To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’
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Yep, heard someone complain about Khelif and I asked them if we should have disqualified Phelps considering his genetics give him all the advantages and if they believed we would have complained about Khelif 20 years ago and if they believed that men who’s testosterone is under a certain level should fight in the women’s category. That was the end of them complaining.
50 bucks says they didn’t listen to a word you said and are still complaining about it, just in online echo chambers instead of to you
Well, if that at least shut them up for the time I was hanging around them then good!
I keep bringing up Brittney Griner and ask if she should be forced to play in the NBA and suddenly it’s, “no, she couldn’t even come close to beating the worst NBA player.”
So if you’re a woman with masculine features and want to be an athlete, you can’t compete with anyone apparently.
Realistically she had a choice - she could have either become the first woman in the NBA and been essentially an also-ran beyond that or do what she did - join the WNBA and set a single game record and tie a career record in her first game. Just going to point that out again, she tied a career record in the WNBA in a single game, the first one she played under them.
Now she’s better known for being arrested and thrown in a Russian prison for trying to bring a weed vape into Russia when that’s illegal there. Pretty sure that’s technically international drug smuggling, albeit in the smallest and most innocuous possible way.
Ah yes, the Air Bud rule. “Nothing says women can’t play in the NBA.”
And, of course, it was her choice on which league to play in. Because players get to choose such things.
It was her choice which leagues to try to join. She didn’t try for the NBA and fail - she didn’t try for the NBA. There were even some commentators far deeper into the sport than I considering the possibility that she might do so before she joined the WNBA instead.
As far as it being the Air Bud rule, one woman has officially been drafted by the NBA in 1977. She decided not to try out because she got pregnant. Mark Cuban talked about considering Britney Griner back in 2013, and there’s currently some chatter about possibly drafting Caitlin Clark though she’d be one of the smallest dozen or so players at only 6’ tall.
But yeah, there is no professional sports league in the US that bans women from participating if they can compete at the relevant level. There’s even the occasional woman that tries out for the NFL, the last of which got injured early on in the process and bowed out. High contact sports are a hard sell for women to compete with men just because of size, weight and strength differences and professional sports athletes being more than a standard deviation from the mean.
Or maybe most women who think they have a shot get scared off by a bunch of asshole misogynists- the same asshole misogynists who think that they also can’t compete with women.
Reactionaries don’t want womens sports, they want beauty pageants with extra steps; something they can fap to. That’s why they go after somewhat brolic looking women, regardless if they’re cis or trans: they no make pp hard, therefore they shouldn’t be allowed
Look at how they used to require the female athletes to dress in beach volleyball. Men get loose, comfortable shirts and shorts, while woman were allowed a maximum of 10cm of cloth on their bikini bottoms.
And people were pissed when the new options weren’t exposing almost their entire body. Got all angry about the woke giving athletes more options to choose from when performing their sport.
And there were complaints when that was changed. Including the similar white knight shit going on right now- “how will they be able to perform at their best in shorts?! You’re forcing women to have a disadvantage!” No, they’re forcing your dick to have a disadvantage.
Once you’ve had bro-lic, you just go chro-nic
Do women want to fight Imane? Probably not.
Do I want to fight Tyson in his prime? Probably also no lol
I’m not trying to make her look like Tyson but they are both outside the norm just like 99% of top athletes.
Do I want to fight Tyson in his prime? Probably also no lol
Do I want to fight Tyson right now at almost 60, also no lol
At least now you can get the drop on him. He won’t hear you coming!
But then his pigeons would descend upon you in numbers
Anyone can become amazing at a sport if they work hard enough at it, but the top athletes are always going to be people who worked hard and have a genetic predisposition to it. Lots of sports are dominated by people who are taller than average. Where do we draw the line on a genetic trait giving someone too much of an advantage?
I mean, it’s the Olympics. The best of the best. If we had a breath holding competition and that one tribe that developed extremely large lunge capacity entered, that’s fair game IMO.
It’s pretty much what happens in long-distance running, and it’s seen as very positive (which it is)
I don’t want to fight her, and I’m a dude with martial arts training twice her size. The lady has skill.
it reminds me of the recent volleyball injury case that went around. Trans student spiked a volley ball into the head of another student (not exactly intentionally) and it injured them quite significantly. Naturally her first reaction was to bitch and moan about it, but at the end of the day, nobody would want to be spiked in the face with a volleyball, from a man, women, child, anybody. That shit would at the very least concuss you, and might even kill you in all honesty.
the fact that the other student was trans is probably more inconsequential than you would think.
