[two]
Flipping the Olympic coverage over to rugby…another story about gender, and gender norms, is blowing up…with an American rugby standout at the center of the controversy…and relentless bullying.
From The Daily Signal:
Chances are, I am not the only American who two weeks ago had never heard of Maher and didn’t even know women’s rugby sevens was a sport at the Olympics. (Come to find out, women have played rugby at the Games since 2016.)
Fans of Maher know that the 27-year-old athlete from Vermont is one of the best rugby players in the U.S. She led her team at Quinnipiac University to three National Intercollegiate Rugby Association titles and earned All-American honors.
Her success continued in Paris as she led the U.S. women’s team to medal in the sport for the first time at the Olympics, finishing third.
Maher’s success as an athlete can be rivaled only by her success as a social media influencer. Upon arriving in Paris for the Games, she began making funny, clever videos on social media joking about looking for love in the “Olympic villa” and celebrating the fact that she is 5’10,” 200 pounds, and fully a feminine woman.
As The Wall Street Journal put it, Maher “Plays Like an NFL Running Back,” but she does it with red lipstick and long hair.
Maher is…indeed hilarious. (Note: apparently the video is a spoof of Love Island, which I didn’t even know was a show).
Unfortunately, Ilona is also getting destroyed on X (formerly Twitter), which I’ll let you investigate for yourself…but was defended quite brilliantly by Kimberly Ross of the Washington Examiner:
Men and women come in all varieties. Some men are ultra masculine. Some women are ultra feminine. Others aren’t. Ilona Maher may not be your type. That doesn’t make her less of a female. Don’t like the gender wars? Don’t add to them with the bullshit I see in the replies.
YouTuber Brett Cooper, apparently formerly VERY tomboy-ish in her teenage years, provided valuable insights here.
My Roman Empire is wondering how many strong girls out there have heard you're literally a man so many times that they ended up believing it. I mean, that literally Sends chills up my body and makes me want to cry, and I'm so incredibly grateful that I had the mother that I had because I would have absolutely been susceptible to all of that.
I was susceptible to all of it. Obviously, you guys see the more adult Brett, you see the Brett that's been me for the last two years. You didn't know me in high school. You didn't know how tomboyish I was, how much I literally hated being a woman. Like, I would have absolutely fallen for all of this BS.
But unlike so many of my former close friends who have now undergone literal medical procedures to try and alter themselves, I know so many people who have done that. It's heartbreaking. Unlike them, I actually had a support system that saw this happening and called me on it. And so many other young girls who are seeing these types of comments online, who are getting called that in real life, do not have that.
Perhaps the most iconic aspect of Ilona Maher is not just her achievements on the field, but the fact that she fully admits she’s affected by the bullying and has still managed to stay positive and cheerful in the face of so much hate.
Well done.
[three]
The “Karens for Kamala” Zoom call this week raised millions for the campaign of the Vice President
From the New York Post:
With a woman of color on the Democratic ticket, progressives have fallen back on their worst instincts: performative alliance and race essentialism. Politics by segregation.
Last week, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts organized a massive Zoom meeting — “White Women: Answer the Call” — for Kamala Harris.
On the call, which drew over 200,000 participants, reportedly raised $2 million and has been dubbed the largest Zoom in history, Watts declared (with great humility, of course): “White women, we have 100 days to help save the world.”
Author Glennon Doyle lectured. The singer Pink was there. “The White Lotus” actress Connie Britton spoke, jokingly calling herself and the others “Karens for Kamala.”
In other words, gazillionaire elites with the luxury of telling other women — ones who may be worried about paying their grocery bills — that they should cede their personal interests in favor of intersectionality.
And then there was influencer Arielle Fodor, who has 1.3 million followers on TikTok, where she is known as Mrs. Frazzled. She speaks like a mid-level marketing mama on the verge of being invited to the annual conference in Cabo if only she can enlist five more eager wine moms to her vitamin-selling team.
Fodor was introduced as someone “here to help gentle parent us through this election.”
On the one hand, the enthusiasm from Harris is real with this group. The lockstep-celeb crowd who typically show up for Dems in elections weren’t enthused up for Biden, and now they're reignited.
On the other…it’s worth asking just how many votes “Mrs. Frazzled” will inspire AGAINST Harris. Adults really, really don’t like being talked down to…and that’s her entire brand.
Mrs. Frazzled got big by treating grown people like toddlers…
In addition to what the Gen-Zer’s call the “ick” with content like this…Mrs. Frazzled is also engaged in several types of bullying according to Gavin De Becker, who pioneered threat assessment for both the U.S. Marshalls and the CIA.
One user on X lined up Mrs. Frazzled’s content with signs of bullying and manipulation from De Becker’s bestselling book The Gift of Fear:
“niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.”
