Cis Teen Runner Falsely Accused of Poor Sportsmanship by ICONS
The anti-trans group, which claims to advocate for women in sports, claimed a teenage runner gave a thumbs down to a trans girl who placed ahead of her.
by Evan Urquhart
Senior Adeline Johnson did NOT give an unsportsmanlike thumbs down to one of her competitors at a high school track meet in California this weekend. The Branson School stepped in to correct the record after an anti-trans advocacy group falsely claimed that Johnson, who placed fourth in the varsity girls’ 1600 meter, gave a thumbs down to second place finisher Athena Ryan, who is transgender. The school clarified that Johnson made the gesture in response to her mother, and it represented her reaction to her own performance, not her competition.
screenshot from the New York Post
The false claim that Johnson’s gesture was directed at Ryan originated with a viral tweet by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS). ICONS is an anti-trans group with close ties to Riley Gaines, a college swimmer who once tied for fifth place with trans athlete Lia Thomas. The tweet maligning Johnson as a poor sport was subsequently magnfied by multiple right wing media outlets including Fox News, the Daily Mail, the College Fix, and the New York Post.
One of the co-founder’s of ICONS, Kim Jones, featured prominently in a recent article for the New Yorker about a group of “thought criminals” who meet regularly to share in their experiences of being canceled in which she came across as an obsessive transphobe who dominates conversations about gender and insists on using only “sex-based pronouns.” This might help explain why a group that purports to be about protecting women athletes would smear a high school athlete experiencing a low moment with false claims about her motivations. Johnson’s reputation means nothing to a group so single-mindedly focused on attacking transgender women in sports competitions.
Accurately portraying the views of cisender women athletes and not casually damaging their reputations would seem to be a baseline for a group that aims to support women in sports. By falsely portraying an emotional response to a fourth-place finish as being a gesture in support of their activist agenda, ICONS effectively maligned one of the very athletes they claim to be protecting.