As most of you know, I'm a sucker for history, so when I saw this Xweet earlier this morning...well...it was well nigh irresistible.

HOLY SMOKES

Yes, it’s a real article. https://t.co/WeWEbjhNIn

— 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐠 (@WaywardGreg) February 18, 2025

I mean, it had VURT DA FURK written all over it, not the least of which was the fact that it was on CNN's website.

Now, I get that the network's been on a crusade about the trans since Trump's executive orders about women in sports and pronouns, etc. Why, they're running a sob story right now about a trans athlete whose 'identities' are a 'target,' whatever that means. And how he's ready to 'challenge' Trump's ban on trans athletes.

“Each of my identities is a target, especially in America."

Trans athlete CeCé Telfer tells @AmandaDCNN why she is ready to challenge President Trump’s ban on trans athletes.

Read more: https://t.co/6plAs26e0O pic.twitter.com/fm1FId5wdt

— CNN Sports (@cnnsport) February 18, 2025

STUNNING, BRAVE

Which is not a ban on trans athletes like him. He can run anywhere he wants. It's a ban on him - and like-minded fellow males - competing against the opposite sex disguised as one of them.

This guy is an underperforming male who turned to stealing women's thunder. That's all there is to it.

CeCe Telfer has the distinction of being the first male to win a women's NCAA Championship. Telfer took first place at the 2019 NCAA Division II Women's Track and Field Championships in the 400-meter hurdles. 

Telfer had an unsuccessful athletic career competing against men, ranking 390th in 2017 among all Division II male athletes. That's when Telfer decided to "become" a woman and compete against females, ultimately becoming the top athlete in the women's division after one year of hormone therapy. 

Like many trans athletes, Telfer suggested that the athlete was actually at a "disadvantage" competing against women because of the testosterone level. But the results – winning an NCAA championship, particularly after a poor career competing against males – directly contradict that ridiculous claim. 

"I have no benefit. I’m on hormone suppression, it doesn’t help. It’s another disadvantage. Cis women are producing more testosterone than the average trans female," Telfer said in 2019. 

Unreal. Male athlete CeCe Telfer goes on CNN and arrogantly explains that the NCAA can't vacate Telfer's title, in women's sports, because "that's not how history works."

History will not be kind to males stealing accolades from women. https://t.co/TWkDdjdeq1

— Dan Zaksheske (@RealDanZak) February 18, 2025

I see the problem here - it's Trump and the people who voted for him. This is basically where a race/trans-baiting CNN article about a cross-dressing black man in Memphis, TN, in *checks notes* 1866 comes in.

Meet 'Frances Thompson.'

On a Friday in June, Frances Thompson swore an oath before a congressional committee and began to testify about what she’d experienced during a race riot in Memphis one month earlier.

She told the committee how seven White men, including two police officers, forced their way into her home and stole her money and all her meager belongings before sexually assaulting her and her teenage housemate.

In sharing her harrowing experience, Thompson quietly made history. She is believed to be the first Black transgender woman to testify before Congress.

Thompson’s testimony in 1866 came at a critical time, as the nation weighed whether to expand equal constitutional protections to newly freed Black Americans. But it also came at a great personal cost – a decade after her landmark testimony, Thompson was cruelly outed, arrested for cross-dressing and forced to work in an all-male chain gang.

Historians and advocates tell CNN they draw parallels between all that Thompson experienced as a Black trans woman and today’s anti-transgender political climate after President Donald Trump signed numerous executive orders targeting trans American minors’ right to access medical treatment and participate in school sports teams aligned with their gender identities..

See how this is shaping up already?

That's just in the first, what? Five paragraphs?

Where do the reviled 'conservatives' of the somewhat inflammatory headline come into the story?

The sad tale of Mr Thompson took place during the race riots in post-Civil War Memphis (New Orleans also experienced a vicious bout). Thanks to the horror visited on the city by the explosive mix of angry, defeated Southern loyalists, a burgeoning, volatile influx of black veterans and a new Irish immigrant population, and President Andrew Johnson's relinquishing control of Reconstruction efforts back to ex-confederate state governments, it was a dangerous, ghastly time. [Beege adds: The following is from an article on The Freedmen’s Bureau Report on the Memphis Race Riots of 1866]

...The situation in Memphis was volatile for months before the riots. The city’s free black population had quadrupled following the end of the Civil War in April 1865, creating pressure for jobs and housing. Many new black inhabitants were Civil War veterans living in South Memphis near Fort Pickering. They refused to accept second-class citizenship after contributing to the Confederacy’s defeat. Almost simultaneously, the city’s immigrant population was exploding, mostly from recent Irish immigrants, who also needed jobs and housing. Many of the Irish found employment as policemen and firemen, while blacks found jobs in manual labor. Blacks resented the Irish being in a position of authority, and the Irish cops exhibited racial bias toward blacks.

