This is Pride Month, but for segments of the LGBTQ community the enthusiasm for a united front has gone sour. Back in the heady days when the gay movement ruled the Left with its parades and show trials for bakers, it blithely added the Trans designation to its marquee.

But that decision is coming back at the veterans of the Gay movement, and they don’t like it. “@spiralmoney The T has only destroyed the hard won acceptance LGB people fought for. They contribute nothing and wreck everything. The LGB only asked for equality, nothing more.” The protocols of accepting trans athletes as women and radical surgery to assume a different gender have startled longterm members of the Pride movement.

Suddenly, they have become victims of their own victim mentality. Pride parades are cancelled or downplayed to avoid conflicts in the movement.  “FredSargeant  Considering how hard the queer activists have been coming at gays and lesbians to convert into Ts, anyone could have seen this coming.  It turns out that it wasn’t the straights who were coming for us after all.” Yeah. Not happy.

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova is likewise pissed that men are being allowed to beat biological women in sports competitions or having surgery to transform their bodies into women.  And ordinary women don’t want passengers on their float. “Making a mockery of women who really suffer with so many different things, just pisses me off. Be who you want to be. But some should NOT pretend they have these problems, when they can’t.”

As we wrote in May of 2024 there are few better examples of the victim polka than J.K. Rowling, the feminist creator of the immensely successful Harry Potter books and movies. “Normally that would be enough notoriety for one lifetime. But Rowling, a committed Labourite,  has endured a second notoriety, that as critic of trans people gaining admission into the lives of women.

“Let’s just say this iteration has not been as pleasant for her as her Harry Potter success. The forces of the gender jumble have crucified her for saying things such as: “Telling women and girls they must accept increased risk to themselves to appease male feelings is the very definition of the patriarchy you claim to stand against. Vulnerable women are paying the price for a fashionable fallacy that has serious, real world consequences.”

So who’s the victim here? At the heart of the conflict is the progressive cult of victimhood that dictates identity in today’s society. Since the early days of feminism and the LGBTQ movement victimization has defined their space. Sample: “Invasive? You know what is invasive? Having men take from us. Threaten our safe spaces. That’s invasive.”

The latest TV instalment of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian feminist tract The Handmaid’s Tale illustrates the evolution of victimhood from access to contraception in the 1960s to today’s safe spaces. With its gothic premise of women in red gowns being herded like cattle by the patriarchy, Handmaid’s Tale has been Victimhood 101 for impressionable young women since its 1985 publication.

In their sense of victimization secular women— who’ve had every opportunity that their grandmothers wanted— now quake in fear at constructs created for them in universities and colleges. Crisis is used to produce a panic response. Psychiatric (bulimia) and physical (Covid) panics have robbed them of their self esteem and self control.

In this they are exploited by elected officials, bureaucrats and the health industry. They are helpless pawns in a crisis mentality created for them the past 50 years. The culture industry, too, exploits their vulnerabilities by blurring the definitions of women into a maze of pronouns and accepted behaviours.

If you believe the polls the put-upon narrative has isolated young unmarried women. During the recent U.S. election polling in the Washington Examiner suggested that married men are 59 percent Republican. Married women are 55 percent Republican. Unmarried men are 52 percent Republican But a whopping 68 percent of unmarried women were backing Kamala.

And they are fragile. New polling from Nate Silver shows that conservatives are up 31 points among those with self-described excellent mental health, and down 26 among those with poor mental health. Meanwhile the party of neuroses and vulnerability reports that 45 percent of liberals self diagnose themselves as having poor mental health.

Women are hardly alone. The DEI movement— which began as a correction against a lack of opportunity for certain groups— has morphed into a steamroller allowing a marriage of militants and guilty liberals to redefine society.

Nowhere is the unlikely marriage of victimhood more bizarre— and dangerous— than the Hamas infatuation. “Terrorists, criminals, psychopaths, and fantasists from every part of the globe have grafted themselves on to the Palestinian cause, because the most basic laws of nature have been revised to accommodate it,” wrote Lee Smith in Tablet. “The Palestinian cause gives hope to each of these groups—hope that their own nihilistic and murderous ambitions could win world favour as well. And they have.”

Former actor Russell Brand, who’s currently undergoing the J.K. Rowling treatment for adopting God over godlessness, points out the true nature of this vulnerability craze: “… The crisis is always used to legitimize certain solutions, and a docile or terrified public is willing to participate in this. Proposed solutions that usually involve giving up their freedom. We are continually being invited to give up our freedom in exchange for safety or convenience. And it seems that this process is radically escalating.”

