Another athletics one

No its the fault of (some) women, who even now cannot accept that we all come in different shapes and sizes.
Too bulky - You re a cheating trans who is erasing female sport.
Too thin - You re body shaming us all and risk an eating disorder.

We watched the indoor competitions and it never once crossed our minds that men were in female competitions, why ? because the governing bodies have banned trans women in competition & at this level they are very hot on cheating.

@Worldgonecrazy Why have you linked to pictures of just black athletes?

*competing

@MrGHardy There are no trans women completing in the women's category of elite athletics. They are not allowed.

Well they clearly are not.

If gender identity is the metric by which to assign sporting classes so that transwomen compete in the women's category, then you can't have non-binary people in the women's category because their gender identity is different to 'woman'.

This is the hypocrisy of the gender ideology.

In the photo of the Chinese athletes above - even though for some reason the top half showing the athletes heads has been cut off - suspicions were raised, denied by the athletics authority, but the two were later disqualified from the women's event.

https://dunyanews.tv/en/WeirdNews/748901-Debate-surrounding-true-gender-of-Chinese-female-athletes-reignited-by-I

I spent quite a few years competing in a power sport and the experience of training and my female teammates and competitors were a wonderful refuge from sexism, though other aspects of the sport brought it right back.

I agree that this mess has been weaponised by sexist insistence that we look at male people and don't see them as male. But you really can't always tell, at least from a photo or a few brief clips.

Competitors for the chinese women's 400M team in 2019:

I cannot recall people thinking Tessa Sanderson looked male, but certainly recall always looking twice at Fatima Whitbread.

The Eastern European athletes were all white. Testosterone causes the facial structure to change in a more masculine fashion, heavier brow, squarer jaw and so on........and of course the East Europeans were also winning most of the women's events. Sharon Davies also lost out on swimming medals to women because they'd been doped. She herself always had very muscular, well built shoulders and back.....for obvious reasons, but you didn't automatically question her sex.

You'd have to be very stupid, these days, to be doping given that the testing is now so stringent - so obviously in this case there might well be another reason, as I've suggested, such as naturally occuring higher testosterone levels.

But you cannot stop people from noticing and commenting on such incongruities. It was my husband who had been watching the race and had mentioned a very male looking athlete in the hurdles event.......and then when i was browsing Mumsnet there were others who had clearly had similar thoughts.

It is always worth remembering just how sexist sport was and how homophobic men's sport remains. Tbh women's tennis got a lot of homophobia back in the day. Journalists male and female wrote about Billie Jean King supposedly being a sexual predator on young women. They wrote those things because they were homophobic and back then homophobia sold newspapers.

*being

Yep. Remember all the fuss about Tessa Sanderson bring a man? She wasn't.

No, that's Nikki Hiltz, who won silver in the 1500m. She is female, identifies as trans.

But it doesn't matter how feminine she is. It matters that the rules have changed.

Did you watch her interview after the race. She is incredibly feminine when talking and close up. Amazing athlete to boot.

The original 2003 IOC Committee that said male people could compete as women post surgery contained an ex-athlete who was constantly challenged about her sex during her career. I'm certain her experience influenced the committee, why wouldn't it. I'm just sorry that she influenced it in that direction because I obviously think that was a sexist and wrong decision.

What we need is rules that work, and then to let men and women look however they look. Maybe start training yourself to do that.

you'd have to go a long way to find a man who's built anything like either of the Williams sisters, seriously.

But their gait??

The Williams sisters…

@PermanentTemporary yep, Fatima Whitbread had the same accusations flung at her. And Denise Lewis. Even non-athletes like Michelle Obama have been accused of looking too masculine. I’m struggling to put my finger on what they all have in common…

Just joining the chorus to say that anyone thinking this way needs in several ways to reset their thinking.

It's not 2020 any more. Things have shifted. In most sports we can be sure that people in the women's category are female.

It's not correct that women never suffered from being considered too masculine for sport before- Fatima Whitbread got a lot of grief for looking too masculine and so dud many other athletes. In those days it ws mostly discussion of doping rather than sex status but not always.

TRAs aren't wrong to say that sexism has always hurt women in sport. They just didn't see their particular issue as part of that sexism. Recasting the rules hasn't eliminated sexist attitudes and we need to check our own now.

For the avoidance of doubt, here is Caster Semenya aged 15:

Semenya is 5'10" with a booming bass voice. Literally everybody on the planet fitting that description is male. That picture is entirely flipped in the case of the athlete being discussed in this thread.

Good point re Femke Bol.

I'm not saying this must be the case - but the fact that this athlete is apparently consistently beating world records and her trainers say she could go much further still.... And how many people watched the race and did instinctively question her sex - does point to something quite unusual.

She has broken the 60mh world record twice. Of course her coaches are saying she could do better, all coaches would say that. What about Femke Bol- she managed to break the 400m indoor world record when it isn't even her even her event. Femke looks very different though so her achievements are not questioned.