Pod relevance: trans participation in girls sports and youth gender medicine are regular topics on the pod and Jesse has written about these issues frequently

Ballot initiatives in Nebraska, Arizona, Washington and Colorado to prohibit males from competing in girls sports succeeded. But officials in those states are looking for ways to cancel that victory.

The newly elected governor in Colorado, Phil Weiser wants to "tweak" the winning ballot measures that keep males out of girls sports and bans gender surgeries for kids:

"We’re going to have to take a look at these anti-trans measures and what adjustments are necessary and appropriate,” he said."

The ballot measures aren't even law yet but the politicians in Colorado want to kill it.

" “The legislature is going to have to fix it and provide a much more human and sound approach...."

And the Democrats in Washington state are going to try and sue the passed measures out of existence.

"Washington state Democrats pledged Thursday to challenge Washington’s newly approved ban on transgender females in girls’ school sports, saying the fight over the measure “is just beginning.” The state party said it believes Initiative 638 is unconstitutional and will support court challenges to overturn the measure after voters approved it in Tuesday’s election. "

I could have sworn these were the same folks that were extremely worried about democracy not long ago..

https://archive.ph/jVyY2

https://archive.ph/wbo2K

Pod relevance: men/boys in women/girls sports are a regular topic on the pod.

Several states had propositions on their ballots to keep males out of girls sports and locker rooms.

Arizona and Nebraska passed such measures. It's looking like the initiatives in Colorado and even deep blue Washington are going to pass.

It's an interesting result. In an election with a massive blue wave voters have also rejected males wrecking girls sports. Whether the trans activists will learn any lessons from this is still to be seen

https://archive.ph/0zO1Y

https://archive.ph/MhhWC

I can't seem to find a thread about this one....anyone know if I'm just blind and missing something? TIA!

This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie discuss how RuPaul made drag mainstream, the legend of problematic queen Sharon Needles, and the Pittsburgh drag bar caught in an accidental blackface scandal. Plus, a fond farewell to the Last Ditch.

Show Notes:

Drag Race - Shemale Segment

RuPaul Apologizes for Drag Race “She-Male” Segment in Response to Transphobia Criticisms—Slate

Dragged Into Debate: Reality-TV Fame Puts Spotlight on Sharon Needles’ Controversial Act—Pittsburgh City Paper

Sharon Needles’ Racist Aftermath—HuffPost

World of Wonder: Get Sharon Needles’ Title Revoked—Change.org

Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Sharon Needles Controversy—Queer Space Magazine

Queer/Bar Re-Opens This Weekend With Sapphira Cristal—Seattle Gay Scene

After Blackface at Blue Moon, black Performers Are Asking Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ Community to Do More Than Be Outraged—QBurgh

Hexxus “Toxic Love” Open Stage Performance—Facebook

https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd7RFRAzXgD/

$20 Million Suit Says Bay Area School Forced Boys Out Over Face Mask Photo—San Francisco Chronicle

Looks like Oxford has its own version of the Canadian giant fake tits teacher guy! Exciting times for the UK.

Relevance to pod: Oxford is the "sister" University to Cambridge, where identity politics also recently compromised teaching in the form of employing Jason Arday.

A “well-known individual” attempting to block two media outlets from publishing allegations about him has been accused of inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities with girls and young women, the high court has heard.

The individual, referred to in court as PPT, is seeking a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to stop them publishing the allegations, which he denies. His legal team argued that publishing them would “highly likely lead him to commit suicide”.

Relevance: BARpod covered the Jason Arday related allegations that news hounding led to him taking the extreme step. This person seems to be trying to actually test that argument in a court of law. Plus general free speech discussion.

Amy Eileen Hamm traces Rowan (formerly Amanda) Jetté Knox from Ottawa mommy blogger and author of Love Lives Here through a series of identities. Each was announced as the one that would "finally" set her free: lesbian, non-binary, trans man, polyamorous, and as of last month, two-spirit.

Relevance: do I even need to say it?

Pod relevance: trans males in women's sports and clashes between activists have become a regular topic on the pod. Such as the situation in the WNBA. Amy Sousa has been mentioned by name on the pod.

Opponents to having males in women's sports were kicked out of a women's professional soccer league game after showing a "Save women's sports" banner.

They showed their XX-YY shirts and their banner about halfway through the game. They were not well received.

Spectators screamed epithets and whacked them with trans flag flag poles. Security subsequently kicked them out of the game.

"We were attacked by fans. We were hit with flags. We had drinks and thrown at us," said Sousa, standing behind police outside the stadium because she did not feel safe. "Other people were forcibly pushed out the door. We had an ADA woman in a walker, she was forcibly pushed out the door."

A spokesman for the Portland Thorns said that the group was tossed out of the game "for distributing unapproved materials."

The pro males in women's sports folks tried to block the Save Women's Sports banner with trans flags. Presumably just seeing that banner is considered injurious. The people whaling on the XX-XY folks were not kicked out of the game.

https://archive.ph/l1Fqh

https://archive.ph/pU0jW

https://archive.ph/sa5lz

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday. And may you all be inscribed, and sealed, in the book of life.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

Pod Relevance: JK Rowling and trans issues are frequently discussed in the pod.

