Time For Another Links Post

• The case of Katie Hill bothers me at multiple levels, not least because I largely think whatever people decide to do with their genitals in their private lives is their own affair. Yes, it was gross that her vengeful ex-husband leaked photos. Yes, it violated House ethics rules for her to sleep with an underling — but is that reasonable? Is the presumption now that all consensual sex between subordinates and supervisors is intrinsically unfair and coercive? I find myself agreeing, in part, with Jessica Valenti’s assessment of the situation (she was taken down by “revenge porn”), but this is the #MeToo world Valenti and her compatriots designed. Arguably, Hill created a #MeToo victim in the staffer, and those are the stakes here. For Valenti, women can only ever be victims, which says a great deal about her thought processes.
• Remember when Wired didn’t suck? It has to have been 20 years ago or more. The only reason I can think of for them to write this disingenuous, lazy piece, “Trans Athletes Are Posting Victories and Shaking Up Sports“ is to garner hate-clicks:

  Transgender athletes are having a moment. At all levels of sport, they’re stepping onto the podium and into the headlines. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard won two gold medals at the Pacific Games, and college senior CeCé Telfer became the NCAA Division II national champion in the 400-meter run. Another senior, June Eastwood, has been instrumental to her cross-country team’s success. At the high school level, Terry Miller won the girls’ 200-meter dash at Connecticut’s state open championship track meet.
  
  These recent performances are inherently praiseworthy—shining examples of what humans can accomplish with training and effort. But as more transgender athletes rise to the top of their fields, some vocal opponents are also expressing outrage at what they see as transgender athletes ruining sports for cisgendered girls and women.

  “Training”, I suppose, which equals “going through male puberty and then simply declaring yourself to be female”. The question of motive inevitably arises, and while, yes, it’s easy to impute the urge for easy podium places and trophies as the primary draw of this cheating approach, it also is irrelevant. (CeCe Telfer particularly strikes me as mercenary enough to be in this class.) Biological males are stronger than women, on average and especially at the right side of the bell curve. This is not hard. Bending over backwards to cater to the delusional, narcissistic, and even sociopathic is absolute nonsense.
• Deadspin was at its best when pursuing stories other sports media wouldn’t touch. I seem to recall they were unafraid of the Joe Paterno fall to earth caused by his covering for Jerry Sandusky and the latter’s buggering of young boys, and they likewise went after Ray Rice (though that story broke on TMZ Sports). Now comes the news that editor Barry Petchesky has been fired amid a “stick to sports” edict from new owners G/O Media (the second rebranding since they were spun off the old Gawker Media in bankruptcy court). I have a hard time mustering much concern for him and those who quit in sympathy, mainly because a site that feels it meet to give airtime to a grown-ass woman rape-shaming her pre-sexual son has not only lost its way, it has gone insane.
• A free press is only interesting to people who work in it if they can get paid, apparently, so former Time editor Richard Stengel is penning stupid op-eds in the Washington Post claiming we need to gut the First Amendment, because, reasons.
• Emma Sulkowicz is now fun at parties because, libertarian, or something. Protip: apologize to Paul Nungesser, then I might believe some of this stuff is anything other than a stunt to get your name back in the news.
• First Circuit Court of Appeals to John Doe in Doe v. Boston College, scheduled for argument next week: sorry, Jeanne Suk Gearson, your attorney whom you have paid for many weeks if not months of preparation, may not defend you in court, because, reasons. This is the court putting its finger on the scales of justice, and if I were a betting man, I would put money that this is a politicized punishment.