I feel this would be a great MythBusters episode: “can you die from being hit in the head with a volleyball? No, but what if we built a machine that shot it as fast as a bullet?”
it would certainly be an interesting one, though if i had to guess, the chicken airplane one is probably similar enough…
as long as you ignore the chicken and the airplane part lol.
So far it seems like only Italian women don’t want to fight her.
I’ll repeat what I said elsewhere about this debate. You probably wonder “so what should the rules be to include an athlete for women’s sports? Surely there must be some rule”. This is understandable but please realize that the transphobes who are pushing this aren’t concerned at all with the specifics. They’re not even interested in women’s sports. They want to remove trans women from public life altogether. Not just sports but everywhere. Intimidating trans athletes into obscurity is just their most recent tactic.
So please remember that there is no test that will satisfy the transphobes. There is no fair rule that can be agreed upon, because the transphobes will always keep moving the goalposts. This gets extremely complex. There is no use in debating these people. They will debate forever, because the actual deep down motivation is disgust with trans people.
Save your energy. Don’t debate transphobes.
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Your submission in “TERFs taking their gloves off for Imane Khelif” was removed for Transphobia.
lemmy.blahaj.zone admin is using photon? 😁
Certainly am :)
Never JADE (justify, argue, debate or explain)
That’s why transphobes shouldn’t set the rules. And when the rules are set, there will be backlash, which needs to be ignored by the scientific community and the authorities governing professional sport.
This is a tall order, but I do think the question of where the line must be drawn to guarantee fairness is a question worth answering, preferrably not by me, because I don’t have the credentials to deliberate on what’s fair and what isn’t. This is the role of science.
They’re not even interested in women’s sports.
Yes, they are just weaponizing one disadvantaged group against another. Just like how in Portland, they had disabled people sue to remove homeless people from sidewalks (even though majority of homeless are also disabled). Or when churches bringing up abortions of PoC being a “genocide” (which they don’t care about) so they can ban abortion for everyone.
When you’re a gold medal winning man, you have overcome the obstacles of a normal man to become a superman.
When you’re a gold medal winning woman, you have overcome the obstacles of a normal woman to become a man.
That’s the logic at play.
That’s so gross, I like it
I looked her up again to get caught up on what kind of info wikipedia has updated on her.
I really admire her stance.
Honestly I can’t believe she is so brave to face the world with a stance like that.
Courage.
Alfred Kinsey proved that everyone’s on the vertical-align spectrum.
What stance are we talking about here? I don’t see it indicated on the picture
it’s listed below age
Oh rofl ty
So she was actually a robot all along…
Imane Khelif doesn’t even have genetic differences! She’s a cis woman who happens to currently be one of the best in the world at punching!
I admire the hell out of her.
She didn’t let the bullshit stop her from competing to the best of her ability.Proves she’s as strong in character as she is in the ring. Keep kicking ass Imane Khelif!
I agree with your point but
She’s just a
normalcis womanTrans women are women, and are perfectly normal.
oof you’re right my bad
You seem to be unaware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development issues, particularly 46,XY DSD in competitive female sports.
Which doesn’t apply to Khelif in any way that anyone has been able to prove, and which she and the IOC has denied even being tested for. This was a rumor from a disgraced Russian testing firm and spread by Russian state media after Khelif beat a Russian boxer. So why are you mentioning it here?
Can you elaborate in your own words how this is an issue in women’s sports? That wikipedia page only mentioned at the end about “issues” in competitive female sport but did not elaborate and only cited one study. I clicked on the linked study but no one has the time to read eight pages of it especially one that is full of jargon for those without scientific or sports background. So far though, I see that the authors of the study criticised IAAF testing methods as being flawed but I couldn’t find the meat and bones of what specifically they are trying to criticise.
It is a complicated issue, hence the need for details. In a nutshell, rare people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya have such a significant competitive advantage against vanilla females they would come to dominate some female olympic disciplines to the point it would destroy female olympics as a sport competition. I would argue they need to compete in their own class for the same reasons of fairness as female and male ligas are distinct.
This cannot be discussed rationally in the current political shitstorm unfortunately.