The report also considered national politics. The Memphis riots, as well as those in New Orleans twelve weeks later, occurred during a political battle over Reconstruction policy. Radical Republicans in Congress called for a more punitive approach to the former confederates. In contrast, President Andrew Johnson’s policy accepting ex-confederate control of reconstructed southern state governments suggested to many Americans that the president’s policies were failing. Radical Republicans argued that the riots called into question the Freedmen’s Bureau ability to protect black people in the South. They therefore wished to maintain and strengthen the federal military presence in the region.

From the official report, Republicans wanted the military to remain in the cities in order to protect the blacks.

Not quite sure where these 'conservatives' are yet.

As part of the investigations into the riots, Mr Thompson didn't go to Washington to testify about the trauma he endured. Federal agents and members of the 'Freedman's Bureau' came to them to take their testimony..

...In the days that followed, Congress dispatched federal agents and members of the Freedman’s Bureau – which had been founded to help the formerly enslaved transition into citizenship – to interview survivors and document what had occurred.

Frances Thompson was “one of many women who got up that morning and walked to the congressional hearing and told her story,” historian Hannah Rosen said.

The 14th Amendment was also in the throes of being ratified at the time of the riots, and the author of the piece ties Thompson's testimony to shifting the national mood towards ratification.

...Rosen credits the bravery of Thompson and the other women who testified with helping to shift the national sentiment around the 14th Amendment.

“Her impact isn’t direct, but she was part of the large numbers of people in Memphis … who showed enormous courage showing up to tell their story to congressional leaders who were not necessarily sympathetic,” Rosen said.

Tenuous at best.

Then we go off the deep end.

THEN CONSERVATIVES BEGAN ATTACKING HER IDENTITY

...Despite her bravery, Thompson was later forcibly outed as a transgender woman – and her life would ultimately end in tragedy.

...A decade after the end of the Civil War, the gains made during Reconstruction had already started to wane. Many Black residents had fled Memphis after the massacre, and the state took over the Memphis police department, Rosen said, because the officers “were seen as out-of-control ruffians … who had obviously been a key source of the violence.”

In 1876, Thompson was still living in South Memphis when rumors began circulating that she was “cross-dressing,” a violation of a local ordinance.

She was arrested and conservative newspapers – which had been instrumental in sowing discord before the massacres – reported that Thompson had been subjected to a medical exam and was “pronounced a member of the male sex.”

Multiple articles used Thompson’s identity to try to undermine her testimony to Congress about the Memphis Massacre. But she remained defiant – even as officers forced her to take mugshots in both men’s and women’s clothes.

Mr Thompson got hit with a substantial fine after a round of public mockery and was forced to work on a male chain gang after being unable to pay it.

Sadly, once released, neighbors found him ill and although they got him to a hospital, Mr Thompson passed away.

In 1876, Tennessee was solidly Democratic territory and I can imagine local politics were even more so.

But somehow a 'cross-dressing' black man's tragic story is the fault of 'conservatives'?

And parallels today's mores? Precisely how?

...The historian said in many ways, 160 years later, the country appears to be echoing the same backlash that occurred after Black Americans made modest gains towards equality following Reconstruction – and vulnerable people, like trans Americans, are once again bearing the brunt.

“History is repeating itself,” Rosen said, adding that she sees parallels in the “vilification of Black trans women in order to denigrate one’s political opponents,” and what Thompson experienced.

Like the resistance to Reconstruction, Rosen said she believes the backlash we’re witnessing today is “a reaction to the very brief window of commitment to racial equality” that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

But if Thompson’s life story proves anything, Bryanna Jenkins said, it’s that trans people always have and will continue to be at the forefront of the push for civil rights in the United States.

I can only assume kicking black male athletes out of women's sports is the 'vilification' this nutcase is referring to. It's not like there aren't any white male pretenders losing their schweet gigs either...oh, but wait. There are.

And pushing back on males in women's sports is the exact same as the violent race massacres during Reconstruction?!

Only in their twisted, progressive fever dreams. GAWD, these people are sick.

And gaslighting 'conservatives' in the headline? That's on CNN because nowhere in the article is the word 'conservatives' other THAN?

THEN CONSERVATIVES BEGAN ATTACKING HER IDENTITY

You guessed it - the headline.

[Beege adds: Thank you to comments] And one note about 'conservative newspapers.' What were THOSE in a Southern city during Reconstruction? Hmm.

History sucks for progressives of the professional victimhood-grifter class. It always bites them in the asterisk.

What a load of horse poopie this entire exercise is, and CNN, had they the capacity, should be ashamed. 

Maybe the network should made to parade through town with 'race-baiting gaslighter' signs hung around their necks. 

I don't blame the author for writing this load of horsecrap - hey, if you can get someone to swallow it, have at it. 

I blame CNN for publishing it.