Woke DD and women in sports

I’d ask her why she cares so much about them and so little for women and girls?

The daughter of a friend of mine is depressingly woke. It's all she ever talks about. And it's like listening to someone speaking another language. [Rolls eyes emoji that isn't on the list]

Yes sir!

How freaking brainwashed can someone be? "Entitled to"... entitled to beat actual women?

Show her the cycling tweets from the Manchester event.

Big Tantrum because the runner up didn’t give them a big hug and wear a solidarity badge 🙄 then much rudeness about lack of sportsmanship (shouldn’t that be sportswomanship?) and bitchy comments.

Says it all.

I don’t think going on about the subject will help because it pushes her into a corner and it’s difficult for her to back down. She’ll just keep defending the indefensible. My husband is a bit like this - he’s responsible for diversity in his organisation and likes to think of himself as a liberal and tolerant sort of guy. Mostly this is really good but has been difficult with the trans issue because it has been presented as the new progressive issue and instinctively this is where he would like to be. However he initially supported self I’d until I pointed out that this would mean that any man at all could ‘identify’ himself into the sports centre changing room where his teenage daughters changed. He can also see the problem with sport but still finds it hard to go against the TWAW mantra because it sounds nice and inclusive even if it is anything but. I leave research papers and newspaper articles around as a lower key way of putting the point across.

Stonewall never says anything about the trans community without adding ‘small and vulnerable’. This is deliberate as it means any questioning can be framed as big bad bullies vs vulnerable individuals. So I talk about the girls and women who have lost out on medals and scholarships to the male bodied cyclists, weight lifters, rugby and cricket players and athletes who cannot be described as ‘small and vulnerable’.

I think the OP is being very supportive though - encouraging her DD to examine evidence and to think about all sides of the arguments not just one.

Avoiding serious issues is less genuinely supportive than having a sensible discussion, surely?

I hope I can support my daughter should she decide not to agree with me on things.

What does that mean in practice though? That sounds like a meaningless platitude tbh.

I hope I can support my daughter should she decide not to agree with me on things.

but when you look at the park run results it really hammers home the difference

We do the kids park run, and the fastest every week are boys - although there's generally a girl in the top 5. From looking on from the sidelines, it seems to me that the differences start at about 9 or 10 - below that, the boys and girls come in in general fitness order, but once they get that touch older, the boys start pulling away with their times.

in one practical she encountered a bolt beyond her strength, the demonstrator handed her the 'girls spanner' ... not pink, just longer than the standard one to apply more leverage.

I love that 'girls spanners' exist (though I'd probably call them womens spanners myself). I did not know this. Real, practical solutions to real, physiological differences is what should be aimed at more widely.

Does she realise that no matter how many hormones are taken and how much surgery has been had it is basically a cosmetic procedure?

I say this because I had a rather heated twitter interaction where someone claimed trans women and cis women have equal rates of breast cancer.

I suppose there has been so much crap in history about women not being capable of doing maths or most of the professions etc etc that young women sometimes think the sports stuff fits into the same category rather than being a reality based difference.

Yes. My DD has, I think, a clearer view on the matter. She's studying engineering. Lots of hard maths equally for all, but when in one practical she encountered a bolt beyond her strength, the demonstrator handed her the 'girls spanner' ... not pink, just longer than the standard one to apply more leverage.

Women will, both on average and at at the extreme top of the range, always be physically disadvantaged compared to men in many respects. This is the trade-off for having bodies evolved to do the awesome physical tasks of growing, birthing and feeding a baby. Our bodies aren't 'lesser' - they're great for an incredibly physically demanding challenge which men can't do at all.

Encourage her to start park run, and see where the fastest female finisher ranks overall each week.

When I was a teenager I believed that women could be as physically strong as men, and as capable at all sports were it not for socialisation and practice. I thought this was a "feminist" position to take. Deep down, I knew it wasn't true but admitting women were "weaker" would be like admitting women were lesser, and I couldn't face up to the cognitive dissonance.
I grew out of it though - the evidence was too overwhelming!

I did couch to 5k recently. When I was near the end, dh (tall, long legs) started it. We realised that he was covering the same distance on his week 1 runs as I was on my week 9 runs. (So annoying!) His fast walking speed is the same as my jogging speed!
I do park run now, run at least 3 times a week and have really seen improvement. However dh's occasional park runs are still much quicker than mine and he runs a lot less regularly. I do overtake some men while running, but when you look at the park run results it really hammers home the difference... The fastest runners every week are men.

‘Entitled’ yup, that’s about the long and short of it.

Are they also entitled to use woman changing rooms, win women’s awards (when using as a woman part time - see P Bunce), have access to woman’s refuges...?

Does she believe that a transsexual is the same as transgender (and has she seen who falls under this - just about everyone these days).

What does sex mean - what does gender mean? Can a male person who says they are female still get prostate cancer? Can trans men still have periods? Can a woman have a penis? Can a trans woman still rape?