No matter what arbitrary divisions are in place, be that gender or weight or race or whatever, there will always be people who dominate the field. That doesn’t destroy the Olympics as a sport competition, that is the Olympics as a sport competition. Competing in order to find the best of the best, the “freaks of nature” who manage to far surpass the average person.
Competition is core to human nature, but so is fairness. Which is why men and women compete in different categories. If you want to discourage women athletes to compete it would seem somewhat unfair to me, but really I only care enough to correct technical points in a discussion.
I don’t know your political leanings, but this is consistent with the same people who are anti-DEI and anti-anything else that forces equality.
So what’s so wrong about forcing equality literally anywhere else? Or, why is it necessary only in women’s sports?
Then, going back to the original post, why is Michael Phelps lauded despite having clear genetic advantages?
Or, why is it necessary only in women’s sports?
As a general rule in sports, men participate in essentially “open” leagues, while women’s leagues exist to protect women from having to compete against everyone else to promote women taking part. In other words, women’s leagues are already a form of protectionism to encourage participation because people care about women having a “fair” environment to participate in in a way they do not for men.
This idea that sports leagues for women/girls are a form of protectionism even extends down to school sports and Title IX, which is why under current Title IX policy girls must be allowed to try out for boys teams but not the reverse.
But where are you basing your definition of “fairness”? If you exclude people with a biological advantage, since that would be unfair, then literally all current athletes would be excluded, since by qualifying for the Olympics they have proven that they have a strong biological advantage over the average person.
The only solution is to Harrison Bergeron everyone.
vanilla females
Please define “vanilla females.”
Presumably they mean XX cis female persons with no medical disorder altering production or action of any sex-related hormone or anatomy. But that’s a big mouthful to describe a large majority of female persons, and folks get real angry when you describe the by far most common set of common traits a group of humans have as “normal”.
and folks get real angry when you describe the by far most common set of common traits a group of humans have as “normal”.
By that argument, Christianity is normal. It’s the most common religion.
So I assume you think Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are abnormal, yes?
By that argument, Christianity is normal. It’s the most common religion.
So I assume you think Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are abnormal, yes?
I think when talking about what religion is “normal” you’re better off to talk about within a given society or region because it is an extremely regional trait and trying to consider it globally makes it less useful. And it shows a lot in how those societies interact in the broad strokes with those religions. Including the presumption that one is at least probably familiar with it and it’s broader teachings by default. For example, in India Hinduism is “normal” and you would expect a typical person to have a familiarity with Hinduism, to be aware of it, to see it’s influences on culture even if a given individual isn’t a devout Hindu. You see the same as regards Christianity in most of western Europe and North America, Mormonism in Utah, Islam in the Middle East, etc.
By comparison, unless you are in one of a few very particular contexts, Scientology is almost never normal.
But then you’re trying to assign a moral value to being “normal.” The degree to which one resembles the average or typical person of some group or social context is not a measure of their goodness or morality.
Someone said it better:
Yep, heard someone complain about Khelif and I asked them if we should have disqualified Phelps considering his genetics give him all the advantages and if they believed we would have complained about Khelif 20 years ago and if they believed that men who’s testosterone is under a certain level should fight in the women’s category. That was the end of them complaining.
Lol, no one complain about Michael Phelps but people are suddenly making faux concerns about women’s sports-- which is specifically strange considering no one says the same about men’s sports. It is though this isn’t motivated by misogyny and transphobia.
Yes, by all means let us abolish the artificial separation between olympic male and female sports. I personally don’t care one bit, since I don’t have a stake in the game. Career athletes will probably disagree, but fuck them, right?
So, would you agree that if a born male is below the certain testosterone level that the person should compete in women’s category? No one seems to be railing on this but somehow everyone is up in arms when it comes to women’s sports.
I do love how the people constantly white knighting women by claiming that women who are athletes should be protected from other women who are athletes, but with masculine traits, but when you flip the script and try to suggest that maybe that should apply across the board if that’s how we’re doing things and “feminine” men should play against women, suddenly it’s “no, not like that! Our precious
propertywomen must be protected!”Not really. Not a sport physiologist, but the core advantage is due to male puberty. If you prevent male puberty with blockers and afterwards keep male testosteron in low range and/or use the same regimen as in M2F transition these individuals would be better matched in a female competition.
