The Washington Post, Associated Press Double Down on Liberal Media’s Pro-Transgender Athlete Bias

If there were any lingering doubts about the unabashedly pro-transgender bias of the liberal media, they were demolished Thursday by the marked contrast between a feature story and a news article, both in The Washington Post, on two separate cases of trans athletes competing in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

At 6 a.m. Thursday morning, The Post published online a 2,238-word magnum opus, headlined “A trans girl was banned from her track team. Now she’s competing with the boys.” (It comes nearly a year after The Post published an equally obsequious 2,600-word profile of a drag queen.)

Post staff writer Karina Elwood’s fawning profile of transgender “female” athlete Eliza Munshi, 18, of Falls Church, Virginia, lamented that “[a]fter President Donald Trump banned transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports, a Virginia high-schooler joined the boys’ team.”

How fawning was it? Consider the cringeworthy anecdotal lead paragraph: “Eliza Munshi kneeled on her bedroom floor curling her lashes. She dabbed glitter into the corners of her eyes and debated whether to tie her hair into one French braid or two. She slipped on her green jersey and headed to her first track and field meet.”

The article was lavishly illustrated with no fewer than nine photos, including one of Munshi as a child, perhaps at age 3 or 4 and wearing a dress—the implication being that the now-18-year-old knew from an early age that, XY chromosomes notwithstanding, he was really a “she.”

Some 14 hours later, at 8:04 p.m. Thursday, The Post published a not nearly as sympathetic 304-word account of a female fencer who had forfeited a match last Sunday at the University of Maryland at College Park, rather than duel with a transgender swordsman competing as a faux female.

“Fencer disqualified from tournament after refusing to face an opponent she says is transgender” was the headline The Post put on the article, which wasn’t even written by one of its own reporters.

Instead, it was a reprint of an Associated Press report that led with: “USA Fencing disqualified a fencer from a women’s tournament in Maryland after she refused to face an opponent whom she says is transgender.”

Stephanie Turner’s refusal to pretend that her would-be opponent was another woman at a fencing tourney held four days earlier on March 30 had gotten her disqualified from further participation in the tourney held by USA Fencing, the national governing body for the sport.

The ever-woke AP took pains to use plural pronouns in noting: “The Associated Press is not identifying Turner’s opponent because they have not publicly commented on the incident, nor disclosed their gender identity (emphasis mine).”

But the sex of her would-be opponent was obvious to Turner, even if it wasn’t to The AP, which included Turner’s quote to Fox News: “I told them that I was refusing to fence because this person is a man, and I’m a woman, and this is a women’s tournament, and I refuse to fence on principle.” 

Unlike The AP or The Washington Post, The Washington Times’ account of the incident identified Turner’s rival as Redmond Sullivan and noted that Sullivan had previously competed as a man.

In a symbolic gesture of refusal to square off against Sullivan, Turner took a knee—which not so long ago was a gesture gleefully embraced by the Left when done by athletes in support of left-wing causes. (In this case, not so much, despite Turner’s being a woman of color. As such, we now know that in the privilege hierarchy of the Left, transgender “women” rank higher than women of color.)

After taking a knee, Turner said Sullivan approached her and asked whether she was OK. When she told him she wouldn’t fence against a man, Sullivan cited USA Fencing’s transgender policy.

“Redmond says to me, ‘Well, you know, there is a member on the board of directors here who supports me, and there is a policy that acknowledges me as a woman, so I am allowed to fence, and you will get [sanctioned],’ and I said, ‘I know,’” Turner told Fox News.

That “member of the board of directors” of USA Fencing was likely Damien Lehfeldt. The New York Post reported Friday that Lehfeldt had written “a long-winded Aug. 30, 2023, blog post, in which he defended the right of trans fencers to compete against women, despite conceding they may have ‘a physical advantage.’”

“There’s a possibility that transgender women have a physical advantage over their cisgender opponents after transitioning,” The New York Post quoted Lehfeldt’s blog as saying. “There is also a possibility they do not. In fencing, there is no data to support either viewpoint. Giving athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is more powerful than medals and competitive glory.”

That, of course, is easy for Lehfeldt to say, because he isn’t a girl or a woman being forced to compete against a faux female or to risk losing “medals and competitive glory.”

Whether Turner would have won a medal at the March 30 non-NCAA tournament is unknowable now, but according to the website SheWon.org, to date these athletic interlopers have robbed more than 1,400 other girls and women worldwide of the recognition they deserved:

# of Female Athletes: 1,407

# of Medals*: 2,011

# of Competitions: 887

# of Sports: 44

*Or records, scholarships or other opportunities.

Turner also won’t be lavished with an effusive 2,238-word paean by The Washington Post, but by the same token, Munshi isn’t being allowed to deprive real girls of trophies or scholarships.

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