Can she not see there is a obsession with transing why are most likely to be gay kids? And what this means for the child - medicalisation, sterilisation, drop in iq achievement levels, life of medical procedures... why is big business killing themselves to adopt the rainbow - when it was back in the LGB days they wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole!

When I was young I hought it was just sexism when everyone said that men were stronger. But there weren't any female football teams and anyway I preferred to be with the boys.

And no, OP, we are very far from reactionary

If your dd thinks it's fair for people to identify into a sex class of their choice, including one where the other people are typically physically smaller, lighter weight, with less muscle etc, then presumably she thinks that weight and age classes are also irrelevant.

Presumably she would have no issues with a heavyweight boxer identifying as welterweight and beating all the other boxers to a pulp.

Presumably she would have no issues with adults identifying as children to win children's races, competitions etc.

Either you think physical reality matters in sport or you think that identity ie what someone thinks (or claims to think) they are is more important.

You can't have it both ways.

Yes I have been surprised by this in real life too. Seems like its fairly common for a fit and/or skilled woman to be able to out perform an unfit/unskilled man at cycling, tennis or even climbing a steep hill.

But then they start to do a bit of training and suddenly you watch them whizz past you in terms of achievement which is kind of depressing.

I suppose there has been so much crap in history about women not being capable of doing maths or most of the professions etc etc that young women sometimes think the sports stuff fits into the same category rather than being a reality based difference.

I dripfeed reality into discussions regularly.

Stuff like, when checking peak flow for asthma, just going 'Jesus, I hadn't realised the women's chart doesn't even touch the men's chart! Look, DD, if Dad had your peak flow he'd be nearly dead.'

Or talking about hip angle when she's doing physio.

Or watching horseracing, or dinghy sailing, and commenting on how there's no need to split by sex if it's skill rather than muscle needed.

Or celebrating the truly remarkable women doing ultra-marathons.

I am wondering in the same vein if it hasn't become a little impolite to talk about women vs men in terms of physicality. I hadn't thought of it before, but a few nights ago my husband was saying to my 15 year old daughter that as a child and teen, he had been taught that it was wrong to hit girls. She's realistic about men's strength, but even so she found it hard to relate to that idea. My husband pointed out that this was because men are stronger generally and it's not really on to fight with people weaker than oneself, but she still found it an alien and even offensive way of thinking.
It struck me that you don't really hear people talking that way anymore, even if men know which I think many do, it's almost impolite to mention it.

so I'll pretend that Black Widow, Wonder Woman, etc. etc. are realistic,

I wonder about the influence of popular culture on the perceptions of younger people.

I'm not a fan of fantasy or sci-fi or super hero genres, I prefer my books, films, TV shows to be rooted in the real world but even there of recent times there is an awful lot of portraying women as the physical equals of men. Women cops who can beat up male suspects. Women soldiers who are equal in every physical way to their male counterparts. Women spies who 'kick ass'.

What is rarely depicted is the reality that women will almost always lose a straight physical contest with most men. That the male suspect will be able to knock the woman cop out and get away. That the woman soldier will be carrying a lighter pack. That the woman spy will be using methods other than 'kicking ass'.

For young people who aren't using their bodies and comparing directly in the real world it is perhaps not surprising that they have unrealistic views when that is what much of popular culture portrays.

Yes a lot of that rings bells. When I trained really hard for rowing (morning and evening sessions on the water, six days a week, weights three or four times a week - I put on three inches on my busy measurement, all of it muscle) I got so I could do... Ta dah... Five pull ups. Your average bloke who was a complete couch potato could probably do that with no training at all, most men I've known who are in any way athletic can do between 30 and 50.

Goose's comment about muscular strength dropping off faster in women also rings bells - I've found post menopause my muscular strength has dropped off a cliff. It's actually pretty distressing - my body which used to do all sorts of great things has just completely crapped out on me.

I think I was pretty convinced that I could be as strong and as fast as the boys as a late teen/early twenties. Mainly because I was fitter and faster and sportier than the more interested in computer games boys I was friends with and dated at university! I didn't quite get that there is actually a real gulf until I started doing mass start running races where I found myself jostling in the middle of the pack with fat middle aged men even after training my socks off for months and having pretty good times for my sex and age category! As I've got older and lost fitness it's become even more apparent. And when I go to the gym with my 15 years older then me, does an office job husband and he can lift way more than me despite the fact I'm in a physically active, manual job every day it hits me even harder. Sometimes personal experience is the only way to displace a misconception. I also horse ride where you do compete on equal footing with men... which I think makes it more difficult to see. If her sport is skills based it'll cloud her understanding.

Unfortunately another thing that brought it home to me in a different way, although I
didn't join the dots at the time, was being sexually assaulted and not being able to do a damn thing about it because the man I had observed to be a bit weedy and unthreatening was actually able to completely over power me. I'm not a small woman, I'm broad shouldered and muscular... But nope.

I guess just keep talking to her, OP. And hope she doesn't have to have a bad experience to see what you mean.