Or, you know, one could separate athletes into brackets/categories that are better comparable and don’t give certain people a huge advantage over others. Make a separate marathon category for East Africans. Make a separate swimming category for people like Phelps. Make categories for boxing based on strength or performance.
Multiple female skiers have called for a different way of doing things for example, because the shorter courses for women bore them and they aren’t allowed to compete against men.
Make a separate marathon category for East Africans.
Holy fuck…
So should someone like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have their “own classes”? Who would they be competing against?
They too are “rare people who have a significant competitive advantages against vanillas”.
This cannot be discussed rationally in the current political shitstorm unfortunately.
You misspelled “my own ideology isn’t rational, so I can not discuss this rationally”
Fyi I don’t agree with the previous commenters ideology about two separate classes for women.
I however agree that we can’t discuss this rationally today because social media (including lemmee) is a terrible forum for this discussion, because, unfortunately, a person who is AFAB and has a DSD, or other naturally occurring condition, which gives them more or less testosterone/lactic acid/something else than the typical woman, and thus an advantage, gets conflated with having a trans woman compete, because then the people who feel strongly about trans people on both sides come out of the wood work and start yelling…
And then everyone gets pissed and/or understandardly triggered and nothing can be argued.
By naturally occurring I mean w/o the use of drugs/doping/surgery. Which in my understanding is what’s the case with the boxer.
I don’t post this to argue or convince. Just clarify what I think they’re trying to say.
I won’t respond to the “are they female”/“what to do” debate, only that this forum is terrible to have these debates.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk/soap box lecture
By naturally occurring I mean w/o the use of drugs/doping/surgery.
Without discussing the sex/gender side of this argument; I don’t understand why you’re not applying the same logic to freakishly dominant male athletes?
We measured lung capacity in biology class in the ninth grade, and I had the largest of the class. Six liters. Most guys were around 5.5l.
Phelps has twelve.
And there’s a ton of scientific studies about Usain Bolt.
I understand your point, but would the same logic not be applicable, even if the “unnatural” (they’re very natural but you get the point, that’s why the quotations) physical traits for Phelps and Bolt aren’t necessarily as significant as having very high testosterone levels in a women’s league?
Apologies I meant the person you were originally replying to. I can see it being ambiguous.
I agree with you, this argument is dumb, sexist, and not fair.
I’m just saying this is just not a good forum to handle it.
vanilla females
Yeah, okay.
It’s a reasonable catchall, could have said baseline. Or define things by exclusion, which is unnecessarily technical and verbose.
It sure is a catchall. However, you don’t need to be technical or verbose. The scientific term you want is phenotypical.
I still wonder how you don’t think you’re being intersexist at the moment though? Like, where do you draw the line? Is a woman with PCOS disallowed because it causes a slightly elevated testosterone level? What about a woman with webbed feet? They wouldn’t be considered phenotypical either.
But why don’t we get a little more technical and verbose for a second. The typical female testosterone range is 0.5-2.4 nmol/L (that’s nanomoles per litre). The typical male range? 10-35 nmol/L. A woman with PCOS may have levels around 2.5-3.5 nmol/L. Someone with Caster Semanya’s (alleged, never confirmed) condition would typically have around 3.5-5 nm/L. Still half or less than a phenotypical male. So I bring it back to the webbed feet, because they’d probably be similarly on par in terms of the advantage they provide.
Aren’t the Olympics about finding the most capable athlete from whatever category the sport is separated into? Not even every event is gender segregated, there is no “female Olympics”, there are simply gender segregated Olympic events.
And for those events, if the categories are separated by gender, wouldn’t “rare people” like Caster Semenya be the most deserving female athletes to win Gold in those events?
And if that’s a problem, maybe we need to find a different way to categorize athletes other than the current system that sorts them by their genitals.
Ugh I am still so frustrated with you for name-dropping Caster Semenya like you know what you’re talking about! I have the same intersex variation that she (allegedly) has. The only reason anyone cares is that she has an XY karotype. She was born a girl, she was raised a woman. Why should she be disallowed from competing as one? Why is your solution to exclude some cis women from sports as well? Where will it stop?
Which doesn’t matter in any way, shape, or form anyway. The original tweet is making that point. Phelps is a fucking fish mutant and we let him compete as a “man” but a woman somehow must conform to some platonic ideal of a woman to even be considered such.
It’s fucking sexism, and genetics doesn’t factor into it in the slightest.