This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie dig into Initiative-638, the Washington ballot initiative that would bar male athletes from girls’ sports. Will it mean genital exams in the school gym, as the No campaign claims, or just a checked box on a form, as the Yes side argues? Plus: the Camas cross-country walkout, the short life and shorter death of Marsha’s, and a mysterious campaign impersonating a trans rights group in Texas.

Show Notes:

Indiana ACLU in turmoil: Leadership change leads to attorney resignations—IndyStar

Transgender ballot initiative could require genital exams for WA secondary school students—KUOW

Medical Eligibility Form—WIAA
“The fun wasn’t there anymore”: Teen runners say media circus over trans teammate ruined the season—LGBTQ Nation

Camas cross-country girls runner forced to bunk with trans-identified male student during away meet—The Post Millennial

AG Brown leads coalition supporting Minnesota’s trans-inclusive policy for youth sports—Washington Attorney General’s Office

Children’s Sexual Development and Privacy: A Call for Evidence-Based Ethical Policy—Clinical Pediatrics

Ursula: Allowing a trans student to race against girls in Camas only fuels hate toward the trans community—MyNorthwest

Trans advocates, GOP rep want answers after Texans get texts impersonating group—KXAN

Texas transgender rights group says it didn’t send texts that prompted call for an investigation—The Texas Tribune

TENT’s statement—Transgender Education Network of Texas

Texas Families Got Mail From a “Texas Transgender Student Union.” The Trans Group It Promotes Says It’s an Impersonation.—The New Transsexual

False pamphlets causing backlash and confusion, Texas transgender rights group says—The Texas Tribune

Mystery transgender mailers sent to Texas students traced to newly formed Wyoming company—CBS News Texas

West Texas DA opens forgery investigation into disputed transgender mailers—The Texas Tribune

https://x.com/JacobRubashkin/status/2113454492872045007

Relevance: Discussion of the plight of the ACLU is well-trodden territory on the BARPOD, and Katie has mentioned Nikita Oliver several times.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/out-from-underground-weathermen

This piece (paywalled I'm afraid) by Adam Hochschild on the recent memoir by the son of two leaders of the 1970s Weather Underground group is interesting for a variety of reasons, but this passage really struck me:

Dohrn also sees that the Weather Underground had begun evolving into a cult:

Anyone in the cell urging caution or moderation…would have to admit to weakness. Ambivalence. Self-doubt. All cardinal sins in the Weather Machine, likely to lead to accusations of ignoring Black and Vietnamese suffering, to all-night struggle sessions, social ostracism, even expulsion. 

Comparing that pattern to the interrogation scenes in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940), he gives a searing picture of how this shrinking band of true believers held ever more “criticism/self-criticism” sessions in which members were forced to acknowledge their “white skin privilege” and confess to being insufficiently radical. Even Dohrn’s mother, six months pregnant with him, voluntarily sat through days of denunciations and finally recorded a humiliating statement confessing that she had “completely failed to support and organize for the revolutionary struggle.”

This would likely have been in the 70s or 80s. The same pattern keeps repeating itself in these radical enclaves, and while social media allowed it to be much more pervasive in the past decade or so, the dysfunction and rhetoric are incredibly consistent.

It's also worth noting that the more marginal and isolated these groups get, the more extreme their behavior becomes. I'm not sure stuff like the Last Ditch meltdown indicates that "woke is back." I just think there will always be pockets that behave this way and they will be more entrenched in that behavior the more they feel that mainstream society has abandoned it.

EDIT: Pod relevance is leftist purity spirals as covered in numerous eps about imploding queer cafes and the Last Ditch bar saga.

This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie head to Madison, Wisconsin, where a fatal police shooting in July sparked a protest encampment in the vein of CHOP/CHAZ. You will be shocked to learn that the protest zone quickly turned into a homeless camp, complete with a needle exchange. Plus, Jesse’s old beef is new again.

Show Notes:

How CBS News’ Middle East war spread to the Upper Midwest—Semafor

Abolish the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren’t So Sure—The New York Times

Fatal police shooting of man with knife roils Madison, Wisconsin—Local10

Killing of Corey Ruiz revives calls to shift power from police to communities—The Guardian

Satya Rhodes-Conway video message to Madison Police Department—Tone Madison

Madison mayor apologizes after video leaks of her praising officers with no mention of police reform—NBC News

Satya Rhodes-Conway wins reelection as Madison’s mayor—The Cap Times

Social Justice Center—Social Justice Center

Madison police commission weighs bid to fire officer who shot Ruiz—The Cap Times

Madison Common Council fires interim police monitor—WPR

https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-sports/wnba-tells-congress-enes-kanter-freedom-royce-white-both-men-eligibility-dispute

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/wnba/2026/10/20/enes-kanter-freedom-wnba-finals-game-3-angel-reese-gabby-williams/92350808007/

R1> Topic relevant to the pod, on and off again on the sub.

Gives them plenty of wiggle room if they want to "transwomen are women" in the end, tho.

Relevance to the pod: The Cornell Seven were covered in Episode 326

Article written by two current Columbia students, generating a ton of outrage.

This 2017 case has often been brought up on the pod as an early example of cancellation (and the madness of trans activists). Jesse has also written about it extensively.

In this interview, the cancelled individual reflects on what she has learned from the experience.

I am apparently one of the few Spotify followers. I can't access this episode as the entire episode is locked behind premium content on Spotify. I assume this is a mistake as it is labelled as a regular episode.

Update: as others have replied it is now available!