Woke DD and women in sports

OP: was she able to work out the biological male in that photo I posted yet? Or is she still trying to work it out?

She's not 'woke', she's 'sleep'!

Of course everyone is entitled to do sport - competing with those of the same sex!

Give her a decade in the real world - that'll soon wake her up.

It would be so much easier if sports (and changing rooms and prisons etc) were all just recategorised as
*Penis
*Vagina

Done.
Humanity saved.

I feel like the best question is,

“Why do we separate sports by gender identity rather than sex? Is there evidence that females with a masculine gender Identity (trans men) are as a group stronger/faster than males with a feminine gender identity (trans women)?

If not, shouldn’t we separate by sex, since there’s strong evidence that males are as a group stronger and faster than females?

@WhatsInAName19 it's so frightening. She's only small but I worry about what she will come across in her years. What the state of things will be by the time she is old enough to experience it. Or if she will push me away if I try to explain it to her.

Brothers

Brothers are the key

OP does your dd have a brother?

I'm dreading my daughter being brought up in this world

@OkayGo me too. I am terrified at the prospect of her being swept along into this madness and all my attempts to arm her with facts and compassion actually alienating her from me. One of the very worst things about all of this is the way that women are being silenced and wrongly painted as hateful bigots (ironically, by some of the most hateful misogynists) all because we dare to defend our hard won sex-based rights and even the right to be called women and speak about our bodies. How many of us are scared to write what we think online? Scared to speak about this to our friends and family for fear that they will cut us off? Scared to speak up at work for fear that we will lose our jobs? Scared to speak up to our sports team for fear of being kicked out? There are lots of brave women doing great things, but we shouldn't have to be brave in order to be granted our existing sex based rights.

Channeling the libfem I used to be in my 20s (way before trans issues took off - and I hasten to add as a sporty woman, I was never so daft as to think there was no physiological difference...) I think the reluctance to "see" physical differences comes from three main factors.

1. An over-emphasis on the importance of socialisation relative to physiology.

2. Cognitive dissonance -"if I admit to myself how much stronger men are, and that some of them are bad guys, I'll never leave the house again... so I'll pretend that Black Widow, Wonder Woman, etc. etc. are realistic, and that with the right jujitsu moves I too could fight off a rapist."

3. A worry that if we admit to the existence of physical differences in sport, that will function as the thin end of the wedge, and we'll end up having to admit to cognitive differences as well. (I don't think this fear is well-founded - insofar as any studies do show cognitive differences, the d-values are tiny, way, way smaller than d-values for physical differences; and the studies are rarely robust across different methodologies; and you can't even in principle filter out the effect of nurture and brain plasticity).

Re. 1, the importance of socialisation (and apologies - this really is a TL:DR): I can see how this happens because in some sports women are still playing catch up. Take football AS AN EXAMPLE - a sport I used to play. I started aged 30-something (friend talked me into giving it a go, I fell in love with it). By about age 7 or 8 DS was more skilled than me, because he had played for hours and hours, obsessively, from about the age of 2. (Although it's been debunked as being the whole story, Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours to excel at something rule has some merit).

Now look at your average upper primary school. You have 4 classes of 30 - so 60 boys, 60 girls. At least half of those boys will be obsessive about football. Maybe 1 girl out of 60 will be. Simply because of social pressures. There will be sporty girls - doing gymnastics, or swimming, or... But not football. So you immediately have a massively larger pool of talent. This is still the case today.

So a libfem can point to this socialisation and say "that explains the difference..." (In fact there used to be a poster on here who used to try to push this position).

My view is that if women's football was taken as seriously as, say, women's tennis (if we'd never had the FA ban on women playing on FA pitches, which ran from the 1920s to the 1970s!) we'd see a lot higher standard of women's football. It's really turned round out of all recognition in the 20 years I've been following the game - standards have rocketed. But just as Serena Williams couldn't take on a man in the top 100, women's teams will never be able to compete with the sheer speed, strength and physicality of men's teams.

Socialisation is part of the story, but it's never the whole story.

OneTerrificMouse

Thanks for posting that image of the volleyball player - Tiffany Abreu, because that really highlights the insanity of what is happening to women's sport.
The net in volleyball is lower for women (for obvious reasons) and so are the hurdles in women's track events.
Therefore Abreu is being encouraged to cheat by the sports authorities.

My dds are a similar age and are not woke. Lots of young people don't think TWAW at all.

You might well find that her views evolve.

I'm at the very mild end of the gender critical spectrum, but nevertheless my teenage daughter practically accused me of being a terf after a discussion about women's sport.