Phelps needs to be investigated because I’m pretty sure he is a largely a dolphin
Genetically, he’s been disqualified for swimming due to having a Z chromosome, meaning he’s sexually a fish.
🙄
I thought ZZ made you a bird.
We need to settle this, everyone. Is Phelps a bird or a fish? No other options here.
Those guys are assholes. I keep bumping into them mid-air. Have they ever once apologized?
ZZ/ZW is used by assorted fish and birds. Disgusting. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… MASS HYSTERIA. Brought to you by the woke mob. Thanks, Obama.
It’s not about protecting women. It’s about attacking women.
There I fixed your conclusion.
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Should we have other protected divisions though? Why don’t we have a protected division for people not born with attributes that help them? Making a division aimed at women and then not letting the best women compete in it seems rather dumb and it’d be similar to making a division for men who aren’t athletic so they can compete without having to be the best.
We do, we have the Para-Olympics. But, it seems you’re conflating being good with being scrutinized. The better you are in a protected class, the more you should be scrutinized to retain the class protection. It does not mean you will be disqualified… You may be the best ever in that protected class.
We could make a lazy couch division if we wanted to. I don’t think anyone wants that.
Para-Olympics are divisions for people with disabilities. It’s not for people without advantages (and I’m not saying there should be, just posing a hypothetical). If we don’t allow the best women to compete because they’re too advantaged, doesn’t that also imply we should have other divisions for less advantaged people too?
Obviously the woman thing we’re seeing is just conservatives policing what the idea of a woman is though. They don’t actually care about the women or the sport. They were not watching women’s MMA (or whatever the event was) before this happened. It still does bring into consideration what divisions we should have though, and whether women’s division actually makes sense to have or if it should be something else, and what that should be. We don’t have divisions for socio-economic status despite that playing a large role in most sports. Should we?
Just saying it was another type of protected division. I agree, the men’s division is also protected to some degree from PED users. There is no clean solution. I like someone else’s post about Heap Problems. It’s clear there are naturally occurring classes of athlete, but the lines we draw are arbitrary, and that’s just how it is. Just like any other science experiment, we must pick and choose variables that make the most sense, as we cannot infinitely slice.
Sports is full of divisions. Age divisions. Weight divisions. Each sport has its own set of rules based on what gives an advantage in that sport.
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This is a pretty good take, except that the men’s division is also protected. Performance enhancing drugs are not allowed, it is not a free-for-all open division.
I don’t think anyone thinks the men’s and woman’s division should be combined because there is no good way to differentiate the difficult place in the middle; this is a classic heap paradox, just because the division between woman and not woman is difficult does not mean it doesn’t exist.
Just one example from speed climbing men’s WR = 4.74s, woman’s WR = 6.06s; the men are 27.8% faster. No one is arguing that men are more dedicated and train more, that they have access to better nutrition or equipment. Men have a natural advantage; combining the divisions would simply mean that no women could possibly get into the top class competition. This maps across ALL sport.
This maps across ALL sport.
Well, while mostly true, there are always exceptions.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men
Tldr ultradistance events and some shooting
Interesting.
TIL there are people who swim marathons.
Yes. I think that this is the concern of everyone who is genuinely interested in fair competition. While I’m sure that some people are triggered ( in both directions ) by the transgender debate.
I mentioned in another thread that I think the simple solution to this is to not define divisions by gender, but to simply measure testosterone and have a high-T “open” division and a low-T division. This is where the perceived competitive advantage lies and sidesteps the whole gender issue entirely.
While sensible, is T really the only factor at play here? Once you get into the science where do you draw the line?
Realistically it probably depends on the sport. Y chromosomes, being exposed to certain levels of testosterone in utero (unless one is resistant or unresponsive to the hormone), being exposed to certain levels of testosterone in puberty and maintaining certain levels of testosterone all do things to the body than could effect performance and that’s all still mostly just focused on the one hormone. How much each of those things has an impact (if any) is going to depend entirely on the nature of the sport in question.
Should Brittney Griner be tested for testosterone and then forced to play in the NBA if it’s too high?
You can’t tell how high someone is by measuring testosterone. Maybe you were thinking of the Toblerone test.
Cute weed joke considering it landed her in a horrific Russian prison as a queer woman, but also, I didn’t say she was too high.
You’re right. Determining what’s fair and what isn’t is a task non-transphobic scientists should be working on, not something you discuss lightly around a beer at a pub. There needs to be actual research.
