Wednesday: The End of Sport for American Girls

(I do not necessarily endorse the rest of the content of that video, it just popped up in my recommendations for some reason.)

Doesn't Biden waffle? I swear he's worse than Trump for incoherent waffling. I can see where thise rumours about dementia come from.

He also thinks men can self id into women's prisons. See from 5.12 in this video

The enforcement bit though...

He didn't need to go that far. That's. Interesting.

What has he said on women's rights, anyone know?

I'm not surprised at all that Biden had that in his agenda to get elected - any Democrat would have needed it included because it checks the boxes. I'm also sure that Sarah McBride has had undue influence on Biden. Sarah is probably a likeable person and Biden wants to 'be kind'. There is evidence that with COVID, armed anti-government groups and the poor economy that transgender 'rights' will not be prioritized. Also, the Senate won't have 2/3 votes for the Equality Act.

I have always felt that sports in the U.S., along w/ many Americans obsession with fairness in sport, would wake people up, but this thread shows some depressing truths.

The biggest barrier is cognitive dissonance with an issue that uses racial and gay rights language...Americans still DO NOT GET IT because 'trans rights' feels like the next civil rights cause, even though all citizens already have constitutionally guaranteed human rights. Sadly, the U.S. does not have any sex-based rights in our constitution, so this is where the conversation gets muddled. We still need to ratify the ERA...if that happened, we'd have a lot more legal power to overturn infringements on sex-based rights.

Tulsi Gabbard did raise a bill to protect the existing sex-based rights in Title IX. It might wake some legislators to the flaws of the Equality Act. LGB Alliance USA has some excellent talking points to share w/ U.S. legislators...also, if you are outside the U.S., you can still write to Kamela Harris or Joe Biden and share concerns of puberty blockers, success of Kiera Bell case and what happens in your country when sex-based rights risk being eroded. American women would appreciate it.

@CaraDuneRedux As a companion piece to @scienceofsport’s analysis of biological factors you may also like this article by Jon Pike a philosopher specialising in sports ethics who also spoke at the World Rugby event coordinated by Ross Tucker.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00948705.2020.1863814#.X-Bsq1y1tjc.twitter

TL;DR you don’t “balance” safety fairness and inclusion in sport (as the IOC et al claim they are doing). These three things form a hierarchy with safety at the top.

But do read it - v readable and he makes several good points!

That's the only way I can imagine women getting their sports back

I suspect that things will have to get a lot more 'blatant' for the tide to really turn, and for serious questions to be posed. In sport, and in many other areas.

Perhaps after a decade or so when podiums are half full of mediocre men and a few women have died from sporting injuries then women will be allowed a sub-category of 'vagina havers games'.

That's the only way I can imagine women getting their sports back.

We need clearer rules, because at the moment no one has a fucking clue what is ok and what isn’t

That is because it largely seems to depend on reporting, and also on the mind set of the moderator on duty.

The whole thing has become wrapped in this quasi-religious identity politics in the US whereby it's blasphemy to even try to question it. These people are in the minority but they're the ones with all the power so my hopes of it changing are pretty slim

it is going to take time; quite a long time......but eventually the obvious contradictions of transgenderism will out themselves, and the real debate and questions will then arise.

I often think of the Hogwarts staircases.

We really need Mumsnet HQ to clarify exactly what is and isn't ‘of the spirit’ because stuff that was absolutely fine on here 6 months ago now gets a deletion and a strike.

We need clearer rules, because at the moment no one has a fucking clue what is ok and what isn’t.

OvaHere

RoyalCorgi
I see that Uppity and I have had our innocuous posts deleted. Am getting so fed up of this.
And me. The thread is starting to resemble swiss cheese. This always happens when we try to talk about safeguarding.

Yep - I knew it would happen when I wrote it.

So for everyone else - we referenced the very worst that would make the world wake up and stop this destruction to the rights and safeguarding of women and girls.

No one else seems to give a shit. The world is turning into a dystopian nightmare.

However, the women on these boards are a true solace.

I'm copying this across from the AFL thread - hope people don't mind the duplication, but it's useful to have a link to a scientist discussing this, I think.

Even if you reduce testosterone to below the 10nmol/litre level the IOC requires, the advantages of male puberty are retained in most measures.

Ross Tucker (who led the team who reviewed the existing literature for World Rugby) is very good on this. This thread is a good starter:
twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1333017543745953792

The bottom line is:
(a) you have to decide on either inclusion until evidence of harm is demonstrated, or exclusion until evidence of no harm is demonstrated. This choice is a philosophical/political one, but it's interesting to ponder why almost all sporting bodies have gone for the first of these options;

and (b) the existing literature (barring Joanna Harper's study of 8 amateurs self-reporting their times, with no controls) shows that on just about every measure you look at, reducing androgen levels reduces performance by a bit relative to other males, but does not reduce it to anything even close to the female range.

Biden will be remembered as the man who hated women so much, and was so fucking petty, that he removed their right to play sport in safety. He's just another creep.

Boycott. It worked against apartheid in cricket and rugby. The players have to take the lead.

I could weep

So could I. I'm a female sports competitor in an event – like most of them – where a male would rip me to shreds, metaphorically speaking.

I care about my podium place. I care about the pIaces and medals of my fellow women competitors. I don't give a shiny shit about being inclusive to male people in places where, to put it bluntly, they have no fucking right to be included.

I am Woman!

I see that Uppity and I have had our innocuous posts deleted. Am getting so fed up of this.

Well, if she has a feminist awakening about her role as a default support human around early middle age, as so very many of us do...

She’s going to be fucking fuming at what she gladly threw away to appease a whole group of people who DGAF.

@RozWatching Do you remember that Hannah Mouncey had an opinion piece published in the Guardian (perhaps bc they have an Australian edition) about not body-shaming women, because Hannah is a larger woman and, y'know, we all need to stop body-shaming Hannah. Bloomin cheek!

I have a male friend whose daughter is a long distance runner. I asked him how he'd feel if she has to compete against trans women and he said "she cares more about being inclusive to an oppressed and abused group than a medal!"

I could weep.

That man should hang his head in shame at the thought of how he's crushed his daughter's aspirations, how he's brought her up with an unthinking acceptance that she's a second class citizen.

"it won't matter because apart from a few suppressed GC voices it will be normal."

Also by then we'll have lost any distinction we have and they'll be effectively women.

So we'll have to complain that women are dominating women's sports. People will then equate it with bigotry, like people who point out black men often do well in track as being unfair.