Until we run out of victims expect to surrender your freedom.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/

Breaking News from the WNBA: The Caitlin Clark experience is still a dumpster fire with her fellow players. Okay, let’s be honest: it’s the veteran black/ LGBTQ players who make up the league’s base. They are still seething over the attention Clark gets for jumps in TV ratings and sponsorships. But don’t take our word for it.

It can to be seen in recent on-court confrontations with black rivals Angel Reese and Rhyme Howard. The veterans of the NBA are happy to slap the newcomer around. They don’t like her slapping back. As we predicted in April of last year, “The most interesting reaction may come from the women already in the WNBA. The intrusion of a white, conservative, straight Catholic woman in their midst won’t sit well in a league where women of that description have been made to feel unwelcome in many dressing rooms. 

“She’ll need a tough hide to survive the resentment of other players who see themselves as the stars and Clark as a product of white privilege.” Her first reality check came with being snubbed for the 2024 U.S. Women’s Olympic team. The veterans said they couldn’t trust a rookie. Sure.

To short-circuit the hate Clark tried reaching out to the black community of the WNBA. “I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” Clark told Time. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them.” (Fact check”: the WNBA was a chronic money loser ignored by most sports fans before Clark.) Her outreach boomeranged, alienating her white fans while being ignored by most black players in the WNBA.

On last Friday’s First Take on ESPN, Stephen A. Smith was succinct. “As a result of her greatness combined with her being white, there are plenty of Black players who were excelling on the WNBA level for many years before Cailtin Clark ever arrived that didn’t receive that shine. So, there is resentment from the perspective that, ‘Damn, we were doing this and everybody’s trying to act like it’s just her.’

“…They do resent the fact that a white player comes along and they’re getting all of this shine when they were doing a lot of great things for the league and for themselves as individual players, and they didn’t receive that level of shine, that marketability, that pizzaz, etc., etc.”

MSN reported that Robert Griffin III and Ryan Clark of ESPN were on opposite sides of the argument. Griffin offered the opinion that a number of WNBA players treated Clark unfairly, because they were jealous of the publicity she was getting, and that she was viewed as something of a saviour to the league. In addition to her skill, the fact that Caitlin Clark is a white player appeared to turn up the heat in the argument.

By contrast, Clark said that he believed Clark was a talented player, and that she had recognized the great players who had come before her. However, he said there was a “racial component” to the way her fans attack certain players.”

The problem for those hating on Clark, who’s been everything advertised, is that she has brought attention to their sport, attention they failed to generate themselves despite national TV contracts and the chequebook of the NBA. The latest TV deal increased sixfold as Americans tuned in to see Clark. @TheBabylonBee cheekily sums it up. “Caitlin Clark Canonized As Saint After Performing Miracle Of Making Women’s Basketball Watchable.”

As we wrote last April, “That resentment has been naked and ugly from many who see themselves eclipsed by Clark’s obvious drawing power— and by their own inability to break the glass ceiling. As we have written on multiple occasions, women’s sports has been in search of a marketable messiah to change it  from an ESPN liberal hype to mainstream.”

For many in the audience— including women— the image of these sports has become too political. As the gender revolt took hold, fans were turned off by the strident lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe and WNBA star Britney Griner who turned every game into a referendum on the latest #BLM talking points.”

In fact it was the insolent, angry face of Griner— here seen cursing out referees—  that informed the public opinion of the WNBA as a league dominated by lesbians and #BLM militants. When Griner, jailed in Russia for foolishly taking marijuana products into that country, was later exchanged by president Joe Biden for a violent militant known as Doctor Death many bridled at surrendering a known criminal just to free a basketball player. They said it showed privilege of a different kind.

Clark isn’t the only white player getting the hard fouls. Her new teammate Sophie Cunningham got rag-dolled by Houston’s Kiki Iriafen, and then acknowledged “We have a target on our back”.

Meanwhile the Professional Women’s Hockey League is desperate for any kind of attention in the U.S. that might attract a TV contract. While receiving well-meaning support in Canada from TV and the media, it remains a sideshow on the American media landscape. Thanks to Clark the WNBA has an 11-year, $2.2B  deal with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC Universal. So far, the PWHL is still looking (the National Women’s Soccer League has a four year deal with $240M.

While no one is suggesting a racial/ gender conflict to spice up the product, it would help if there were a Caitin Clark on skates somewhere to rescue the league from insolvency.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/