Thankyou Laurel Hubbard

@Manderleyagain
Yes I think so - or I have seen it said that ioc decided to stick with 10, while iaaf have gone with 5 for trans women and women with semenyas condition. Most sport federations have gone with the ioc line, so athletics is different from the other sports.

women with CS condition???
I thought CS has “fathered” biological children with their wife. If this is the case how can their status / time records / medals etc… still stand?

Big £ competitions - golf / tennis. Big tv coverage.

& also re retired elite (or maybe not) sportsmen entering women’s comps.
Unless these retirees are sitting on the commentary couches collecting their fat fees!

It sounds feeble, but we need these x players to come forward and help.

The testosterone rules are simple women are only allowed narural female levels men aren't allowed to compete against women unless they say they are women and then reduce their testosterone a bit. Not to female levels obviously that wouldn't be fair on them (TW) but let's says 5 times maximum female levels. If however a TW can't get into this range it will be raised with immediate effect.

*Totally agree.

I want to say her name as much as possible.

It's Kuanini Manumua.*

This. She is generally called Nini. She was raised in the US and competed for them as a junior. Her parents sacrificed hugely financially to support her training. She got into weightlifting in high school. She is a committed Christian. She is 21. This would have been her first Olympics.

That is all I can find out about her online and sadly none of us will get to watch her in Tokyo.

Not sure it’s time to pop the champagne just yet.
Hubbard is 7th in world, so likely not to medal? Which would ‘prove’ there’s no advantage and women should just STFU.

Always counter this, please. It proves is that an old, male bodied person, well past their competing prime in the male category, can waltz into the women's category and take the place of a young, fit woman in her prime. They already won before they set foot in the Olympic village. They took the chance to compete on the international stage and the Olympic experience away from a woman. Getting on the podium is a process over years of training, competing, trying, failing and learning from experience. If women/girls are always pushed out of those chances to learn and develop by transwomen, they have no way of ever knowing what they could have done at the top level.

Agree, it's time for the men in sport to step up.

Agreed. Why should women have to fight yet another battle

That looks good Ted, I like Boyce, will each that.

I don't think we should forget that Semenya has been instrumental in getting us to where we are now, and the media are has been and will do, the bidding of the IOC as in, will report on Hubbard with language to support their narrative (including, acceptance esp since the BBC is still a Stonewall diversity champion, paid for with license fee money...)

The media coverage this week might men Hubbard is referred to as 'transwoman athlete' but is put money on words like

She
Her
Trans female
Woman
Other women

...Being used. Newsfeeds for the Olympics get put into domestic broadcasts so the reporters and producers will absolutely be made to lie to avoid complaints and legal issues.

We should watch Sky, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 like a hawk. Radio too, those brief news updates will be nice and sketchy on the details.

A few brave former male olympians, well past their prime for men's sport, could breeze into the women's categories and clean up. I think people need to see the consequences if this ideology is applied across the board.

They could win, stand on the podium and only as they're about to receive gold, step down and simply hand it to the woman who really won. Now THAT would be worth seeing.

In short, we are where we are because one post op trans woman cyclist told the IOC they would need to start effectively "doping" on testosterone (as they had no testes and male bodies cannot function properly without it) in order to compete, and therefore, wanted a doping exemption. And that, plus the stupid Harper study, is why the IOC changed their rules to self ID and a reduced testosterone count.

Could be forced into transitioning to become a medalist as a woman instead.

Depending on the definition of transition, this flip flop would possibly be acceptable to some athletes although others might need to be subject to some degree of coercion or inducement.

I would highly recommend listening to this interview with Canadian track and field champion, national coach and PhD in Kinesiology, Linda Blade. It gives you the batshit history of how we have got to where we are, and how easily the IOC threw away women's sport, to appease one or two transwomen. (Plus the fascinating fact that women used to have their own Olympic federation and held 4 international, women's only, Olympic Games during the 1920s/30s).

I want to say her name as much as possible.

It's Kuanini Manumua.

The comments on the Laurel Hubbard articles in the media, the DM in particular, are 100% outraged but it annoys me when people should say ‘the female athletes should boycott and protest!’ Why is it the women who have to suffer to protest? Why can’t the MEN show solidarity by boycotting and insisting that Hubbard should be competing in their group?
Why can’t the audience refuse to buy tickets for that event?
Why can’t the organisers step up and say that sports must be firmly segregated by sex?
Ffs. Why is it always women who have to make a stand when we’ll be the ones punished or losing out for doing so?

Imagine a country that cares only for medals and not for the athletes. Ex top junior boy who is now not quite good enough to represent his country as a senior. Could be forced into transitioning to become a medalist as a woman instead.

If a woman had the levels of testosterone that LH has they would be investigated for doping, disqualified and stripped of any honours.

There's an excellent BBC radio series?/podcast? called Bloodsport, available on BBC Sounds, about institutionalised doping in sport. I'm not saying that being trans is the same as taking performance enhancing drugs - of course not. But it gives you an insight into the lengths countries are prepared to go to win medals. And also to the extent to which national sporting bodies are prepared to fuck over the athletes themselves...

The striking thing about the graph is that trans women can have more testosterone than naturally occurs in some healthy men(- though presumably they are not usually olympians) and miles more than any women.

Really, focusing on the position of the line detracts from the main point of the underlying unfairness of anyone who went through male puberty competing against women. It does illuatrate how little the policy considered women though.

'I'm not cheating, I am competing within the rules' was the line that RM/VI used when they became the women's world champion, despite being male, wasn't it?

Which is all very well, but who was it lobbying for rule changes and supplying 'evidence' that TW had no advantage over women in (un)sporting competitions?

Disappointing it wasn't the idea of women's safety in prisons, refuges and medical settings that triggered a discussion instead of losing sport places and medals.

I give the benefit of the doubt to most normal people - that the above is so batshit, they cannot believe it. It took my DH ages to get his head round as he could not believe it to be true.

I hope this wakes people up and doesn’t normalise it...

I do worry that because LH may not get a medal that people think it’s ok. When it isn’t.

Nini Manumua is an OLYMPIAN.

Thank you umbel. Those kind of data visualizations are really useful.

Listened to the moral maze on this last night. My son and I spent most of it shouting at the radio, ' it's not cis, it's woman!! This word cis is a word I genuinely am starting to recoil from when I hear it, it's quite offensive as 'woman ' has worked very well before all of this

Is the Semenya line lower because that is what athletics sets?

I can see it @umbel - that is an incredibly powerful graphic.

Does he not feel embarrassed? How can he not feel shame when he stands up against the women! I'm embarrassed for him