Month: July 2023

She’s a Boy

By Bob Small

She’s a Boy is a video by Whistle the Band featuring Cat Cattinson, a detransitioned singer.

It’s one of those pop earworms that stays in your head.  This is about Lisa Thomas and other male to female transexuals who participate in women’s athletics.

How should we consider her and other transexual athletes, especially as Lia is listed as being pre-op.

So is Lia Thomas the Otto Pelzer or, less obscurely the Martina Navatrilova of trans sports.  Possibly it depends on whether you consider pre-op or post-op true transexuality — my vote is post-op — and whether you wonder whether there should be a handicap, like in golf.

My gut feeling is that the NCAA or the University of Pennsylvania should have noticed that Lia Thomas still had the equipment William Thomas was born with.  Of course, there’s no mid-way place for on-going transitioners to compete, no special league but would we feel the same if an actor named Lia Thomas had transitioned to William Thomas to get better roles because Hollyweird is still male-dominated and was rewarded with a Best Male Actor Oscar?

Now I’m looking at this from the outside having never wanted to be another sex but this option should be open to those who truly need to become someone else, as long as they are adults and aware of the travails that may happen.

Cat Cattinson is the detransitioned lead singer for Whistle the Band.  Whether her biology degree, her detransitioned status, her being a singer, her being a songwriter, is the most important of the adjectives to describe her is for her to decide.

Cat has said “I don’t think that people should have to be a man or a woman or non-binary to be able to express themselves or do what they want to do.”

Lastly, we’re talking about a very small part of the population.  How important is this, really?

A tip of the hat to Vermont Scott.

Here’s the video

Canada’s Hidden History In The Revolution (And Why It Wasn’t More)

By Bob Small

You have probably never heard of Jonathan Eddy and his campaign, known as Eddy’s Rebellion. He led a group of Nova Scotians who planned to conquer Nova Scotia in order to make it the 14th colony. In 1776, he led a force of 72 people (including some Americans) in an effort to take over Fort Cumberland.

Their slogan was “let’s add another stripe to the American flag.”

However, the first attack on Nov. 11, 1776 because the Indian who was supposed to open the fort door from inside was struck down before he could get the door open. A subsequent attack also failed. Fairly soon after that, an English warship containing 400 men arrived. Failing as a military hero, Eddy later became a U.S. politician.

There was also a Nova Scotian act of insurrection when “a large consigment of hay, bound for Boston, where it would be used as forage for the British army occupying the city, was burned in Halifax before it could be loaded onto transport ships. A Canadian Hay Party, if you will.”

In 1784 the mainland of Nova Scotia became New Brunswick, a refuge for the Tory loyalists fleeing New England.

Meanwhile, in another, slightly more successful invasion, U.S. forces occupied Montreal in 1775 and attacked Fort Chambly. The Americans then left Montreal on May 9, 1776.

As to why Canadians chose the British, it possibly came down to “better the devil you know than the one you don’t know”.

Another article to ponder: We Could Have Been Canada | The New Yorker

Lastly, there was the “New Light Movement, which came up in the 1770’s and took some people’s thoughts off revolution.

Canada’s Hidden History In The Revolution