Transphobes will probably not like the conclusions of that research, though…
The WNBA is still part of the NBA. She’s been playing in the NBA
You know what I mean.
What’s funny is that is THE issue we’re discussing - misogyny in sports. That the NBA in your mind defaults to “Real Men’s Basketball^TM” and women have this little side denominator with their girl basketball… like no. Be exact if you don’t want to be sexist. The NBA is both the men’s and women’s basketball associations.
What you MEANT was whether Britney should change to the men’s division of the NBA.
…or I don’t watch basketball and just didn’t know that.
Nah, it must be that I hate women.
What do you think the letters in “NBA” stand for?
Interesting apology for your accidental misogyny. Kinda looks like you do hate women.
And what of high testosterone people who are completely testosterone insensitive? Those are the women who have Y chromosomes
i think we need a normie olympics, it’d be like the paralympics, but for people randomly selected from the average population.
My kid said just the other day. “they should have an average person do it first so we could see the difference.”
Now I’m thinking which one would be the funniest. Hurdles are definitely up there
Relevant https://m.xkcd.com/2964/
Oh, right! Now I know why the image in my head was so vivid. I actually saw it before
Summer olympics: Pole vault
Winter olympics: Luge
For pole vaulting I’d be surprised if even one person would dare to do the jump. I’m pretty sure I’d chicken out, but to be fair, it looks like it’s really easy to get hurt
There are a LOT of Olympic sports that you probably shouldn’t “just do.”
Fencing would be pretty amusing.
bonus points if it’s horse based (though that’s just jousting)
Diving, pole jumping, gymnastics in general
i absolutely agree with your kid, get that kid on marketing stat!
I told her the same thing. She should pitch it for the next Olympics. She’d be 14 when that happens. Gives her four years to plan.
You should watch Takeshis Castle then. It’s pretty close to normie olympics.
Sometimes athletes go on, but the obstacles are so fucky even they struggle with it.
oh right, that show, i remember hearing about it at one point, what a weird show.
This whole thing de-legitimatizes any point any TERF argument ever had, is what I’d say if there was any point they had to begin with.
She almost, ALMOST has it!
Just a little bit of mental extension and she’ll realize that this is the same reason trans women should be allowed to play women’s sports as well
I was confused because despite the title suggesting she’s a TERF, this sounds on the face of it like a pretty trans-inclusive statement.
I’m pretty sure she isn’t a TERF, Caroline is a left-wing pop culture/politics streamer.
Not sure that she is. I can’t find anything that suggests that she is.
I found one tweet where she talked about the need to have trans actors play trans roles. I don’t think that would even occur to many TERFs.
Ah, if she’s not a TERF it is pretty inclusive. The title made it sound like this person is a transphobe though and I have no idea who they are.
Also, these TERFs (and other bigots) haven’t seemed to have noticed that women who play sports at a high level like in the Olympics haven’t asked for their protection.
Everyone wants to play sports safely. You don’t need to ask for it.
Yes, we really need to make sure a sport where people punch each other into unconsciousness is safe.
Why didn’t I realize that before?
And yes, people who want protection do have to ask for it.
Regulations in general contradict you. You’re forced to wear a seatbelt whether you asked for it or not, even if you don’t want to. Not sure how that related to trans rights or sports, though.
Oh cool, let’s check out some TERF messaging:
Sport is inherently physical, so the different physiologies of the sexes matters. Whilst everyone should be able to participate in sport, the Sports Councils’ Equality Group’s International Research Literature Review states “There are significant differences between the sexes which render direct competition between males and females unfair in most ‘gender-affected sports’”. The peer-reviewed scientific literature found evidence that:
Alright, pretty reasonable start. We all want fairness.
On average, compared to age-matched females at any given body weight, adult males have:
- 40- 50% greater upper limb strength
- 20-40% greater lower limb strength
- 12kg more skeletal muscle mass [1]
Hold up, did we just use a study about (cis) adult males to argue that trans women shouldn’t be allowed? Oh no, that doesn’t seem very scientific… Well, I’m sure it’s fine, let’s check their references:
[1] Janssen et al 2000, Handelsman et al 2018
Okay, it’s fine, I’ll look them up myself:
Skeletal muscle mass and distribution in 468 men and women aged 18-88 yr
Okay well, that can’t be right, their numbers are just coming from a comparison to men, they’re just pushing the narrative that trans women and men are equal. Huh. Let’s check their other reference:
Circulating Testosterone as the Hormonal Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance
Wait, this study doesn’t prove anything about trans women either. In fact, considering their comparisons of low and high-level testosterone in males, you could reasonably extrapolate that trans women on feminising HRT are comparable to their peers from this study. I wonder why the post didn’t bring up that possibility? Ah well, let’s move on, shall we?