All of Mrs. Frazzled’s videos align around the idea that only she understands reality, which is something her ideological opponents are not able to do. Her skits are all built around the idea that you can’t tell her “no,” because she’s in charge of reality.
Again, De Becker called this one.
Declining to hear “no” is a signal that someone is either seeking control or refusing to relinquish it. With strangers, even those with the best intentions, never, ever relent on the issue of “no,” because it sets the stage for more efforts to control. If you let someone talk you out of the word “no,” you might as well wear a sign that reads, “You are in charge.” The worst response when someone fails to accept “no” is to give ever-weakening refusals and then give in.
When men become unhinged, they often commit acts of violence. When women do they same, they are more prone to reputation destruction. Just because an annoying TikToker is speaking in a pre-school sing-songy voice doesn’t mean that her intentions are not outright evil, and that her words do not encourage discrimination and othering.
[four]
The sports world finally has a competitive streaming package.
The streaming sports bundle Venu has settled on a price, though the launch date is still TBD.
Venu, a joint venture of Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, will be available at a launch price of $42.99 per month. Users who subscribe at that price will be locked in for 12 months, and can cancel at any time. There will also be a 7-day free trial.
The service will include access to a number of live, linear channels including ESPN, Fox, ABC, TNT and TBS. Venu will also include access to ESPN+.
The streaming bundle is still targeting a fall launch date (the company had been targeting a launch ahead of regular season NFL games). While it is targeting “sports fans outside the traditional pay TV bundle,” Venu will also have access to some entertainment programming via many of its channels.
“With an impressive portfolio of sports programming, Venu will provide sports fans in the U.S. with a single destination for watching many of the most sought-after games and events,” said Pete Distad, CEO of the upcoming Venu Sports service. “We’re building Venu from the ground up for fans who want seamless access to watch the sports they love, and we will launch at a compelling price point that will appeal to the cord cutter and cord never fans currently not served by existing pay TV packages.”
Let’s do some quick math. Streaming was supposed to “free us” from the high cost of cable, but now:
Venu $42
Netflix: $20ish
HBO: $17ish
Disney/Hulu/ESPN+: $15-25
Apple TV/Parmaount +/AMC +, etc: $5+ each
On the one hand, this offers sports apart from a traditional cable package. On the other…we’re back to that $100+/month cable bill.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
A couple of movie anniversaries worth mentioning. Both The Village (a which is still highly controversial for being really brilliant or really stupid—I’m in hte former camp—it’s my favorite horror/thriller) and the indie darling Garden State, featuring Zach Braff and Natalie Portman (The Phantom Menace, Black Swan), turn 20 this summer. Both are well worth a re-watch (or first watch).
Lin Manuel-Miranda (Hamilton) is teaming up with a fellow playwright for a concept album about the 1979 cult classic Warriors, about a gang traveling across New York City after being framed for the murder of a rival. So…it’s a musical, basically…but without the stage and actors and stuff? Apparently this has been tried before…successfully, as the The Waitress, a hit on Broadway, began as an album-only project. Oh, and legendary rapper Nas has a hand in production on this one. “Whatever you expect me to do next, I will not do that thing.” Lin-Manuel Miranda, apparently.
Johnny Cash is getting a statue at the U.S. Capitol…the first musician to be honored in that manner. Cash will replace a statue of former U.S. Senator James P. Clarke, who is being removed for calling the Democratic Party to preserve “white standards” during his tenure in the early 1900s.
Vince Vaugn (The Breakup, Wedding Crashers) shares the screen with Zach Braff (Scrubs, Garden State) in a murder-mystery comedy that’s…pretty much tailored for Millennials and Gen-Xers (re: The Real World series intro joke).
Kicks off 08/14 on Apple TV+.
Yes, lots of viewers hated on Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Some called it too woke, other thought it didn’t live up to the original trilogy (I mean…what can?).
I thought there were good moments, even if the first season fell well short of greatness. But season 2? This looks MUCH better.
If you’re into the alt- country scene (Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, etc.) American Aquarium should be on your radar although these guys lean a little more into electric guitars than some of the current a-listers. Throw a rock at the catalog of the North Carolina six piece, and you’ll hit a great record. The Fear of Standing Still adds to their impressive catalog.
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube Music
Most of the Conservative Hip Hop and “Maga Country Music” songs out there supporting Trump are about as cringe as Mrs. Frazzled bullying the whole internet for Kamala.
Punk supergroup The Defiant (cobbled together from The Offspring, Street Dogs and Mighty Mighty Bosstones) supporting RFK Jr. is one of the only musical endeavors this year I would categorize as art and not just schlock.
Until the next one
-sth