On Monday morning, I checked the news and learned that Canada had defeated the U.S. ladies, 1-0.  I sent a note to a good Canadian friend saying "thank you."  For the record, I have always cheered for the U.S.  However, this is not a team I could relate to.  I guess that I was not alone, as we read in this AP report:

Conservatives are celebrating Team USA's 1-0 loss to rival Canada in the semifinal round of the women's Olympic soccer tournament — an upset critics say resulted from American players' focus on social activism. 

'Little Ms. Purple Hair and her team of woke warriors fell flat on their faces,' read an article on former Trump aid Wayne Dupree's website, referencing team captain Megan Rapinoe.

'The US Women's Soccer Team went WOKE and now they lost to Canada,' best-selling author and self-described security expert Brigitte Gabriel tweeted. 'That's what happens when you put political propaganda before sport and hard work.'

Let's not forget that this team refused to go to the Trump White House in 2019.  Maybe they were angry that women were doing so well in the Trump economy.

The ladies went into the tournament as the clear favorites.  They will have to fight for a bronze medal, a disappointment by any standard.

What if the ladies had represented themselves differently?  What if they had understood how lucky they were to represent the USA?  Instead, they went woke and let Megan be the face of the team.

In the end, they lost me and lots of other fans.

Update from Thomas Lifson:

Canada's team that defeated the women includes a "transgender, non-binary" member, according to CBC News:

Canada's appearance in the gold-medal match in Japan won't be the only first for the women's soccer team when it takes to the pitch Friday (10 p.m. ET on Thursday in Canada).

Quinn, a 25-year-old midfielder from Toronto, will also become the first openly transgender and non-binary athlete to win an Olympic medal, as the team is assured of a gold or silver.

Quinn came out publicly as transgender in a social media post last fall, changed their pronouns to they/them and now goes by one name.

Since Canada's 1-0 semifinal victory over the United States on Monday at Kashima Stadium, setting up the final against Sweden, Quinn said they've been "getting messages from young people saying they've never seen a trans person in sports before."

Quinn played college soccer for Duke University in North Carolina, and is the highest-drafted Canadian in National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) history — taken third overall by the Washington Spirit in 2018. They now play for the OL Reign.

I am not 100% sure that a "transgender, non-binary" person has a Y chromosome, which is the real definition of a male (follow the science!). But assuming "they" does have one in each cell of "their" body, then the lesbian feminists on the team, like Megan Rapinoe, may join other lesbians in worrying that trangenderism is displacing lesbianism, as Eric Utter discussed on these pages a few days ago:

Several lesbian feminists were troubled by the survey results, as the number of Americans identifying as lesbian remained roughly the same, while the number identifying as bisexual or transgender skyrocketed.  They believe that many young people who would have identified as lesbian in days of yore are now coming out as nonbinary or transgender.  Egad!

The belief is that many masculine lesbians are now "transitioning" to "men," causing the lesbian community as a whole to shrink.  Aimee Anderson apparently saw this phenomenon coming and stated so in an article she wrote in 2015, titled "The Death of the Lesbian."  Anderson laments the loss of "old-school" lesbian culture and ominously proclaimed, "I care about the extinction of an entire people: lesbians."

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).

Image: Jamie Smed via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).

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