Handgrip strength is often seen as a wider indicator human muscle strength[2] and mean maximal hand-grip strength over 2,000 European young adult males and females shows:
Oh, huh, still conflating cis men and trans women…
- Female handgrip at 329 Newtons
- Male handgrip at 541 Newtons
- Highly trained female athletes still have weaker hand grip than 75% of untrained male subjects [3]
Hmm, it doesn’t seem very feminist to perpetuate the wildly inaccurate myth that the majority of males would outcompete elite female athletes…
Okay, so would you like me to keep picking this apart, or could we agree that it’s scientifically unsound now? If any of these “facts” were relevant to the discussion of trans women in sports, I might (reluctantly) agree that there’s a safety argument to be made. But I think what this conversation lacks most is empirical evidence. It seems that if an organisation like the one you linked above, who ostensibly want what’s safest for all women, that they’d love to fund such a study that proves definitively what’s safest. That they wouldn’t care what the result was. So why have no studies into actual trans women been done?
I know this is quite anecdotal, but myself and most trans femmes I’ve talked too (who are on HRT) can describe the experience of losing that strength that comes alongside testosterone. If you want something more empirical, I have read countless instances of trans female athletes being unable to come close to matching their pre-transition Personal Best’s. In fact, the gap between their pre and post-transition PBs is often on par with the gap between female and male results more generally. I can’t recall a single instance where their PB went up after hormones. Whereas most athletes in their prime continue to push their PB higher.
The link was to disprove the previous claim and provide at least one example of women in sport calling for protection.
Whether or not they are justified in asking for a balance between saftey and fairness is a can of worms I’m leaving closed.
All I see is another progressive organisation that has been infiltrated by TERFs. The page you link too reeks of their tactics and arguments. The fact they’re based on TERF Island (UK) says a lot as well.
For the women involved that aren’t TERFs, I think it can be all too easy to subscribe to their arguments when you’ve worked so hard to achieve fairness and equality. But the conflation of trans women and cis men as equals, without any scientific proof, leads me to believe that even they are being deceptive here. I mean, the TERF tactic of denying trans men their identities also shows up towards the end:
Transgender men and boys, or non-binary women and girls, who do not take hormones or who have not undergone any form of medical transition, share the same physiological features as biological women and therefore should be welcomed in the female category.
Like, I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s fair to use people who dislike trans people to prove your point. You’re fair and reasonable to not want to open that can of worms. All I’m saying is that finding a definitively anti-transgender reference doesn’t prove your point, because there’s no way to seperate the TERF from the science in that article. Meanwhile, I have never seen an Olympic-class athlete complain about transgender women in sports until Angela Carini. And even she has turned around and profusely apologised for what she said:
“It wasn’t something I intended to do,” Carini said. “Actually, I want to apologise to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke.”
She added that if she met Khelif again, she would “embrace her”.
So, I dunno, I don’t really think you’ve disproven that claim at all.
finding a definitively anti-transgender reference doesn’t prove your point
Ok. I think I can provide an example and avoid any sensitive topics. Co-ed soccer has different rules (e.g no slide tackles) because women have asked to be protected.
I have never seen an Olympic-class athlete complain about transgender women in sports
That wasn’t the claim I was countering. A more general statement was made.
Olympic-classwomenathleteshave never asked for protectionfrom transgender womenin sports.The original statement made was too broad.
It sounds like that’s her argument.
So much of this fear and hysteria is bound up in the media’s need to find “perfect” athletes, rather than the social need to venerate exercise and healthy competition. You get this fixation on cheating and this endless bickering over who has an “unfair” advantage, while losing sight of the general value of people feeling inspired to play sports and swim and just get the fuck outside to touch some grass.
The need to know who should win the shiniest trophy seems to eclipse any other concern. It becomes a justification for all the hatred and bigotry that The Olympics was originally intended to cut against.
“Superman vs Thor” mentality.