6 months later she apologised (we had no discussions in between)... what did it for her was the idea that as a lesbian woman she should be cool about having sex involving a penis. But she agrees about the sport issue now too

There's a difference between professions where strength is a factor, and sports.

Yes, but the point is that a lot of young women don't realise there is a strength difference at all, in part perhaps because they've been encouraged to think there isn't in terms of professions. I agree with you that in jobs there are the factors you mention, but it's also true that in those professions having women can make a difference to the way the work is managed or there may be some jobs where the number of women remains low. If you can't even allow for discussing those possibilities, you also aren't going to be able to talk about the sports issue sensibly.

I'm dreading my daughter being brought up in this world

There's a difference between professions where strength is a factor, and sports. For a strength based profession you can set a minimum level and anyone who can reach it should be able to do the job. Skills such as cooperation and equipment may be helpful too. Of course, you get rumours/complaints about where that level is set or how well it's policed, which may or may not be accurate.

For sports, the whole point is that the upper level is open. Yes, raw strength is not the only consideration, mental strength, recovery speed, stamina, courage, physical configuration, practice etc are all important. You cant just line people up, get them to bench press a weight and the strongest will win all sports. But overall, strength and physical configuration will give huge advantages in a self selecting group of trained sportspeople.

My question would be if she's ever actually played sport...

Can you ask your DD if she’s seen much evidence of transmen taking part in men’s sporting events, gaining places in men’s teams?

Maxine Blethyn, a 6ft 4inch transwoman, has been playing for Kent women’s county cricket. Ask if your DD knows of any transmen playing in men’s teams.

Were there any at her uni, do you know? My sons have played football and rugby at their universities. There are no transmen playing in any of the men’s teams at either of their unis - for obvious reasons of size, speed and strength. But a number of transwomen are now playing in the women’s teams, taking the place of young women who previously had a place on those teams. Oh, and they’re smashing it.

So if your DD’s argument is based on trans people being entitled to do sport (which, of course, they are!) ask her if it’s actually just transwomen that she’s considering.

Because transmen, who are also surely entitled to do sport, have absolutely no incentive to do so if they know they won’t ever win a place on a men’s team, or win any race against a man.

It seems like which ever way you look at it, women lose out.

I think it's easier not to see the issues if you've never done much sport, so a. you've never competed with boys growing up and seen the way their advantages go into overdrive after puberty, so you go from basically being on the same level to them being able to beat you without even trying and b. it's not directly inconveniencing you anyway so maybe you just don't care.

It's the injuries that even those who aren't invested in sport tend to care about, so I'd start with Fallon Fox breaking Tamika Brent's orbital bone.

They can see that young men their age are generally talker....and bigger...and stronger. It must be fucking obvious that if they ran a race against these men that they would lose, or in a fight ...lose, or weightlifting...lose

I wonder about this as well, but my observation has been that many don't see it. When I was in my 20s I joined the military, and it was interesting to see that some of the young women did not expect to struggle so much to meet the same expectations as the males - or in fact lower ones in some cases. I would have said that I knew men had an advantage but even so, at that age, as someone who wasn't really into sports or anything like that, I was surprised at the difference, that a quite fit young woman might well be less strong than a less fit, middle aged man.

When I was in school there seemed to be a lot of emphasis placed on the idea that women had no real differences compared to men, including in jobs that were very demanding of strength. I remember hearing an interview with an older male firefighter, saying that one issue with female firefighters was that even if they were quite strong when they joined, they tended to lose their muscular strength at an earlier age and found it difficult to get back to the same level. This was considered some beyond the pale sexism, it didn't even occur to us that it might just be true.

Nobody really believes it.

Obviously not talker...taller

Why is the k so close to the L?

What i dont get with some of the youngsters and the sports issue...when it comes to self ID at least is , these young woman are walking around with their eyes open yeah?

They can see that young men their age are generally talker....and bigger...and stronger. It must be fucking obvious that if they ran a race against these men that they would lose, or in a fight ...lose, or weightlifting...lose

I mean there is level playing field, being ‘fair’ and being fucking stupid

Or do they think that with a bit if training that they would stand a chance

Might check with dd , she is nearly 18 and a bit dippy but even she would be able to see the problem with this...well i hope so, I’m a bit afraid to ask now

Can she work out which one of these ladies is a male?

I know its quite hard to tell. You have to look really, really closely.

Why does she think sports are divided into male and female in the first place?

I suspect a lot of young women don't realise the real physical differences between men and women. Which seems odd, but many people don't really need to use their bodies that way any more.

She must really, genuinely think that TWAW. If so, there'll be no getting through to her.